Members of the Gogrial West County peace committee in Warrap State have pledged to provide trauma healing and psychosocial services to the community affected by communal conflict in the county.

The Aguok and Apuk clans of the county have been involved in deadly clashes since 2016.

The committee made the resolutions during a five-day trauma healing and psychosocial training which was supported by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). About 30 participants from nine payams of Gogrial West County attended the training.

"I learned about peacebuilding and reconciliation and when I go back to my village I will call a meeting and talk to people on how they can relieve themselves from stress," Josephine Aluk Garang, a member of the peace committee said. 

"The training has changed me and I will support people with problems by telling them the related stories with what they have experienced although counseling is not an easy job," William Deng Mayar said.

"I am so happy to be in this training workshop because I learned about trauma healing and psychosocial support. I will take to message to change my community," Angelina Amiir Ayok said after the training.

For her part, Lucia Bassa, UNDP Peace, and Community Cohesion officer urged the participants to use the knowledge gained in fostering peace in the state. 

"In implementing issues of psychosocial support and reconciliation in the community, we need you to go and form support groups that will jointly help the community with issues of trauma healing. We want to hear you calling us back and say we helped her or him to recover from trauma because all of us in South Sudan are traumatized and we need to help each other," Bassa said. "So et's make Warrap state to be like Aweil because many people talk about Aweil as peaceful. Warrap is in the middle of Bahr El Ghazal so we need to have peace for many people to come and stay here, then development will come." 

Bassa said similar pieces of training will be conducted in all the counties of Warrap State.