Campaigns

As the world continues to watch the wave of uprisings across Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) nations, AWID and other women’s rights organizations around the world, together with our partners in the region, strategize on how to best hold the line to ensure that women’s rights are not jeopardised, while maintaining meaningful spaces for women’s rights activists to actively participate in the transition processes.

Women contestants in the fray for sarpanch elections scheduled for July 31, who are financially not too sound to woo voters with valuables, have taken up a unique stand of highlighting what other candidates failed to promise.

All-round development of their panchayat is their mantra and their promise to the voters. Women candidates in Kruthuvennu, Machilipatnam rural and Bantumilli have intensified their campaign by raising their voice against poor access to health care, basic amenities and largely better management of natural resources.

The Somali Ministry of Development and Social Affairs is drafting a bill that outlines a new gender policy for the country and safeguards women's rights, particularly in politics and education.

The proposed legislation is part of a wide-ranging government programme that aims to promote women's rights and support their access to education, health services and participation in governance.

While 30% of parliament is supposed to be reserved for women, women make up less than 16% of the current parliament. 

Two years away from the general elections, Nigerian women who converged under different organizations and auspices at a two-day summit organized by Nigerian Women in Parliament with the support of United Nations Development Programme and Democratic Governance for Development (UNDP/DGD), have started strategizing on how to gain more political relevance ahead of 2015.

 In a country where they have been playing second fiddle to men for centuries, women candidates outnumber men in the ongoing polls to the West Bengal village councils, the third tier of India's electoral democracy.

An estimated 90,000 rural women are contesting the pollls out of a total of 169,000 candidates, that is over half the total number of candidates in the elections that would decide representatives in 58,865 seats.