Juba: On Saturday, Pope Francis joined other Christian leaders and the UN in calling for the protection and advancement of women in South Sudan, where child marriage is frequent, rape has been used as a weapon of war, and the majority of girls do not complete secondary education.

The penultimate day of the pope's visit to South Sudan, which included an unprecedented joint "pilgrimage of peace" with Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Church of Scotland Moderator Iain Greenshields, the rights of girls and women repeatedly came up.

Protect, respect, value, and honour every woman, every girl, every young woman, every mother, and every grandmother, please. At a meeting between the three leaders and those who had been displaced by conflict, the pope said, "Without hope, there will be no future.

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In his speech to the roughly 50,000 attendees of an ecumenical prayer vigil held at the mausoleum of South Sudan's liberation hero John Garang, Welby later returned to the theme.

He urged the young men, "You will value and honour women, never raping, never violent, never cruel, and never using them as if they were there to gratify desire."
"Women of South Sudan, I know that many of you live with the trauma of sexual violence and the daily fear of mistreatment in your own homes, on top of the grief of conflict and the duty to provide for your families."

The widespread sexual violence against women and girls during conflict, according to a United Nations report on South Sudan published in March, was "fueled by systemic impunity."

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According to the report, "all armed groups across the nation are engaged in widespread rape, frequently as a component of military tactics, for which government and military leaders are accountable."
South Sudan declared its independence from Sudan in 2011, but a civil war broke out in 2013 as different ethnic groups turned against one another. Even after the two main antagonists reached a peace agreement in 2018, interethnic conflicts have continued to claim many civilian lives and force them to flee their homes.

In addition to bringing up the issue of widespread sexual violence against women and girls, Sara Beysolow Nyanti, the local UN humanitarian coordinator in South Sudan, also spoke at the event where the three religious leaders heard accounts from children who had been living in displaced persons camps.

In response, the pope urged South Sudanese citizens to "ensure that women are protected, respected, valued, and honoured." If given the chance, Francis claimed, "women will be able to change South Sudan's face and give it a peaceful and cohesive development"!

Less than 5% of girls complete secondary education, according to Sister Orla Treacy, an Irish member of the Loreto Sisters religious order who works to prevent child marriages and runs a school in Rumbek, north of the capital. In South Sudan, she claimed that 52 percent of 18-year-old girls and about 10 percent of 15-year-old girls are married respectively.

To see the pope, Treacy and some students travelled 125 miles (about 200 kilometres) by foot from Lakes State. She claimed that a recent decree promising to end child marriages had been signed by the governor of that area.

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According to the World Bank, South Sudan has the highest maternal mortality rate in the world, and the country is rife with poverty and hunger, with two thirds of the population in need of humanitarian assistance.