Kei Emmanuel Duku<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Children from South Sudan’s Children Parliament, an initiative by Save the Children, are calling on the government to enact policies and allocate funds to mitigate dangers\/threats posed by climate change that have greatly affected children across the country.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The Children’s Parliament\u00a0is a forum where children voice their concerns and influence decision-making regarding their rights to education.<\/p>\n During a recent debate session held in Juba, themed \u201cClimate Change is Affecting Us More, We Call Our Leaders to Act Now,\u201d over 50 schoolchildren aged 15 and above gathered to discuss the impacts of climate change on their education and futures. Many participated virtually.<\/p>\n They highlighted how shifting weather patterns and environmental degradation have disrupted their access to education, forcing schools to close and diminishing learning opportunities.<\/p>\n Amoko Ronny Moses, a student at Juba Diocese Module Secondary School and the Speaker of the Children’s Parliament mentioned that the ongoing flooding in Upper Nile, Jonglei, and other areas of the country has resulted in the destruction of farmlands, schools, and road networks.<\/p>\n He added that it has affected Water and Sanitation Services (WASH), thus affecting children’s education.<\/p>\n “In most regions across the country, water levels have risen significantly, making it difficult for children to cross rivers and streams. This has led to instances of drowning, especially among those who cannot swim. While some children can cross the rivers to access education, others have tragically lost their lives while trying to navigate the dangerous waters. Additionally, there has been a sharp increase in waterborne diseases,” said Hon. Ronny.<\/p>\n At the start of this year, authorities closed schools for two weeks due to a severe heat wave, advising children to stay indoors as temperatures reach 45\u00b0C affecting an estimated 2.2 million learners.<\/p>\n Hon. Ronny urged the government to enact policies to regulate the rampant rate of deforestation, waste disposal, and plastics dumping in the country and provide early warning systems to allow academic institutions to prepare ahead of time.<\/p>\n “As children, we advocate for early warning systems to be implemented to avert situations like what happened in the January-April heat waves. Many of us have returned home without receiving any holiday packages, which has negatively impacted our learning. It is crucial to recognize that learning should not be interrupted during natural disasters like heat waves or floods. In areas affected by floods, the government should allocate funds for the construction of water channels or drainage systems,\u201d added Ronny.<\/p>\n Agot Alier Garang, the Deputy Speaker of the Children\u2019s Parliament noted that most materials used for constructing schools are not climate-resilient and cannot outweigh floods.<\/p>\n She added that once floods occur, farmlands are destroyed affecting the community\u2019s livelihood and resulting in food insecurity causing malnutrition among children of school age.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen gardens are destroyed means parents need to buy food from the market and given the economic situation in the country, automatically means that children cannot eat and get malnourished and when you are sick you can\u2019t attend school,\u201d said Alier.<\/p>\n Alier, however, noted that school girls and women bear the adverse impact of climate change particularly in terms of access to WASH services.<\/p>\n She appeals to the National government to allocate funds to renovate latrines and toilets and provide clean drinking water for learners.<\/p>\n \u201cTo enable a good learning environment for girls who feel embarrassed always when there are no sanitary pads and clean water for them to maintain themselves, especially on their menstrual periods it becomes challenging for them to attend classes causing school dropout,\u201d noted Alier.<\/p>\n A recent report released by UNICEF South Sudan indicates that approximately 490,000 children countrywide are affected by floods.<\/p>\n The report further notes that floods have caused significant educational disruptions, with nearly\u00a090,000 children out of school\u00a0due to flooded classrooms and the displacement of teachers.<\/p>\n Hon. Keji Francis, a student at Pentagon International Collage, Juba, said the government should consider revising the academic curriculum and include climate change as a subject both at lower and upper primary for learners to understand the dangers posed by natural disasters and how it can be mitigated.<\/p>\n She, however, attributed the recent reports of women giving birth to deformed children in oil-rich areas to noncompliance by oil companies on the country\u2019s environmental laws.<\/p>\n The children\u2019s legislator urged the government to conduct a forensic audit on foreign companies extracting oil and other minerals in the country.<\/p>\n \u201cForeign companies extracting minerals must share their strategic plans and standard procedures of extracting oil should be observed to minimize oil pills and waste linking into the soil and air because it is sad seeing an abnormal child born just because of our negligence,\u201d said Keji.<\/p>\n She urged the public to plant more trees, arguing that the planting of trees, will complement the country’s rich flora and fauna in the end diversifying the country\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Kurchiek Morwut Diing, a student of Juba Diocese Model Secondary School in Juba noted that the last three years’ floods and the current one have negatively affected the agricultural sector in Unity, Jonglei states, and Bahr el Ghazal region.<\/p>\n He said most of the children in the flood-affected areas are now suffering from diseases such as rickets, anaemia, Kwashiorkor\/marasmus, and other major vitamins like C and D and other waterborne diseases while malaria remains the leading killer disease among children in South Sudan in the last 3 years.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2022, over 220,000\u00a0children were affected by malaria of which over 600, 000 were estimated to have died of malaria and approximately 74.1% have so far been affected by malaria this year, government needs to provide children with treated mosquito nets and also anti-malaria and roll out sanitation campaigns in flood affected areas, countrywide,\u201d said Morwut.<\/p>\n Hon. Mary James Koag Koag, the Chairperson of the Environment and Forestry committee at the Transitional National Legislative Assembly confirmed in the last three years, Jonglei State has been badly affected state by floods out of the 10 states and three administrative areas in the country<\/p>\n She assured the Children\u2019s Parliamentarian of government responses to some of the challenges raised affecting the welfare of children while pursuing their education.<\/p>\n She further added that currently, the Country\u2019s National budget is still undergoing a review process by the Finance committee at the Parliament and some of the recommendations suggested during the debate will be considered and submitted for review by the sector committees before they are submitted for incorporation into the next financial year by the Members of the Parliament.<\/p>\n She however highlighted that the biggest challenge facing the Ministry of Forestry and Environment is insufficient funding from both the government and the donors to respond to climate disasters.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the previous budgets, only 1.5 Million pounds was allocated for the ministry, and looking at the current economic trends this is just a drop in the ocean, however, we have worked hard to raise the figure to 19 million pounds in the last financial year,\u201d said Koag.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kei Emmanuel Duku Children from South Sudan’s Children Parliament, an initiative by Save the Children, are calling on the government to enact policies and allocate funds to mitigate dangers\/threats posed by climate change that have greatly affected children across the country.\u00a0 The Children’s Parliament\u00a0is a forum where children voice[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":30008,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/South-Sudan-Childrens-Parliamentarian-posed-for-a-Group-Photo-after-conducting-a-session-on-the-impact-of-climate-change-on-the-education-sector-in-South-Sudan.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30009,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30007\/revisions\/30009"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}