With Support from UNDP-Civil Society Advisory Committee project (CSAC), the National Transformational Leadership Institute (NTLI) at the University of Juba in collaboration with Rumbek University of Science and Technology (RUST) conducted a training on enhancing the leadership and women’s empowerment skills for peace committees from Rumbek East, Mvolo and Yirol Counties. The training was held in RUST, Mabui Campus from 9th to 18th May 2017. The aim of this training was to increase conceptual clarity on gender, sexual gender based violence (SGBV), transformational leadership and peacebuilding to sharpen knowledge and skills on the fundamental causes and impact of the on-going conflicts and gendered norms infringing women and girls’ rights and to develop action plans for cohesion building and advocacy around peace and sexual gender based violence. Adult learning techniques and learner centered methods including questions and answers, interactive lectures, demonstrations, case studies, group discussion and class presentations were employed to prompt information and experience sharing among participants.
The results indicated that the majority of the participants find sexual gender based violence juxtaposed harmful traditional practices, mind-set, cattle raiding and poor leadership structures as major disputes thrusting conflict and instability in their communities. The training significantly improved knowledge and information on preventive and response to sexual gender based violence practices, conflict management and peacebuilding from self to family to community and between communities. The information on peacebuilding strategies and consequences of divided society was considered to be highly educative. To this end, participants expanded their verbal, coherent and aptitudes desirable to engage in conflict resolution and peacebuilding.
From participants’ actions plans, UNDP-CSAC project was requested to continue strengthening capacity of peace committees to effectively engage in peace dialogues and negotiations, facilitate the opening of feeder roads and common boarders as well as hospitals and markets to enable peaceable interaction between people from diverse cultures and backgrounds.
UNDP-CSAC project was recommended to support grassroots dialogue and reconciliation activities to reach out to more women and young people. UNDP was also requested to support the peace committees by establishing centres for adult education and peace networks for information collection, sharing and dissemination. Collection of gender disaggregate data will improve project planning and execution of peace and gender responsive interventions.