SOUTH Sudanese activist Rita Lopidia was just a child when shells started falling in her hometown of Juba, forcing her and her family to flee the fighting in the 1990s. Her experience with years of civil war and displacement and her campaign for women's participation in peace negotiations earned her the inaugural Women Building Peace Award on Tuesday from the Washington-based United States Institute of Peace (USIP). The award, the first of its kind bestowed by the USIP, recognises the crucial role women play in preventing conflict and forging peace and reconciliation in war-torn countries. USIP is a non-partisan federal…