At the inaugural Constituting Assembly of RECOMM held on 6 March in San José (Costa Rica), gathered almost 500 women who hold popularly-elected posts in local governments such as mayors, councilwomen, trade unionists, superintendents and district councilwomen from all over the country.
On 22 November 2007, r
epresentatives from several municipal associations from 5 Central American countries (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras y Panama,) and from the Dominican Republic signed an
agreement at UN-INSTRAW headquarters in Santo Domingo, in order to create the Administrative Committee of the Regional Network of Municipal Councilwomen’s Associations in the previously-mentioned countries.
While Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Dominican Republic already have municipal associations, Panama and Costa Rica initiated the process to create associations at the national level.
In this context, RECOMM will be in charge of promoting training processes, raising funds and establishing relationships with associations of councilwomen and other entities at the national and international levels. The creation of this network will strengthen the exchange of experiences between local Costa Rican leaders.
According to the data published by UN-INSTRAW on the “Diagnosis on Governance and Women’s Political Participation from a Gender Perspective in Central America”
(Diagnóstico de la Gobernabilidad y la Participación Política de las Mujeres desde una Perspectiva de Género en Centro América), in the penultimate electoral process Costa Rica had the highest number of elected female mayors and councilwomen in Central America.
The diagnosis revealed that the number of women elected in local governments is still very low in all Central American countries, except in Costa Rica. Even though Costa Rica has the highest electoral abstention index in the Central American region (70.3%), the number of elected councilwomen tripled beginning in 1998 as a result of the implementation of the quota law.
RECOMM’s establishment aims at i
ncreasing the number of women in decision-making posts at the local level and to influence the formulation of municipal public policies on behalf of gender equality.
This initiative has been realized through joint work by the National Women’s Institute (INAMU); the National Union of Local Governments (UNGL); the Institute for the Promotion and Municipal Assessment (IFAM); the Foundation for Local Development and Municipal and Institutional Development of Central America and the Caribbean (Fundación DEMUCA); the UN-INSTRAW/AECID Project, the Municipal Strengthening and Decentralization Project (FOMUDE), the Local and Community Project of Costa Rica, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) and the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress.
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