Yom Deng Bul was born on 25th April 1988 in South Sudan’s Jonglei State. This was after the beginning of the second civil war in Sudan. She was born into the section of Ayual community in Twic East County. She lost her mother at the age of two years in 1991, a few months before the Bor massacre. She is the Founder/Director of Achut Foundation (AF), a non-governmental organization that champions girl-child rights and girl-child education. She has a degree in International Studies from the University Of Nairobi, Kenya. In this interview, she talks about the challenges she faces in a society that is highly patriarchal and which has little regard for girls and women. As a female human rights activist, she faces more than her fair share of challenges, both in the country and out of the country. She spoke to Moses Wasamu in Nairobi some time this year.
Ms. Yom Deng Bul. Founder / Director of Achut Foundation, a girl-child rights NGO in South Sudan.
Ms. Bul and I began speaking about the many challenges she faces as a female human rights activist. South Sudanese society, with its perception of masculinity, sees Ms. Bul’s work as less important because of her gender, her relatively young age, and because of many people’s indifference to the needs of the girl child. “I decided to become a human rights activist because I am a victim of injustice of the culture of male domination which disadvantages innocent girls and women.” She says that there are thousands of challenges that a girl growing up in South Sudan faces. These include all forms of discrimination, rampant sexual abuse, such as the rape of girls by their relatives, brutal and violent rape by armed men, early childhood marriage at the age of 13 or14, including forced marriages. “The girl-child is denied rights to education, rights to participate in national sports…and majority of the raped girls are suffering from diseases like STDs and HIV/AIDS,” she says. “Ladies like me are denied rights to political ambition, they are denied the right to ownership of property, and they are denied the right to marry a man of their choice,” says Ms. Bul. “Needless to mention about women being restricted from participating in national issues, and in decision-making or policy-making.” She laments that the girl-child is locked out of the national agenda, and she is regarded as property and a resource. She says this is worse in particular communities, where females are huge sources of trade and economic income. Currently living as a refugee in Kenya, Ms. Bul says that life as a refugee is far much different from what life is back at home. She says it makes someone to suffer emotionally because of being forced to live in a foreign country as a sojourner. It generates trauma to a refugee, apart from threats on one’s life that forced them out of their home country.” “There is a very huge difference. The time I used to live in my country South Sudan, I used to run my programmes; I had money to support my career (activism). I had emotional support and love from my family, siblings, colleagues and friends. I used to have my group of girls whom I was serving and now, I am missing them so much,” she tells me nostalgically But despite the challenges, she says there are a few positive things about her living in Nairobi. She says this has enabled her to build a huge network of contacts and potential human rights activists. “I am getting to know more about UN agencies who are combating injustice in African communities,” she says. Like many activists who have been forced to run away from home because of threats on their lives, she is not keen on going back home. At least not soon. “Absolutely not…I have seen much worse already and I better remain here in Kenya just for the sake of my survival.” I asked her what needs to be done to restore peace in the country. “Restoring peace should begin with peace partners to South Sudan’s conflict taking a neutral and impartial stand for the sake of a better understanding of other underlying issues, including visible factors that fuel up conflict in the country.” And for South Sudanese to reconcile with each other, she says that tribalism and nepotism must be challenged through use of legal institutions and by teaching communities about the consequences of violence, and commission of atrocities against other groups. She adds that there should be peace campaigns which remind people about the dangers of violence, using examples of what happened in Rwanda in 1994 and Kenya in 2007-2008. “For genuine peace to come, it needs capacity building for South Sudanese activists for them to be taught about their roles, to strictly stick to their main objective of serving the community. Civil society plays a major role in any conflict reconciliation process, because it is a neutral body and considered as the voice of the voiceless,” she says. Ms. Bul says to help South Sudan, the international community should not pursue any hidden agenda and should not have selfish interests in South Sudan’s abundant natural resources. “They should first seek for a mechanism on how to bring together the warring factions in order to avoid a situation like that one of DRC and Central Africa Republic,” she says. “The peace mediator (IGAD-Intergovernmental Authority on Development) has to wisely tackle this conflict.” Ms. Bul adds that neutrality shall play a key role in avoiding the civil war in South Sudan from scaling up into a regional war that might breed terrorism in the region.
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