Day: December 15, 2022

Over 800 South Sudanese benefitted from the Digital and Innovations Skills Hub (DISH), an e-learning platform that provides access to youth as well as women to develop employment skills.

The project, implemented by Community Empowerment for Progress Organization (CEPO) with support from the Dutch organisation for internationalisation in education (NUFFIC), had four online training courses.

“The objective of DISH is to increase enrolment in certificate education in order to increase employment possibilities. Especially since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, youth and women face challenges to find employment, while employers struggle to employ people with matching skills in fast-growing sectors in the employment market,” said Peter Bidali Elias, CEPO’s officer in-charge of the project.

He added, “The opportunities and sectors of employment have been identified through research by the partners in earlier programmes which identified key employment sectors for youth”.

Through DISH, online short certificate courses, which included Business Administration, Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Peace Building and primary school teaching, were created and made available.

According to Bidali, these three-month certificate courses increase the employability of youth and women because they link to key emerging sectors in employment and contribute to stability, peace and resilience.

“This is to increase enrolment in certificate education in order to enhance employment possibilities in youth and women across the country,” he said.

The certificate in Business Administration course attracted 431 students, Peace Building had 386, Primary School Teaching with 161 and ICT got 88.

Perina Juye, a Business Administration student, said she learnt a lot from the course, especially key considerations when one intends to open a business.

“My advice is that learning sessions should be more interactive,” she urged.

For his part, Martin Seree, a student of Basic ICT said the e-learning platform will provide access to youth as well as women to develop employment skills.

“During the course, I was able to acquire a lot of networking skills, learned operating systems and other IT related skills that I lacked,” he explained.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, youth and women faced challenges in employment as employers struggled to find skilled people.

The latest World Population Review ranks South Sudan as the third lowest in literacy rate in world and thus anticipated that DISH courses will bridge that gap by focusing on low-threshold e-learning courses, which can be used in online and offline digital learning on a variety of devices and settings.

Source: Sudan Tribune

The Sudanese-Ethiopian Joint Technical Committee held a meeting on Wednesday to discuss the feasibility study of a railway project linking the two neighbouring countries.

The meeting of the joint committee discussed the completion of the feasibility study of the railway project linking Addis Ababa-Port Sudan.

The Canadian consulting company of the project CPCS took part in the meeting.

The railway will help to reduce Ethiopia’s dependency on the Port of Djibouti which handles about 95 per cent of the landlocked country’s imports and exports.

The railway will follow the route of Addis Ababa, along with the Awash-Kombolcha-Weldiya route, to Wereta – Gonder – Metema – Galabat – Gadarif – Kassala – Haiya and to Port Sudan, with a total distance of about 1,522 kilometres.

The two sides stressed the importance of the project to strengthen the communication and economic development of the two countries.

The meeting agreed on the speedy completion of the feasibility study before seeking jointly to attract financing for the implementation of the project.

This is the last meeting of the joint technical committee and consultant. where the draft study is approved. It would be delivered by the end of December.

In a report released in June 2019, the African Development Bank estimated the budget of the project at $ 3,400, 000. The African Union’s NEPAD – Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility will provide $ 2,000,000, USASF will provide a grant of $ 1,200,000 and the counterpart contribution $ 200,000.

Source: Sudan Tribune

“Sudan’s political actors and international partners should ensure that progress on human rights and accountability for serious human rights violations are central to any new transition”, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement published on Tuesday.

“This includes an end to the violent crackdown against peaceful protesters, releasing arbitrarily detained protesters, and taking concrete steps to ensure accountability for serious abuses,” the statement continued.

“The last 14 months have shown how widespread impunity fosters more killings and other abuses,” said Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Accountability is critical for the future and should not be swept under the rug.”

‘Accountability is critical for the future and should not be swept under the rug’

At least 122 protesters have been killed since the October 25, 2021, military coup and Radio Dabanga has frequently reported on the lack of accountability for the perpetrators.

Impunity is an especially controversial topic at the moment as the mainstream Forces for Freedom and Change-Central Council (FFC-CC) is entering negotiations on the second part of the agreement with the military junta.

The agreement between an alliance of civilian parties, headed by the FFC-CC, and Sudan’s military junta consists of two parts: an initial Framework Agreement, which was signed earlier this month, and a Final Agreement, which covers some outstanding ‘thorny’ issues that still require further negotiations.

One of these issues is transitional justice, which is also concerned with immunity from prosecution for the military.

The military’s demand for impunity could mean immunity from prosecution for crimes committed since the 2019 coup, including the June 3 Massacre in which the military killed at least 186 whilst another 100 went missing and many more were injured.

On top of 122 deaths, at least 7,000 protesters were injured between the October 25, 2021, coup and August 2022 alone.

On top of violence and human rights abuses during anti-coup protests, political detainees have been tortured, people have been arbitrarily arrested, and powerful opposition voices have been silenced and arrested, most notably members of the Empowerment Removal Committee established to purge Sudan of the remnants of Al Bashir’s dictatorial regime.

There has been widespread resistance within and outside of the FFC, which took a leading role in negotiations with the military, to this possibility.

Most of Sudan’s resistance committees have been against any form of collaboration with the military institution since the coup d’état, in part because many families of martyrs and pro-democracy protesters killed by security forces also fear an agreement that might allow the military to escape accountability.

“International backers should also unequivocally reject any form of impunity for serious crimes, notably for those in position of command,” HRW said.

‘International backers should also unequivocally reject any form of impunity for serious crimes’

Vague

HRW criticised the vagueness of the initial Framework Agreement, stating that “the vaguely worded agreement lays out general principles for the formation of the transitional institutions and reiterates commitments to promote freedoms and rights and accountability, and to reform security forces”.

“The agreement, however, fails to spell out any clear time frames, details, or benchmarks for justice and security sector reform, stating that plans are to be discussed at a second stage.”

HRW further lamented that the agreement “largely overlooks Darfur, the site of almost two decades of conflict and serious abuse”.

‘The agreement largely overlooks Darfur, the site of almost two decades of conflict and serious abuse’

Source: Radio Dabanga

The Sudanese Doctors Association recorded 73 injuries during Tuesday’s Marches of the Millions, including the use of harmful chemicals in water cannons and tear gas cannisters filled with stones or glass, breaking international law.

Demonstrations swept through Sudan’s capital under the slogan ‘overthrow the coup and settlement’, in rejection of the (upcoming) agreement with the military, were met with brutal force.

The protest marchers were coordinated by local state resistance committees and headed towards the Republican Palace. Security forces targeted protestors with tear gas at the assembly points in Basdar and El Gurashi in Khartoum, Radio Dabanga reported yesterday.

The Socialist Doctors Association (SDA) counted 73 different injuries in Tuesday’s marches of the millions due to the use of excessive violence, including the firing of rubber bullets, sound bombs, and tear gas cannisters. Five protesters were also run over by armoured vehicles of the regular forces.

The doctors also reported the use of the tear gas cannister launching weapon loaded with stones and glass that they shoot from a close range. Medics recently exposed and condemned this practice and explained that this type of weapon is internationally prohibited.

Member of the Emergency Lawyers Rehab El Mubarak also explained that aiming the tear gas launchers, intended for firing liquefied gas projectiles, at the human body is prohibited internationally, even when filled with suitable cannisters.

In their field report, the SDA recorded 44 direct injuries from tear gas cannisters, including injuries to the head, face, and eyes.

The SDA also recorded two cases of infection with a chemical substance in the contaminated water of police water cannons, which leads to inflammatory cases of the skin.

Last week, protesters were confronted with excessive violence in Marches of Millions under the slogan “Reject the False Power” in Khartoum’s cities and Wad Madani, capital of El Gezira.

Resistance committees in Khartoum described efforts by the authorities to define safe demonstration areas as “a new dictatorship of the forces that signed the framework agreement”.

Mohamed Anwar, the official spokesperson for the Khartoum Resistance Committees, stressed that the right to demonstrate is guaranteed to everyone, and should count everywhere, without any demarcation of safe or unsafe locations.

Source: Radio Dabanga