Women owning peace in Jonglei and GPAA
Women’s Conference: Building Peace Across Jonglei and GPAA
From 25–29 August 2025, sixty women leaders from Jonglei State and the Greater Pibor Administrative Area (GPAA) gathered in Juba for a landmark Women’s Conference. The choice of Juba as the venue, though distant from their home communities, ensured accessibility during the rainy season and allowed the use of simultaneous interpretation equipment – essential for dialogue across language and community lines.
A simple but profound question – “what does peace mean to you?” – set the tone for the workshop. For many, peace had long been equated only with the absence of war or violence. Redefining it in terms such as love, togetherness, co-existence, and hard work was a powerful and inspiring shift.
The women represented three communities – Nuer, Dinka, and Murle – with twenty participants from each. They were not newcomers to peacebuilding. All had been actively engaged in the Inter-Communal Governance Structures (ICGS), the Bridges of Peace women’s programme, or local Women Protection Teams. Their shared experience created a strong foundation for this long-requested space dedicated specifically to women’s perspectives on peace and conflict.
Aims and Structure
The women themselves had called for such a conference during earlier governance structure meetings. Their aims were threefold:
To strengthen relationships and understanding between communities.
To reflect on the role of women in peacebuilding and explore concrete options for action.
To commit individually and collectively to next steps in building peace.
We did away with the traditional “conference” model of panels, speeches, and endless reporting back – which often leaves participants disengaged – to journey through a flow of conversations:
Day 1 centred on collective definitions of peace and stories of peace between communities, in communities, families and within individuals.
Day 2 explored what builds and what destroys peace, then honing in on the cycles of abduction.
Day 3 asked, “What can we do about it?” – both as groups and as individuals – and what would that look like.
Day 4 shifted to existing strengths and resources within communities, linking them to community needs in practical ways and avoiding the usual “shopping list” of demands from external actors.
Day 5 culminated in personal and group commitments, followed by a closing circle where the space and participation was entirely by the participants themselves.
Methods and Energy
The facilitation style was deliberately inclusive and non-hierarchical. Apart from the opening session, formal roles and ranks were set aside. Women worked in plenary circles, in language-based groups, in mixed-language groups (with interpreters), and even in smaller clusters to ensure that every voice was heard.
Activities blended reflective silence, storytelling, and lively embodied exercises. Dancing became a regular feature, alongside techniques like fishbowl discussions and visual representations of what strengthens or undermines peace. These approaches encouraged both seriousness and joy, helping participants to connect deeply across community lines.
The facilitation team itself was largely drawn from the facilitation team for the Bridges of Peace programme, who are steadily growing into leadership roles. Their sensitive, non-didactic style (‘facilitation’ in South Sudan often confused with ‘teaching’) was key to ensuring that participants could express themselves freely.
Insights and Outcomes
Throughout the week, women shared powerful personal stories of how they had supported peace in their families and communities, as well as the heavy challenges of living amidst cycles of violence, including abductions. Despite the weight of these discussions, the atmosphere was marked by respect, cooperation, and collective resolve.
Several features stood out:
Honest acknowledgement of wrongs, with women speaking candidly about the attitudes and actions of their own communities.
Recognition of shared challenges, not reducing discussions on resilience or livelihoods to demands for outside aid.
Commitment to action, with participants agreeing not only to future collaboration but also to individual changes in behaviour and practice.
By the end, participants highlighted the sense of energy and momentum generated. Many valued the carefully framed questions and the conference design itself, which moved beyond surface-level dialogue.
Challenges and Next Steps
The conference also surfaced areas for improvement. There is a need to dig deeper into specific follow-up actions, ensuring commitments are practical and reach beyond county capitals into villages and bomas. While most participants embraced the non-hierarchical format, a few found it uncomfortable – a reminder that cultural change takes time.
Looking ahead, everyone hopes that future gatherings can be hosted in the women’s own areas during the dry season, deepening local ownership not just of the conversation but of the space itself.
Most importantly, this conference was not a one-off event. It wove together strands of work that POF, Peace Canal, and partners have nurtured for years. The energy generated will feed directly back into governance structures, Bridges of Peace activities, and Women Protection Teams – strengthening women’s role as agents of peace in Jonglei and GPAA.
Thanks to TourTalk for providing the interpreting system.
This blog was written with the support of AI, based on an audio report by the author.
