Asan Juma
Asan Juma is a human rights defender, Mandela Washington Fellow 2017, and Co-Founder and Executive Director of Rise Initiative for Women’s Rights Advocacy-RiWA, a feminist human rights organization that was formed in Feb 2018 aimed at increasing the capacity of sexual minorities and meeting the needs of sexual minorities in South Sudan. RiWA was born out of the need to bridge the missing link of the untapped potential, comparative advantage & strategic resourcefulness of grassroots & peri-urban based women in the struggle to work towards realizing a supportive policy and social environment that enables healthy and productive lives.
Asan is a graduate of business school in Uganda and has over four years of experience in civic leadership, providing thorough activism support to sexual minority communities in South Sudan.
Asan previously held many state governmental and organization positions including finance assistant at CEPO, Executive Director at AFA, Data Entry Officer at State Ministry of Education-Wau, and Private Secretary at State ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Asan is a member of the Steering Committee of Tanzania Community Empowerment Foundation (TACEF).
HRDs in South Sudan face a number of challenges, most of which appear to be exacerbated by the fact that this is a new nation undergoing a difficult political transition and periodic bouts of instability.
