Rita Martin Lopidia, Co-founder and Executive Director of Eve Organisation has emerged among the historical world changers having entered the global race with a lot of enthusiasm. The outstanding and exceptional South Sudanese young woman leader was awarded the inaugural Women Building Peace Award for the year 2020.
The award offered by the United States Institute of Peace highlights the vital role of individual women who are working regularly in conflict-affected countries or regions in the pursuit of peace. The award honors women peace builders whose substantial and practical contribution to peace is an inspiration and guiding light for future women peacebuilders. It aims at celebrating the often invisible yet essential role that women play in peacebuilding.
Ms. Lopidia nurtured what she envisioned at a tender age to change the narrative by which the women of South Sudan are known. After having witnessed the adverse situation the women went through during the bombing of Juba as a child and later as Internally Displaced Person (IDP) in Khartoum, she buckled up and struggled to work towards changing the status of the women of South Sudan.
She co-founded EVE Organisation with a group of university graduates in Khartoum – Sudan in 2006 and worked hard to bring the women led organizations together to identify the areas of intervention in which women would take a lead in the High-Level Revitalized Forum (HLRF) to bring a solution to the crisis in South Sudan. She believed that women right from the community level play a critical role in conflict management and peacebuilding and as such are positioned to work with the parties and the other stakeholders to implement the peace process in the country. Together with three other women, Rita become a signatory to the Revitalized Agreement for the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) representing the South Sudan women’s coalition.
Their efforts to advocate for the 35% inclusion of women at all levels of leadership in the agreement was registered when all parties consented to it. According to USIP, ‘history shows that civil resistance is most successful when women are engaged, peace processes are more likely to last when women are involved, and a country’s propensity for conflict is lower with higher levels of gender equality’.
To date, the South Sudan women’s coalition together with the women bloc are advocating for more women in the newly formed Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity.
The international organizations and the U.S. government have increasingly recognized the importance of gender equality in creating enduring, peaceful societies. Women’s involvement in peace processes is vital to the overall success and longevity of peace agreements. It has been shown that when women are included in peace processes, the resulting peace agreement is 35% more likely to last at least fifteen years.
In the struggle to enhance the capacity of the women leaders to effectively participate in political processes and peace building initiatives in the country, Rita, through Eve Organization and in partnership with the National Women Parliamentary Caucus developed the women leadership and political strategy to guide the women leaders at all levels. She has engaged women parliamentarians and heads of women led organizations in transformational leadership trainings and have many of them taken for exposure visits to their counterparts in Kenya and Rwanda to acquire more skills of engendering the legislations and advocacy.
Rita has engaged young women leaders from all over the country for an in-house mentorship program to effect positive changes and values in the communities as agents of peace and as a preparatory process to participate in decision making starting with their community to the time when they will be entrusted with leadership.
Just as she emerged in the world arena of athletics lifting the flag of the Sudan higher in Goteborg-Sweden at the age of 13 during the IAAF world championship for athletics in 1995, she in the same way has globally put South Sudan on the map among the World Peace Builders.
