June 13, 2025, (JUBA, South Sudan): The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) in collaboration with the Ministry of Lands, Housing and Urban Development of South Sudan conducted national dialogue with women parliamentarians on the nexus between land governance, gender and climate resilience on 12th – 13th June 2025 in Juba, South Sudan. The objective of the dialogue was to enhance understanding and build the skills and capacities of women parliamentarians to give voice to gender issues in their respective sectoral committees. Thirty Women Parliamentarians from six Standing Committees namely: Gender, Child, Social Welfare and Religious Affairs; Environment and Forestry; Agriculture and Food Security; Land and Physical Infrastructure; Finance and Economic Planning and Women Parliamentary Caucus attended the two days dialogue.
The dialogue brought out key policy priority issues that demand immediate intervention in addressing challenges in the land, climate and gender sectors. Women play central roles in agriculture and natural resource use and management in South Sudan which are critical for building climate resilience. However, women have insecure land rights and limited access to financial and technological innovations to respond to climate induced calamities and enhance their ability to invest in climate-smart practices. In addition, low representation and participation of women in sustainable land governance and disaster response decision-making limits the development and implementation of inclusive solutions. The Parliamentarians dialogue also noticed that integrating gender transformative principles into land governance and effective response to the climate crisis is key to achieving inclusive socio-economic development. Even though significant progress was made in development of policies and strategies to address these sector—wide and cross-cutting challenges, there are still critical gaps in presence of comprehensive legal instruments and adequate implementation capacities of executing agencies at all levels. The Parliamentarians also identified the lack of capacity, awareness gaps on the nexus between gender, land and climate resilience and limited advocacy as impediments to meaningfully dispense their mandates of oversight in the Parliament and the Standing and technical Committees they are assigned in. Enhancing coordination among Ministries; empowering women Parliamentarians to enable them perform their duties; increasing resource allocation to executing agencies to facilitate the enactment and consistent enforcement of policies and transforming negative gender norms and customary practices were recommended as key action points to deliver gender-transformative climate resilience outcomes. IGAD will continue conducting such national dialogues with women Parliamentarians in all its Member States.
