Off the beaten track in South Sudan: helping reduce violence against women and girls

As our Land Cruiser leaves the tarmac at Gudele, on the edge of Juba, and takes a right somewhere onto a dirt path, I am reminded there are only about 220km of paved roads in South Sudan, and most of them are here in Juba.

It isn’t really a surprise, then, that after driving just 15 minutes from our office, we find ourselves a world away from the bustling city and heading directly into the bush.

In Joppa, the houses are mostly made of mud bricks, some of cement. They are rectangular in shape and well distanced. Some are fenced for privacy, others protected only by the paths that thousands of feet have etched into the hard soil a few meters away. For someone who, like me, comes from Europe, the scenery is what I always imagined what this part of Africa would look like: sparse green grass, teak and thorny acacia trees and red soil.

As a senior projects manager, I don’t often get to travel to the field to meet the families who listen to our radio programmes. Days like this are a special event and I am looking forward to hearing people’s opinions of our work.

We are about to meet Mama Lia.

Her house is shielded by bamboo sticks, hundreds of them planted firmly into the ground and nailed to each other. The compound is spacious; she has set up some blue plastic chairs for us at the back of the house, next to a patch where she is cultivating local vegetables.

Mama strikes me as a no-nonsense woman. She tells us that yes, she has been listening to Let’s Talk About Us - our radio programme that explores relationships between couples, the role of men and women in the community and family, and the drivers of women’s confidence and motivation around sexual and reproductive health.

Mama Lia recognizes the voice of our Arabic producer. “I know your voice from the radio,” she smiles. “The episode you did on the sex of the child had a big impact on me and my daughter.

'Women are blamed for giving birth to girls'

We relax into our chairs ready to listen as Mama Lia recounts her experience. She is 56 years old, she tells us, a widow with four sons and four daughters, all of them married. She tells us that her daughter Jakeline had been suffering a lot of abuse at the hands of her husband, the reason being that she was only giving birth to baby girls.

“There is a preference for baby boys in South Sudan, you see, and women are blamed for giving birth to girls.”

Over time, the situation became so bad that Jakeline decided to return to her mother’s house.

“Her husband announced he was going to marry another woman so my daughter came back to me with their three girls,” her mother sighs at the memory. “I didn’t know any better then, so I took them back.”

Sometime later, a volunteer from Active Youth Agency - our local partner organisation - brought Mama Lia a radio with some of the Let’s Talk About Us episodes loaded onto it. She listened to all of them and tells us that the one about the sex of the baby really struck a chord.

After listening once, she called her daughter Jakeline so they could listen together and discuss it. They couldn’t believe their ears.

“The doctor on the programme was explaining that it is the sperm of the man that determines the sex of the baby. It is not the woman.”

Mama Lia says she felt vindicated. She even went to the local chief to tell him her discovery and to ask that he help families facing the same issue. “We have always accepted that it is the woman who is responsible for giving birth to too many girls or boys and this has caused a lot of suffering.”

She convinced her daughter Jakeline to take the radio to her husband and listen with him to the episode. “After he heard the information, he apologised to me and he accepted that he should take her and the girls back.”

Mama Lia can’t stress enough how useful that information has been for her. “If I had known this before, I would have confronted my son-in-law early on and spared all of us a lot of suffering.”

Amplifying women’s voices

Women and girls in South Sudan face some of the worst sexual and reproductive health and rights prospects in the world: a maternal mortality ratio of 789 per 100,000 births, contraceptive prevalence rate of 4 per cent and 31 per cent of women bearing children before the age of 20. 

A 2019 survey reported that sexual and gender-based violence goes unquestioned by many girls and women in South Sudan, with over half of those interviewed believing that rape cannot take place in marriage, and almost 50% disagreeing that a wife can ask her husband to wear a condom.

These challenges are closely linked to low literacy rates and the audience’s needs for trusted information, and we know this requires long-term intervention. Radio is the most accessed and trusted mass media in South Sudan, and content that can challenge a strong patriarchal culture can contribute to increasing the agency of women and girls in decision- making.

The chain of events set in motion by Mama Lia against the social norms and challenges outlined was inspired by our radio programming and confirms that our content is moving in the right direction: helping create change for women and girls.

Access to trusted and accurate information empowered Mama Lia to take action, challenge harmful norms and lobby others, both men and women, to support women’s rights. 

About our work in South Sudan

Since 2020, we have reached over 1.9 million listeners with radios broadcasts of Let’s Talk About Us – roughly 17% of the total population - and engaged 2,765 families in listening groups, or about 23,903 individuals.

Both through radio and in our outreach work, we are managing to reach a mixed gender listenership, of 56% female and 44% male.

This is a crucial achievement, as men’s support is also needed in increasing women’s and girls’ agency and decision-making power.

A midline survey of our listeners also told us that 67% of Let’s Talk About Us listeners are more likely than non-listeners to agree that “a girl/young woman has the right to decide if she wants to use contraceptive methods to avoid pregnancy,” and to agree with other statements about women and girls’ right to choose when to get married, including women and girls with disabilities.

With the help of our programme, Mama Lia has taken brave new steps to etch new paths in her neighbourhood. Our community outreach will ensure others follow in her footsteps.

Let’s Talk About Us is funded by Global Affairs Canada.