Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Rita Martin Lopidia
born 1980
Co-founder of EVE Organization for Women Development
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the South Sudan Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
A peace campaigner who co-founded EVE, and who argued South Sudanese women into the room where the country's peace agreement was negotiated.
Rita Martin Lopidia co-founded the EVE Organization for Women Development in 2005, working on education, protection and political participation for South Sudanese women and girls in a country that has offered them very little of any of it.
Her central work has been on getting women into peace negotiations rather than being described in them. She was part of the effort that secured a thirty-five per cent quota for women's representation in the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, and has spent the years since pressing for that figure to be honoured in the actual appointments. She has briefed the United Nations Security Council on the conflict and on sexual violence within it.
She received the Women Building Peace Award from the United States Institute of Peace in 2020, the first recipient, and has continued to work from Juba through periods when doing so has been dangerous.
Her central work has been on getting women into peace negotiations rather than being described in them. She was part of the effort that secured a thirty-five per cent quota for women's representation in the Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan, and has spent the years since pressing for that figure to be honoured in the actual appointments. She has briefed the United Nations Security Council on the conflict and on sexual violence within it.
She received the Women Building Peace Award from the United States Institute of Peace in 2020, the first recipient, and has continued to work from Juba through periods when doing so has been dangerous.
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