Drew Celli

LCS 242

Professor William Graves/ Alex Perullo

20 November 2020

South Sudan: Developing or Retreating

In the Summer of 2011, it became official, South Sudan officially gained independence

from the Republic of Sudan and was officially recognized as an independent nation. For the past

decade, this small, independent nation has faced the challenges in developing the country into a

stable region of the world. While trying to become a member of the United Nations and the

African Union, the nation has had to face many challenges within its own border. With a new

nation always come a drive for power, and different ideas and ways that the country should be

governed. For the last seven years the country has been in a civil war with one side led by

president Salva Kiir and the other led by Vice president Riek Machar. The war in total led to the

deaths of over 400,000 people and was just recently resolved with a peace treaty between Kiir

and Machar, who was reinstated as vice president.

Due to the internal battle within the nation, the country has lacked the resources and

opportunities to develop as a nation. With all the government issues that have plagued the nation

since its inception, it has been up to the citizens themselves to start developing a culture within

the nation. With the nation at war and the economy not being used to help further the lives of the

citizens, the people have faced many cultural issues over the past decade. Underdeveloped land

and many of its people in poverty have led to the establishment of gender roles that have not

given the most of opportunities to the citizens, especially the women in South Sudan. The
women of South Sudan, have been stripped of the basic health care and educational needs that

every person arounds the world should have the ability to obtain. They have been regulated to

the family care taker and are solely responsible for the maintaining of the household. These are

issues that can not be resolved until, the government starts working with one another for the

betterment of the people. Overall, unless the government commits itself to working together on

improving the lives of its citizens, south Sudanese women will be at a gender disadvantage for

many decades.

For many years in Africa, the nations that make up the continent have had similar gender

roles, not only within the major cities, but within the towns and local villages within each nation.

It has often been the women who have had the stay in the homes, raising the children, with little

to no income as the men were the ones responsible for providing for the family. This was partly

due to the face that women in Africa were often never receiving an education and did not have

the opportunities to gain the knowledge necessary to go out and work and provide. As South

Sudan has began to develop as a nation, we see a lot of similarities. “Hurdles include the

presence of multiple, urgent priorities in post conflict South Sudan, including a lack of security, a

dearth of infrastructure and human resources and a lack of basic services, such as education and

health (Ali 2).” Nada Mustafa Ali had a first hand look at these issues in 2011, when the nation

was just gaining independence. While she hoped these issues could be resolved within a couple

of years, lack of money and a stable government have denied these simple rights from being

obtained. Another main reason for these roles being so defined is poverty. The nation as a

whole is near the bottom economically, and there simply are not enough work opportunities for

everyone, however it seems that the women in the nation are the bottom of the chain when it

comes to having access to these opportunities. As a nation, South Sudan maintained many of the
traditional African cultural norms that we see in other nations, however these norms do not offer

the best for all of the citizens and we see that while the nation has the resources available to

make change, they are not focusing on opportunity for everyone and are still in a fight for power

within the government, instead of having a stable government working together for the people.

However, in the last 2 years South Sudan has began to increase in categories that are important

towards a countries educational statistics. They have increased in childhood literacy rate and

they have also increased in literacy rate among females. While they still have a long way to go

when it comes to offering these opportunities to all of its citizens, they are moving in the right

direction (Elbla).

In South Sudan, women continue to have to fight for basic opportunities that everybody

should have the chance to get. The most glaring issue for females in the country is the lack of

health care that is provided by the government. When women in the nation are pregnant, most of

them do not receive the necessary medical care that is required for a safe and healthy birth of a

child. Throughout the 9 month process a substantial amount of health issues arise for most

women in the country, that have a drastic affect on the health of not only the mother but the

newborn as well. Only the families that have substantial income receive the best care over

newborns. (Sami 2) It is not like the country does not have the resources to ensure a safe and

successful birth of a child, they simply are not allocating the resources of the government in the

right areas to ensure the further development of the nation as a whole. However, since the end of

the war a small percentage of the countries available resources have been donated to hospitals to

ensure that all women who are able to afford a doctors care during their pregnancy the best care

that they can afford. While this has decreased the amount of miscarriages and birth defects in

hospitals, they do not account for the larger number of birth defects from women who do not
have the medical care that is needed (Sami 4). Women also are not provided with the most

security in the nation as well. In the three years before the end of the civil war, the amount of

women who reported that they were victims of sexual assault rose each year in the nation from

2017-2019 (Jaff 2). Dilshad Jaff describes the continued efforts to try to provide women in south

Sudan with the protection and resources to come forward if they are victims of assault and those

rates have declined in 2020.

The nation also does not provide the right amount of educational opportunities for

women. Every child around the world should receive access to some amount of an education, at

least at a younger age. However, in South Sudan only 37% of females between the ages of 7-12

have access to an education, as opposed to 64% for males in the same age demographic (Elbla).

However, the rate of females that are attending school is the nation did increase by a small

percentage in 2020, before the pandemic forced many schools in the nation to shut down. In a

nation like South Sudan, they barley have the resources to send many children to school in

person. They do not have the resources to provide a quality education over online classes, the

way we have been receiving here in the United States (Tiitmamer). Overall, as a nation, the

educational system in south Sudan needs to improve for women. In 2018 the literacy rate for

women between the ages of 7-18 was only 28.5% as compared too 40.3% in males. This 12%

difference is small compared to the 27% difference in the amount of boys and girls in this age

demographic that actually have the opportunity to attend school at all. We continue to see

through our research that women are showing that they have the capabilities to succeed in the

classroom and take advantage of the education that they are being given. However, these women

are not going to have the right amount of opportunities to succeed in life, if they are not getting

the opportunities to succeed with their education at a younger age. These stats on women’s
education tie directly into the idea that it is up to the government to make sure that women all

over the country are given the resources they need for education and opportunities. If the heads

of state continue to battle over control and power, it is their citizens who are going to continue to

suffer, especially the women, who are not being given the health care and educational needs that

they deserve.