Pope urges protection of women in South Sudan

JUBA Pope Francis joined other Christian leaders and the UN on Saturday in urging the protection and advancement of women in South Sudan, where rape has been a weapon of war, child brides are common and most girls do not reach secondary education.

The rights of girls and women was a theme on the penultimate day of the pope's visit to South Sudan, an unprecedented joint pilgrimage of peace with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Church of Scotland Moderator Iain Greenshields.

Please, protect, respect, appreciate, and honor every woman, every girl, young woman, mother and grandmother. The pope said that there would be no future if there were three leaders with people displaced by conflict.

Welby later returned to the theme in his address to around 50,000 people at an ecumenical prayer vigil at a mausoleum in South Sudan's liberation hero John Garang.

Young men, you will value and honour women, never raping, never violent, never cruel, never using them as if they were there to satisfy their desire, he said.

South Sudan broke out of Sudan in 2011 but plunged into civil war in 2013 with ethnic groups turning on each other. Despite a peace deal between the two main antagonists in 2018, bouts of inter-ethnic fighting have continued to kill and displace large numbers of civilians.

The UN humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan, Sara Beysolow Nyanti, raised the issue of pervasive sexual violence against women and girls at the event where the three religious leaders heard about children living in displaced persons camps.

The pope said that if women are given opportunities they will have the ability to change the face of South Sudan, to give them a peaceful and cohesive development in South Sudan. Sister Orla Treacy, an Irish member of the Loreto Sisters religious order who runs a school in Rumbek, north of the capital, works to prevent child marriages, said less than 5 percent of girls finish secondary school. She said that about 10 percent of 15-year-old girls and 52 percent of 18-year-old girls in South Sudan are married.

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Treacy and a group of students had walked about 200 km 125 miles from Lakes State to see the pope. She said that the governor of the region had recently signed a decree promising to stop child marriages.

South Sudan has the world's highest maternal mortality rate, according to the World Bank, and poverty and hunger are rife across the country, with two thirds of the population needing humanitarian assistance as a result of conflict as well as three years of catastrophic floods.