By Samira Paudel
Women for Human Rights (WHR) with the
cooperation of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) organized a three day long
workshop on “Promoting Single Women for Political Participation in Peace
Building”, July 4 to 6, 2012, in Kathmandu.
There were altogether 30 participants from
Central, Eastern, mid Western, Western and far Western development regions of
Nepal.
These 30 diverse single women from across the
country were selected and trained as political leaders to represent their
respective districts and serve as trainer back home to their groups on gender,
political and electoral issues as well as peace building, trauma healing and
reconciliation. Most of the participants
were single women members of the existing leading political parties.
The first day of the workshop moved forward
with an inaugural session followed by contents of Gender and sex focusing on
potential gender issues in elections, electoral cycle, quota debate and their
affirmative action(s) from gender perspective as argued by gender expert Ms.
Salina Joshi from UNDP.
The second day kicked off with an intensive
panel discussion on women in political world, barriers the women face in
accessing electoral process and sharing best and worst practices from the past
locally, regionally and also globally.
They also discussed on the importance of free
and fair elections and the problems women face during elections. The panel
discussion was followed by different group works on building women’s leadership
for effective mobilization at community level for gender justice, areas of
interventions for the political empowerment of single women at executive,
judiciary and legislative and discussing on strategies to increase single
women’s participation at policy level and foster positive peace.
The first session of the third day concentrated
on sharing of experiences of female ex CA members for lessons to be learnt
which the future leaders can get the best out of it and get to know the
challenges and obstacles they had to face in the days ahead being a women in a
decision making position.
The second session focused more on strategies
for advocacy, awareness, campaigns, capacity building, process and steps to be
followed, networking nationally and internationally and also the role of single
women group in politics.
At the end of the workshop, these selected 30
single women were believed to be fully prepared to become an active and
successful political leader in their region to work on post conflict peace
building process in Nepal. After the
unsuccessful CA, the single women also developed a strategy of having a
separate women political party with mixed groups holding three main mandates of
Nationalism, Activism and Feminism. This
idea of bringing a new political party in the country led by women groups, was
supported by the representatives of different regions and promised to have a
deep consultation with academics, civil society, media, government officials
and members of different political parties to make the idea a concrete one and
move forward with the new hopes for the country.
Er. Rabindra Kumar (member secretary of Social
Welfare Council), Dev Raj Dahal (Head of FES Nepal), Lily Thapa (Founder of
WHR), Kunda Sharma (Treasurer of WHR), Chandrika Bhattarai (President of WHR)
and Professor Anjoo Sharan Upadhyaya (Professor from Banaras Hindu University,
India and chair at the Political Science Department of TU) spoke at the
Inaugural session.
Courtesy:
FES, Nepal Office
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