Inputs From Women Groups to the Draft voters’ Registration
Ms. Seng Reasey, CPWP Coordinator raise up the women’s challenges in the regulation and procedure of the election in consultative meeting on 20 July 2015 at SILAKA office.
Women networks and organizations from national and sub national level came together to discuss on draft voters’ registration to make sure that it is sensitive to women voters’ needs.
SILAKA as the secretariat of the Committee to Promote Women in Politics (CPWP) and the leading agency on CPWP capacity development sub-committee, convened consultative meetings of Women organizations and network across the country to review the regulation and procedure of the draft voters’ election on 26 June and 20 July 2015 at SILAKA meeting room office in Phnom Penh.
Ms. Thida Khus, director of SILAKA and the chairperson of CPWP said “We need to make sure that the procedure is sensitive to women needs ; The seven recommendations are made to specific articles with wording to be submitted to the NEC on 21 July, 2015 are to establish a gender equality committee to assure that the process of voter registration will provide equal access to women, handicapped, and minority population; Committee to select staff for the NEC should have at least one woman; Committee to register voters should have at least one woman; All announcements for staff recruitment should be 10 working days prior to closing; Should there is no women applicant, should extend an additional 5 days; All announcements for staff recruitment should add: “Women, indigenous minority are encouraged to apply”; All process of monitoring should have equal number between women and men; Voters’ registration period should be from April 1 to 10 July”.
Through the two consultative meetings from June to July, the group of women found some articles that did not input gender equality in the regulation and procedure of the election and they recommended on that articles such as chapter 1 in article 1.2, article 1.4, article 1.5; chapter 3 in article 3.2 and chapter 5 in article 5.1.
As the result of these meetings, representatives of women organizations will have a formal meeting with NEC on Tuesday afternoon, 21 July and will bring the final recommendations to submit to the president of NEC to ensure that regulation and procedure in the election must have gender equality.