A group of South Sudanese women peace activists has
suggested that men in the civil war-torn country be
denied sex until they stop fighting.
The suggestion emerged after around 90 women,
including several members of South Sudan’s parliament,
met in the capital Juba this week to come up with ideas
on how to “to advance the cause of peace, healing and
reconciliation”.
A key suggestion was to “mobilise all women in South
Sudan to deny their husbands conjugal rights until they
ensure that peace returns,” organisers said in a statement
Thursday.
Other proposals included finding ways to meet the wives
of President Salva Kiir and his arch-rival, rebel chief Riek
Machar, to “ask them to join the search for peace and
reconciliation by impressing upon their husbands to stop
the war”.
Thousands of people have been killed and almost two
million have fled the fighting between government
troops, mutinous soldiers and tribal militia forces.
Civilians have been massacred, patients murdered in
hospitals and people killed while sheltering in churches.
Almost 100,000 people are sheltering in squalid UN
peacekeeping bases fearing they will be killed if they
leave.
Tobias Atari Okori, from the government-backed South
Sudan Peace and Reconciliation Commission,
acknowledged that the idea highlighted that people were
desperate for the war to end.
“People are experiencing great suffering, and it is the
women, children and the aged who are suffering the
worst,” he told AFP.
The UN special envoy on sexual violence Zainab Bangura
said this month the levels of rape are the worst she had
ever seen.
Political and military leaders have repeatedly broken
promises made under intense international pressure,
including during visits to South Sudan by UN chief Ban
Ki-moon and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Earlier this month, a group of 19 major aid agencies
warned that while massive food drops had helped avert
famine for now, the threat remained and would continue
to worsen the longer the war continues.
www.vanguardngr.com/2014/10/women-suggest-sex-strike-end-war-south-sudan/