The United Nations through UNDP and UN Women yesterday sought high level commitment from key institutions of democracy in Tanzania in promoting gender equality and inclusion of youth and persons living with disabilities (PWDs) across the political and electoral processes.
The UN is also calling for inclusive elections, where all those eligible and interested have the opportunity to participate in electoral processes as voters and as candidates is central to democracy.
The UN stand was made at an ongoing two day workshop that has brought together leaders of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC), Office of the Registrar of Political Parties (RPP), the Tanzania Police Force and the Judiciary to agree on how to achieve this. It was the general consensus that, despite the country’s track record in promoting the rights of women, young people and marginalized groups to enjoy equal status with other citizens and the fact that Tanzania is signatory to key international protocols that promote equality, the country still has a long way to go to achieve equal opportunities for women, the youth and persons living with disabilities.
Philippe Poinsot, UNDP Country Director said one of the key challenges faced by women is lack of access to finances to campaign for elections along with discrimination based on socio-cultural prejudices. “Youth and PWDs face similar challenges and these account for their low representation in decision making processes,” he said.
“More work lies ahead to address the lack of opportunities for women, youth and PWDs to engage effectively in political and electoral processes,” said Anna Collins-Falk, UN Women Representative in Tanzania. “This means addressing the obstacles that mitigate inclusive participation by these groups and the creation of sustainable processes to empower and build capacities for effective participation in politics and elections,” she noted.
“UN Women is addressing these challenges through, first and foremost, a baseline research to generate data on the extent of political parties’ commitment to encouraging women, youth and PWDs to stand as candidates,” she revealed. UN Women works with a range of institutions of democracy to support the training of these candidates and undertake advocacy and public sensitization activities to encourage more women, youth and PWDS to seek party nominations in the forthcoming elections in 2015 and beyond, she explained. “We know that women and marginalized groups are underrepresented in democratic politics, in parliaments, executives, judiciary, the media and political parties.
And we know that until this is rectified, real democracy will be difficult to achieve,” said Joram Rukambe, the Chief Technical Advisor of the DEP. Delegates to the two-day workshop will be discussing entry points and strategies to promote gender and social inclusion throughout the project instilling a culture of sex disaggregated data and gender responsive voter registration for election management bodies, incident and case reporting for the police and the judiciary as well as the recruitment, retention and promotion of marginalized groups within the key institutions of democracy.
DEP is a three-year programme managed by UNDP in partnership with UN Women and UNESCO and supported by several Development Partners including DFID, Denmark, European Union, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UN (One Fund).
The UN stand was made at an ongoing two day workshop that has brought together leaders of the National Electoral Commission (NEC), Zanzibar Electoral Commission (ZEC), Office of the Registrar of Political Parties (RPP), the Tanzania Police Force and the Judiciary to agree on how to achieve this. It was the general consensus that, despite the country’s track record in promoting the rights of women, young people and marginalized groups to enjoy equal status with other citizens and the fact that Tanzania is signatory to key international protocols that promote equality, the country still has a long way to go to achieve equal opportunities for women, the youth and persons living with disabilities.
Philippe Poinsot, UNDP Country Director said one of the key challenges faced by women is lack of access to finances to campaign for elections along with discrimination based on socio-cultural prejudices. “Youth and PWDs face similar challenges and these account for their low representation in decision making processes,” he said.
“More work lies ahead to address the lack of opportunities for women, youth and PWDs to engage effectively in political and electoral processes,” said Anna Collins-Falk, UN Women Representative in Tanzania. “This means addressing the obstacles that mitigate inclusive participation by these groups and the creation of sustainable processes to empower and build capacities for effective participation in politics and elections,” she noted.
“UN Women is addressing these challenges through, first and foremost, a baseline research to generate data on the extent of political parties’ commitment to encouraging women, youth and PWDs to stand as candidates,” she revealed. UN Women works with a range of institutions of democracy to support the training of these candidates and undertake advocacy and public sensitization activities to encourage more women, youth and PWDS to seek party nominations in the forthcoming elections in 2015 and beyond, she explained. “We know that women and marginalized groups are underrepresented in democratic politics, in parliaments, executives, judiciary, the media and political parties.
And we know that until this is rectified, real democracy will be difficult to achieve,” said Joram Rukambe, the Chief Technical Advisor of the DEP. Delegates to the two-day workshop will be discussing entry points and strategies to promote gender and social inclusion throughout the project instilling a culture of sex disaggregated data and gender responsive voter registration for election management bodies, incident and case reporting for the police and the judiciary as well as the recruitment, retention and promotion of marginalized groups within the key institutions of democracy.
DEP is a three-year programme managed by UNDP in partnership with UN Women and UNESCO and supported by several Development Partners including DFID, Denmark, European Union, Finland, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UN (One Fund).
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