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Mobilization of women on eve of elections in Burundi |
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Women’s organizations have drawn up a national strategy to increase
participation in general elections in Burundi this May. This will be
the second election since the conflict ended; the second post-conflict
poll in the country.
The strategy was drafted by Partners for the Promotion of Women's Rights (SPPWR), a local NGO aiming to increase the number of women candidates and voters. In the 2000 Inter-Burundian Peace Negotiations in Arusha, Tanzania, there was an agreement for a minimum quota of 30 percent women in government and the national assembly.
After the first post-conflict elections in 2005, Mrs. Alice Nzomukunda became vice president and Burundi also had a female speaker of the National Assembly, Mrs. Immaculée Nahayo. Women represent 35 percent in the Government, 31 percent in the National Assembly, 35 percent in the Senate, 13 percent in the communal administration and 21 percent of municipal council women, according to SPPWR.
NGOs have been critical of the current co-opting system. Organizations think that the system should be eliminated by using "all means necessary" to raise the percentage of women elected to more than 30 percent at all levels during next months' people's elections.
SPPWR underline the importance of the commitment of the political parties to grant enough seats to women in their structures and place them in useful positions on their candidate lists.
One of the concerns of the organization is political discrimination against women and they highlight cultural notions that deem politics as an exclusively "masculine activity".
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