Women from South Sudan call for peace

WATERLOO — Two women at the forefront of a peace movement in war-torn South Sudan will speak here Monday as part of a Canada-wide awareness tour.

Agnes Wasuk Petia is co-ordinator and Awak Hussein Deng is youth co-ordinator of the National Women's Programme of the South Sudan Council of Churches.

Together they have been working and lobbying for a peaceful solution to the destructive civil war in their country.

Many young people are fighting in the war "because they were told to go," said Deng, at a panel discussion Sunday in Waterloo, which kicked off the local events.

She and her colleagues have put together a series of education seminars in South Sudan, which, along with Bible study and worship sessions, have helped young people make better-considered decisions for themselves.

The group also offers trauma counselling and neutral forums to bring together people of warring groups.

Without these initiatives, "our children are going to get lost" said Petia.

Some of them "are lacking love, they are lacking peace," she said.

The role of women in building peace is "crucial."

The cross-Canada tour is organized by the Canadian church-based group Kairos. It hopes our federal government will support the women's group politically and financially.

The South Sudanese refugee crisis is enormous, with reports of 40,000 refugees entering nearby Uganda every month, 86 per cent of them women and children, according to the World Refugee Council at the Centre of International Governance Innovation.

In South Sudan, which declared independence in 2011, Oxfam Canada reports that markets have collapsed so that even if you have money to buy food, you can't find it.

Deng and Petia will speak at a roundtable discussion with officials from Project Ploughshares and Kairos at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Monday at 10 a.m.

There will be another discussion at 2:30 p.m. at Conrad Grebel University College.

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