in the Gulf   

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Gulf News - 31 October, 2006

An international organisation promoting democracy is to provide training for female candidates in the Gulf, where women's participation rate in legislative councils is less than one per cent.

The Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) is holding talks with Gulf authorities to hold a regional training programme targeting women candidates, an official from the organisation said.

"We are in talks with Qatari advisory councils and governments in order to set up a regional training programme for women in the region in a bid to encourage participation in the political reforms process.

"The Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union has already hosted one successful training programme and is planning to have an expanded programme for the whole region," said Anders Johnson, secretary-general of the IPU.

Johnson was addressing delegates from parliaments across the world attending the sixth International Conference on New or Restored Democracies under way in Doha.

According to data available with the IPU, women members of parliament in the Arab world account for only 7.7 per cent of the total. Statistics available with other non-governmental organisations monitoring political participation in the Gulf region show that the rate decreases to 0.5 per cent with regard to women in GCC parliaments.

Raise awareness

An IPU official said the Arab countries with more women parliamentarians are Morocco (38), Algeria (20) and Syria (24). In the Gulf region countries such as Qatar and the UAE have no women members in their consultative bodies.

"Women's participation rate in parliament is particularly low in the Gulf region, but we are to hold training programmes that aim to involve in the political arena those women who are already members of civil societies and organisations.

"We know that there is a lot to do to raise awareness about the importance of women's participation, especially in the Gulf region. But it is a long-term project that aims to fight gender discrimination and misconceptions about women's role in society," Noureddin Bouchkouj, general-secretary of the Arab IPU told Gulf News.

Bouchkouj said the Arab IPU is to host a meeting in Kuwait between members of parliament and civil societies in a bid to involve women from non-governmental bodies in a debate on political participation.