OSCE helps to promote 30 per cent gender quota in local councils of Kyrgyzstan
A high-level OSCE-supported forum aimed at promoting the political rights of women in Kyrgyzstan, in particular at pushing forward the draft bill on establishing a 30 per cent gender quota in the nearly 500 local councils in Kyrgyzstan, was held on 6 March in Bishkek.
Entitled “We support the 30% gender quota in village councils!”, the forum was organized by the public foundation Women Support Center within the framework of the 2018-2020 National Action Plan for Achieving Gender Equality in Kyrgyzstan. It was supported by the OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek, the UN Women, the UN Development Program in Kyrgyzstan and the United States Embassy to Kyrgyzstan.
The event was attended by the former President of Kyrgyzstan, Roza Otunbaeva, women deputies from across local councils of Kyrgyzstan, representatives of the government, national parliament, presidential administration, Central Commission for Elections and Referenda, civil society, independent experts, international organizations and the media community.
Women’s equal participation in decision-making is directly related to the solution to many socially significant challenges, such as improving healthcare and education and preventing gender-based violence, the participants said. They highlighted the particular relevance of the issue in light of the President of Kyrgyzstan’s pronouncement of 2019 as the Year of Regional Development and Digitalization, as well as in anticipation of the next parliamentary and local council elections, which will take place in 2020.
“Today the political landscape has changed. All of the decision-making positions are occupied by men, and I would like to draw the attention of the country’s current leadership to this burning issue,” Otunbaeva said.
According to Baken Dosalieva of the Women Support Center, the national statistics for the past 15 years demonstrate a gradual decline in the number of women across local councils in Kyrgyzstan: in 2004, 19 per cent of those elected to local councils were women; in 2008 it was 17 per cent, in 2012 the number decreased to 13 per cent, and in 2016 women made up only 10 per cent of local councils. In other words, Kyrgyzstan’s village councils currently consist 90 per cent of men. According to Dosalieva, if the current trend continues there will be only 2 per cent women in local councils after the 2020 elections and no women at all by 2028.
The Head of the OSCE Programme Office in Bishkek, Pierre von Arx, said: “Women’s equal participation in decision making is not just an international best practice, it is the requirement of our times. Today’s event, to which we contributed, is a timely and uniting platform in promoting these important processes.”
At the conclusion of the forum, women deputies from local councils read out the text of an official appeal, which they submitted to the president of Kyrgyzstan, to extend meaningful support to the draft bill on reserving 30 per cent of the mandates in village councils for women.