…Holds Two-day Workshop For Key Stakeholders
By Precious Oham
The United Nations Women (UN Women) Working Group in Ekiti State has called for an increase in women’s political participation in the State.
Dunni Riches, Ekiti State Chairperson of UN Working Group spoke on Tuesday at the two-day workshop for Working Group, CSOs and Media.
The workshop tagged “Advance Women’s Political Participation in Ekiti State” was organized by Balm in Gilead Foundation for Sustainable Development, BIGIF, with funding support by UN Women in Nigeria.
Riches, who doubles as President of Ekiti Women Arise said the Ekiti UN Women Working Group consisting of CSOs, Women focused NGOs, media organisations, women group, members of Inter Party Committee, and government agencies is aimed at creating a comprehensive approach to enhancing women’s political participation in the State.
She added that the aim of the Working Group is to address both structural barriers and cultural attitudes that has sets some specific demands to ensure increase in Women’s Political Participation in the State.
According to her, “the demands of the Working Group includes, increased representation of women in political positions to achieve at least 35% representation of women in all political offices at the state and local government levels, legal and policy reforms to ensure that laws and policies promote gender equality and protect women’s rights in the political arena, combating Gender-Based-Violence (GBV) and harassment in politics to create a safe environment for women in politics, free from violence and harassment, financial support and resource mobilization to reduce financial barriers that hinder women’s political participation and to also create funding mechanisms and partnerships to support female candidates’ campaign expenses.
“The group with the aim to achieve these set of demands, will collaborate with relevant stakeholders to organize capacity building and training programs to empower women with the necessary skills and knowledge to participate effectively in politics, by conducting workshops on leadership, public speaking, campaign strategies, and political processes.
“The group will also conduct public awareness and sensitization campaigns with the aim of changing societal attitudes and stereotypes that discourage women from participating in politics and also provide support for women focused CSOs to strengthen their role in advocating for women’s political rights and participation by providing them with technical and financial capacity building opportunities, facilitating networking and collaborating opportunity between CSOs, government bodies, and international organizations.
“The group will also ensure an efficient monitoring and evaluation of all the UN intervention in the state by establishing a monitoring and evaluation frameworks to track progress on gender representation in politics in the state, regularly publishing reports and data on women’s participation in political processes and positions in Ekiti state to ensure accountability in efforts to increase women’s political participation.”
On her part, Executive Director of BIGIF, Tumininu Adedeji reiterated the call for increase in women political participation in Nigeria adding that they want to set Ekiti State as a global role model.
While applauding the State government for ensuring increase in women political participation in the area of appointments, she said the goal is to get to the global requirements.
Her words: “We are looking at building and sustaining what is going on in Ekiti State. The State is topping the movement when it comes to women political participation in Nigeria and everybody wants to come to Ekiti to learn how we are doing it.
“However, we have not gotten to the global requirements of what is supposed to be and that is what we are advocating for. The Equal Opportunity Law 2013 of Ekiti State talks about 35% affirmative action. We are still looking at advocating to ensure we should be able to get.
“The workshop has been done to equip the CSOs and stakeholders to know why we are setting out on this advocacy campaign. We also need to review the Equal Opportunity Law to incorporate some current realities around women political participation and gender equality at large.
“We need increase in women political participation. We are trying in Ekiti and we must give it to the governor and the present executive. They are doing well when it comes to appointments, even in the House of Assembly we have more women compare to other States but we have not gotten to that level.
“We are looking at setting Ekiti as a global role model when it comes to women political participation. We don’t want to compare ourselves with other States but set a global standard. We can do better and we want increase in women political participation.”
The workshop equipped the participants with the knowledge of WPP approaches and programming, foster collaboration and coordination of interventions among the participants.
The participants were also strengthened with the capacity to prevent and respond to Violence Against Women in Politics and enhanced their abilities to design and implement effective advocacy programs, among others.