WUNRN
Burundi is a country in the Great Lakes region of Eastern
Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the
east and south, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
to the west. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burundi
Via UNDP & World YWCA
From
Catherine MABOBORI , Member of Parliament in BURUNDI
Burundi - Additional Quotas for Women in New Electoral
Law
Dear
Friends & Partners,
We are happy to announce you that we have successfuly lobbied to have
additional quotas for women in our newly revised electoral law which was voted
by our Parliament yesterday in preparation for 2010 elections. In fact ,
Our Constitution and recent electoral law were only securing at leat 30%
of women in Parliament and government, but nothing was said at local level.
From today , the same quotas will be considered at communal level
However , we did not succeed to do the same at the cellular or collinal level .
The suggestion was to have 5 councellors at this level , at least 2 women among
them . The governement was favorable and the initial law project included this
but the Parliament rejected this dispostion arguing that it is
unconstitutional and against the principle of direct universal suffrage which
will be applied at that level.
Any way , the step made so far is not bad and we hope to make more progress in
the years to come. This step was made possible by a good parternership with
women civil society organisations and women members of Parliament and we had
previously used the same strategy of lobbying in synergy during the
revision of our penal code some months ago to include repression against
sexual and domestic violence .
Now the struggle will be to make a good information campaign to encourage women
to vote and to be candidates like we did during 2005 elections and
we hope to have the right women at the right places so that the increase of
women political participation can go together with positivily impacting
our society
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