Women leaders to undergo training on political process

Pakistan's women ministry has launched a new programme with the support of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for the education and training in political processes of female leaders and representatives of local bodies across the country. "The Women's Political School [WPS] project will help in institutionalising the process of training of women political leaders, taking into account the dynamic political climate of the country and the upcoming local government elections in 2005," Nilofar Bakhtiyar, an adviser to the prime minister on women's development, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. The UN's development agency UNDP has granted US $4.5 million for the WPS project, an integral component of its Gender Support Programme for Pakistan. The WPS project has been designed to sustain the gains of the Women's Political Participation Project (W3P), which ran from February 2002 to March 2004. More than 80 percent of elected women councillors from the local government elections of 2000-2001 were given training under the W3P project. "To sustain the W3P's gains, the need for coordinating the efforts of training women political leaders particularly at the local level, was deemed necessary," Bakhtiyar said. The project will focus equally on all of the country's four provinces as well as the Federally Administered Tribal and Northern Areas (FATA and FANA), targeting a total of around 40,000 women councillors, according to a UNDP press statement. Women rights activists have hailed the initiative. Education in political processes is necessary for women's empowerment so that they can have a greater voice, Asim Malik, regional director of the Aurat Foundation, which works for women's rights, told IRIN from northwestern city of Peshawar. Under the "Effective Representation of Women Councillors" programme, the Aurat Foundation has set up 70 resource centres throughout the country. Women councillors are provided with free information and advocacy on legal issues at the centres. "We are now working for the women councillors' forum at the national level so that they can have a stronger voice by forming a separate pressure group," Malik explained. Bakhtiyar noted that the new project would usher in changes within the local political leadership and would require building the capacities of women politicians. "This [WPS] will help empower Pakistan's female politicians to use their public offices to raise women's issues directly into the policy agenda. It will help them to address these issues through public policy," Bakhtiyar added. The WPS would provide reliable support networks and systems for women participating in the political process and will build the institutional capacities of relevant government departments, civil society and training institutions, the UNDP said.