MPs want more women in new parliament

Women members of Somalia's newly created transitional federal parliament plan to move a motion seeking a constitutional amendment to increase the number of seats reserved for women in the assembly, one of the MPs said on Monday. The women have complained that delegates attending the Somali national reconciliation conference in the Kenya capital, Nairobi, flouted the National Charter when they failed to adhere to the provision that at least 12 percent of the members be women. Delegates, the majority of them men, appointed only 23 women members to the 275-member parliament even though the charter stipulates that at least 33 MPs be women. "We are planning to come up with a motion to amend article 29 of the charter to raise the women's quota in parliament," Asha Haji Elmi, one of the MPs told IRIN. She said that women members would form a "strategic alliance" with men MPs sympathetic to their cause to ensure that the motion is passed. "We [women] are part and parcel of the national solution," she added. The planned motion will seek to have parliament endorse the creation of an additional 14 seats for women. The fledgling parliament, which was inaugurated in Nairobi last month, will hold a session in the Kenya capital on Wednesday to elect a speaker. The Transitional Federal Charter that provides for the creation of the transitional parliament and a federal interim government was adopted by delegates to the reconciliation conference in Nairobi in September 2003. The MPs were chosen by elders and political leaders from their respective clans who were attending the conference sponsored by the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). The creation of the transitional federal parliament paved the way for the formation of an all-inclusive government in Somalia, which has remained without an effective government since 1991, when the regime of Muhammad Siyad Barre was toppled. Each of Somalia's four major clans was allocated 61 seats in the parliament, while an alliance of minority clans was awarded 31. A speaker and two deputy speakers to be elected from among the MPs will preside over the election of the president, who will in turn appoint a prime minister to form a government. The reconciliation conference was initiated by IGAD in October 2002 in Eldoret, Kenya. The subregional body that groups Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda as well as Somalia, moved the talks to Nairobi in February 2003. After a new government has been installed, IGAD intends to return the peace process to Mogadishu, the Somali capital. It is also planning to seek international help to kick-start the new Somali state.