Anisia Achieng

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Anisia Karlo Achieng Olworo is a South Sudanese MP representing Eastern Equatoria and a women's rights activist. She was born in South Sudan and lost both parents young. She grew up in an orphanage run by missionaries who moved to Uganda, where she finished secondary school. She later returned to Sudan to look for relatives, then trained as a police officer and nurse and worked for Norwegian Church Aid. War forced her to flee again, and she moved to Nairobi, where she volunteered for the UN Refugee Agency and studied at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa.

In 1993 she lived in the Nuba Mountains until fighting forced her to escape to Kenya; her young children joined her sister in Uganda. In Nairobi she co-founded Sudanese Women’s Voice for Peace to fight human rights abuses. She spoke at the 1995 Harvest for Sudan conference and, with Fatima Ahmed Ibrahim, toured Canada in 1995–96 to raise awareness about war crimes and women’s rights violations.

In 1998 she earned a BA in social sciences from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa and also earned a diploma in Women Leadership from Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Kitwe. After the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, she helped train people about the interim constitution’s impact on women. As a Catholic Relief Services peacebuilding officer, she started the Road to Peace project in 2007 to build a road between Ikotos and Imatong. She has also worked with a Center for Justice and Peacebuilding program in Sudan.

Anisia later became a Member of Parliament for Eastern Equatoria and is part of regional bodies in Eastern Africa. She is Christian and has two biological children and an adopted son.