


Michele Ogilvie
Aug 29, 2023
Sudan
Categories:
Women, Empowerment
Originally published October 1, 2021.
I have been thinking a bit about that word, 'empowerment'. In a recent report from Sudan, comes a story that caught my eye - Crisis in Sudan: Responding to Violence and Empowering Women by Lydia Dawson for World Relief, published March 9, 2021. As I understand it, “[e]mpowerment is a gift, the giving or delegation of power or authority. Empowering is a feeling which makes you more confident and fell that you are in control of your life.” Curious words. So, what is the story?
In West Darfur because of violence between Masalit and Arab tribesmen – groups that have a long history of conflict over land and water resources. A total of 237,000 people has been displaced by conflict in the Darfur region in the 2021 so far. That is more than 4 times those displaced by conflict in all of 2020.
Often those displaced end up in displacement camps. Women, as usual, are especially vulnerable to increases in domestic and sexual violence often due to an alcohol abuse and other reasons brought by their displacement. Women can be attacked searching for water or firewood. Women often have no source of clean water to meet their daily needs.
A non-profit group has helped bring a little humanity to this crisis by asking women to advise them on the use and maintenance of water points ( a place to have access to water that is nearby that is open, clean, and safe) in their refugee camps. Small committees are organized, called WASH groups (water, sanitation, and hygiene) and composed of at least 40% women to monitor the orderly use and maintenance of these water points With women on these committees, they can better emphasize the interests of women and children at water access points. What is more, the article reports that because these committees are made up of residents, they will continue in their work long after the non-profit has left the area. This feels empowering to me.
The value of stakeholder participation in the public decision-making process is something many of us might take for granted, however, it is likely that we still leave many stakeholders out of the process when it comes to making decisions and allocating resources. (Note, stakeholder participation is different than citizen participation. Stakeholder participation is an active process to reach out and include the people who are affected by a decision to be made. Citizen participation is broader in scope and includes everyone, regardless if they have a vested stake in the outcome.)
How often have decisions been made in your community for other groups of people without including them because, perhaps, the group in power knew what was best for them. Maybe those groups of people do not speak the dominant language of the community. Maybe they are too young to participate (e.g., teens and children). Or it was too much trouble to get them involved. Or they were invited but did not show up and no one bothered to try and understand why they were not participating.
Stakeholder participation that truly represents the diversity of your community does yield better decisions. It may take a little longer to reach the conclusion, but it ensures more enriching and equitable discussion. Long-term when this is consistently applied and the actions are earnestly pursued, the quality of life for all residents improves and this has surprising benefits for many aspects of a community’s well-being, public health, education, and the local economy, to name a few. The benefits are not superficial.
What scorecard would you give your local group and local community when it comes to stakeholder involvement? Who can we better empower in future decisions?
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