south african delegates jovial during the women conference

WOMEN IN POLITICS

After nearly two and a half decades of strife, the people of southern Sudan breathed a sigh of relief when the warring parties signed a comprehensive peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 and brought to and end one of the longest running conflicts in Africa, causing unstold suffering particularly to the people of southern Sudan. It would not be out of  place to mention here that the worst sufferers of the conflict an its aftermath    were the women of  Sudan more so the women of southern Sudan. While the men in uniform were engaged in the conflict, women were playing an important and complementary role not only in actual combat but also in managing the family, feeding the children and the aged, attending to the disabled and the wounded and above all educating the youth. as the war drew to close and and the peace process began another spectacular aspect of the women of Sudan began to unfold. The women of Sudan were actually in the forefront of preparing the society for peace. the women groups proved beyond doubt that they were endowed with qualities and the potential to contribute richly towards peace and development..
  
 Years of underdevelopment, war, famine droughts and floods have produced a series of crisis of enormous proportions in southern Sudan. While the humanitarian aid requirement remains most important, the overall demand for food production, security, basic health and essential services, infrastructure, income generation and capacity building is overwhelming. In addition to the tragedy of lost lives lost opportunities, destruction of infrastructure, and obliteration of livestock and crops, the war has displaced families and divided communities. as the parties to the peace agreement enter a new phase, the governments now face the challenge of making practical preparations for the international community is putting a proper administration in place, the reconstruction of economy, sustaining peace and rehabilitation of the people.
 
One of the many ways to approach the issue of reconstruction, economic development and achieving sustainable peace is to put in place a stable political system through multi-party parliamentary democratic system. Such a system needs to and inclusive one, promising equality of opportunity, parity in participation, fairness in the process and impartiality in administration. To take holistic view of the situation, the system of representation has to be a broad base one, with special emphasis on the need to ensure the representation o f the marginalized sections of the society, especially the women. The women of Sudan have been at a greater disadvantage due to a number of factors, traditional, circumstantial and human acts of commission and omission.
  
Therefore, there was an urgent need to look at the subject of “women in Sudan” in all its perspective.