Second IEC Coordination Meeting on Gender and Elections

The second coordination meeting on gender and elections was held in IEC in the presence of IEC commissioners and chief electoral officer, civil society organizations, representatives of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, partner embassies and media to discuss women’s significant role in electoral process. Ms. Rida Azimi an IEC commissioner expressed her concerns over the inadequate participation of women in voter registration process and asked the CSOs to help IEC by encouraging women through public awareness programs. Ziaulhaq Amarkhil, the chief electoral officer of IEC also emphasized on the lack of women’s interest in voter registration process and declared the totally number of registered women 11855 so far, however, optimistically stated that the number has increased by 25% since the beginning of the process. At the meeting, CSOs explained their public outreach activities in regard to the voter registration process and expressed their concern over the elimination of the provision in E-Law on the 25% quota for women in Provincial and District Councils elections. FEFA’s representative described the activities done so far by FEFA’s women outreach department and the Women’s Political Rights Advocacy Group which is also facilitated by FEFA and said, “it is unacceptable to have the 25% quota eliminated from the E-Law by Wolesi Jirga for the Provincial and District Councils elections, therefore we need to earnestly advocate at Mishrano Jirga to have this provision included in the Law. The advocacy group met with the speaker of the Senate to share the recommendations on E-Law and the eliminated provision”. She also mentioned a radio round table was held at FEFA by the advocacy group to encourage women to participate at the VR process. Ms. Farida Nekzad one of the members of the advocacy group explained the recommendations of the group on the VR process and said, “one of the ways to encourage women to register for elections is to have mobile teams go door to door and distribute And distribute card to women. This can be very efficient in getting more women registered”. At the end of the session, IEC appreciated CSOs cooperation in this regard and assured the participants that IEC will take their recommendations and concerns into consideration.