Participants at the workshop on safeguarding women's rights. (Photo: Courtesy)

A workshop on safeguarding women rights has reiterated calls for enactment of Family Law and the Anti-Gender-Based Violence Bill to counter harmful customary laws.

The participants made the appeal during a one-day dialogue of the South Sudan Women Advocates Association in Juba on Friday.

Mary Puru Michael, a lawmaker at the national parliament urged abolition of harmful traditional practices that promote Gender Based Violence and undermine women rights in the country.

Honorable Puru said customary laws are responsible for almost all forms of ill-treatment against women and girls.

“There are some customary law that affect us, and in general, most of the customary law have a negative impact on women’s lives,” she said.

Lawmaker Puru said the reason for the prevalence of GBV is because most customary laws were initiated by men, who are also the implementers.

“When we ask who initiated these laws, we don’t know but to me, men are the one who initiates and when it comes to implementation you find men are the implementers and women are not part of the implementation then they are effected when these laws are been implemented.”

The workshop brought together more than 70 participants from various works of life including the parliamentarians, female activists and lawyers.

Others are representatives from the Ministry of Justice and the Judiciary as well as the People with Disabilities Union.

For his part, Deng John, a lawyer and one of the participants questioned why the parliament has not enacted family law since independence.

“Since the country’s independence in 2011, the National Parliament has not enacted laws related to family law because this is important for organizing and stabilizing society with regard to marriage, divorce and adoption,” he said.

“In South Sudan, we have many customs, many of which overlap, and there are customs of a particular community that may conflict with one of the communities. Therefore, there must be a law that brings together these customs in written form as statutory law.”

“Because, in the event of a conflict between customary law and statutory law, the provisions of statutory law prevail. because the customs are considered the third source of legislation in South Sudan after the Constitution and statutory laws.”

Meanwhile, the Chairperson of the Women Advocate Association, Sohila Deng says one of the outcomes of the workshop is to establish communication with relevant actors.

“It is necessary to create a link between the leaders entrusted with following up on the family law and the law against gender-based violence,” she said.

“We also recommended creating a network that includes parliamentarians, human rights organizations, and officials in the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary, so that they can consult with each other in the event of adding, passing, or merging a relevant legal text.”

The workshop was organized by the South Sudan Women Advocates Association funded by PAX for Peace.

In 2020, a women-led organization in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender, Child Social Welfare, UNFPA and other organizations presented the Anti GBV bill to the Ministry of Justice.

And in May this year, a group of women called on the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs to speed up the tabling of the Anti GBV bill before parliament.

But there has been no tangible progress since then.