Elections

In many parts of Papua New Guinea, fear of violence and harassment has caused a set back to the lives and small businesses of many women, but new candidates who now intend to enter politics aim to change this for the better.

“People within the community have approached me to stand for election - to revive the work and services my father had supported,” explains a local female candidate intending to enter politics.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member organisation in Kenya, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, are publishing a report today, examining patterns of sexual and gender-based violence against women during election seasons in Kenya and call upon the State to take immediate preventive actions in view of the upcoming 2022 general elections.

An actress jailed for protesting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s controversial citizenship law, the mother of a rape survivor, and a beauty pageant winner. These are the women leading India’s once-dominant Congress party as it seeks to reinvent itself in a hotly contested state election.

South Asia Partnership (SAP) Pakistan and Aurat Foundation held a convention on women’s political participation in Pakistan on Saturday. The focus was on women in local government.

Centre-right Maltese lawmaker Roberta Metsola, chosen Tuesday as only the third woman to head the European Parliament, is viewed as a political moderate despite controversy over her anti-abortion stance.

Elected on the day she turns 43, the politician from the European Union's smallest nation becomes the youngest president ever to run the chamber. She takes over at a time of mourning for the legislature as it marks the sudden death last week of its speaker David Sassoli.

Several male aspirants of different political parties, who aimed to contest for the mayor’s post of Berhampur Municipal Corporation (BeMC) in the upcoming election of the civic body, were disappointed as the state government on Wednesday proposed to reserve the prestigious post for women.