Skip to main content
WAU - 15 Oct 2012

Poverty and hunger prevent girls’ education in W. Bahr el Ghazal

Naima Abbas, director of Gender Education in the Ministry of Education in Western Bahr el Ghazal state, revealed that there is a sharp rise in girls dropping out of schools in the three counties of Western Bahr el Ghazal state: Wau, Raja, and River Jur.

Abbas in an interview with Radio Tamazuj on the World Day for the Girl Child stated that the state suffers from high dropout rates among girls, where she indicated that the proportion of girls in schools at the beginning of school year was 18.785 in Wau county, 3.144 Raja county, 6.914 for River Jurr county, but that percentage has dropped at the end of the school year.

She confirmed that this explains the high rate of dropout among girls, and attributed the reasons to poverty and hunger, pointing to South Sudan’s long history of war and conflicts besides of the absence of awareness about importance of education for girls, in addition to the state of the South Sudan as new country.

Naima added that all these factors are capable to contribute to the decline in girls' education, and acknowledged that the schools alone are not responsible for the problem, and appealed families to stand side by side with the education institutions to encourage girls to get education.