“Empowering the role of women in BiH – 101 Reason why Vote for Women”
An educational workshop was organized in Gorazde to address this question:
Where are the women in the BiH 2010 Elections??
On july 7th, 2010, Gorazde was a meeting place of numerous political parties’, NGOs’ and public institutions’ representatives all of whom gathered to parttake in the workshop discussing the rights of women to vote, but especially the right to be elected. Over thirty participants provided their viewpoints on why women are not presented in the BiH political life, even with the legal 30% quota for gender presentation on all political levels, and how to change that situation. Unfortunately, contemporary BiH still needs reminding that the women of Bosnia and Herzegovina have the right to be presented and represented on candidate lists, that women earned to be elected in the coming general elections in BiH, set for October 3rd, 2010.
Presenters on the topic for the Gorazde workshop included Jadranka Milicevic and Vedrana Frasto of CURE (GIRLS) Foundation, and Mirsada Sijerčić from the association “GORAŽDANKE”. All three of them pointed out the different aspects of importance of the initiative “Empowering the role of women in BiH – 101 Reasons why Vote for Women”. The initiative holds a high importance at a time when BiH gets a yet another opportunity to show it is advancing towards a democratic country, one that practices all laws, declarations, conventions and other documents of significance that were signed and ratified by the state. Even beyond the need for gender equality, the citizens of BiH deserve political representatives that will get results when it comes to improving the quality of lives of all BiH citizens. The mere statistic that women present 52% of the population and voting body illustrates how acute the women underrepresentation in politics is with only 12% of women in the BiH Parliament.
Surely, this makes BiH a non-democratic country, and citizens in BiH and those in Diaspora can voice their determination for positive changes at the October Elections.
The main objective for initiating the „“Empowering the role of women in BiH – 101 Reasons why Vote for Women” is to raise citizens’ level of general knowledge about women’s political rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina, women’s capacities to be political leaders, of the opportuinities for, but also responsibilities of women to advance the BiH society. The Initiative offers training and other educational events that are taking place across 36 cities and towns of BiH, and covering 105 rural areas of the country.
Educational workshops are an opportunity to advance the capacities for decision making of women in politics as an active response to changing the status of women as a socially excluded members of BiH society and its political life.
In the period between April and October 2010, thirteen partner organizations from 11 BiH towns/cities plan to animate and motivate a minimum of 3000 and a maximum of 20000 women to consider using the basic women’s human right – the right to vote.
Representatives of the Swiss Cooperation Office for BiH also attended this educational workshop.
For more information, please contact us: Vedrana Frašto ( CURE) Cell: (+ 387) (0) 61 217 472 or vedrana@fondacijacure.org
