voices that count
UN Women and influencing change in 2016
New law in Tunisia:
The Tunisian parliament passed a legislative amendment in June that integrated vertical and horizontal parity in the electoral law making it mandatory to include equal numbers of men and women on electoral lists as well as to alternate between men and women within those lists. The change applies to municipal and regional elections greatly enhancing women’s political representation in local governance. The amendment was passed following extensive advocacy work by UN Women with the Tunisian civil society and Tunisian women parliamentarians including by launching a joint project with women parliamentarians last March under the name of “don’t cross us out.” Through the project, UN Women has been providing support in organizing advocacy sessions, designing legislative proposals and planning trainings for women parliamentarians as well as assisting them in creating a functional women caucus.
Constitutional Reform In Algeria:
For over a year, UN Women has supported Algerian women parliamentarians in creating and operationalizing the country's first Women Caucus network. An action plan has also been elaborated (members benefited from a number of trainings in constitutional and legal context, communication, strategic planning, action plan writing, networking tactics and strategies tailored to empower their parliamentary and political action and promoting connections with other regional networks of women parliamentarians).
In March 2016, a new amendment was introduced to the constitution in favor of women’s rights aiming at institutionalizing parity in women's employment and access to decision-making positions, in addition to promoting women’s political participation in elected assemblies.
Engendering the police in Palestine:
The Palestinian Civil Police (PCP) adopted its first ever gender strategy. Developed with UN Wom-en’s support, the 3-year strategy lays out interventions to improve and build confidence in PCP ser-vices and response, more specifically to Palestinian women and girls. The Strategy, which focuses on internal policies and procedures, aims to create a conducive environment for women’s access and reporting to the police, including a more gender-balance police force, with plans to increase wom-en’s representation to 10% in 2018 (currently at 3.75%). An important reform as a recent perceptions survey showed that a quarter of Palestinian women would prefer to deal with women police officers - a percentage that increases even more for cases of violence against women and girls.
Photo: UN Women/Emad Karim
From the 5th General Assembly of the Kigali International Conference , Algeria, 2016.Photo: UN Women/Kimja Vanderheyden
Photo: UN Women/Maged Helal
29