CEPO Executive Director Edmund Yakani. | Photo by Radio Tamazuj.

Civil Society Activist Edmund Yakani is calling on lawmakers from the national parliament to criminalize abduction of women and children in the country.

Yakani, the Executive Director of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO), says the act amounts to human trafficking.

His call comes a day after conflicting data on abductees released by authorities in Jonglei and Pibor Administrative Area showed that over 2,000 children and women were abducted in the last six months.

Yakani asks the parliament to enact a law to hold abductors accountable in order to stop the vice.

“The call is directed to our national parliament to enact a specific law to criminalize a practice, and this practice has become a source of human slavery, human trafficking, deadly and inhuman violence in our country,” the activist told Eye Radio on Friday.

“Children and women are being abducted regularly in some parts of our country, and evidences are coming very clearly that in the period of six month of communal violence between the communities of Jonglei and greater pibor area, 2,000 persons who are women and children are registered as abductees.”

In the previous years, Greater Pibor Administrative Area, Jonglei, Eastern and parts of Central Equatoria were the most states experiencing the practices of child abductions.

The UN Mission in South Sudan said recently that women and children were abducted in the country to be exchanged as bride price in the form of cattle.

UN children agency – UNICEF also said the abduction of children has severe consequences on their physical and psycho-social well-being as well as that of their families, and communities.

Edmond Yakan went on to describe the abduction of women and children as “inhuman”.

“This practice is becoming inhuman, it is becoming human trafficking, it is becoming a source of deadly and inhuman violence,” he said.

“Our national parliament, take an action now, and the action we need from you as nationalists is that, criminalize this practice of children and women being abducted.”