participatory budgeting pilot
Regional initiatives
BEST PRACTICES
Project Description
Participation of women in politics and in the decision-making processes countrywide is significantly low. The number of women active members in the political parties is on average less than 1/4 of the total number of members, and in some districts, this ratio is even smaller. The women participation in the leading structures of the political parties in both the national and the local level is even smaller. In general, there is a sense of strong resistance as regards the women participation at various levels of political representation, and in particular as regards the definition of mandatory criteria for the party structures regarding women participation.
Women are also largely missing from leadership structures within political parties at the central and local levels. Although, much has been done to improve the standing of women in Kosovo’s society and to promote their inclusion in public life; however, big challenges remain.
A failure to properly consider the gender aspect is also perceived in the current policies and strategies of development formulated by the Government. There is a lack of attention and failure to act with regard to the women participation of in the social and economic life that would allow them to compete for a vacancy based on their values.
Meanwhile, the Kosova Assembly and Special Representative of the Secretary-General in UNMIK Regulation 2004/18 have approved The Gender Equality Law (June 2004) .The Law calls for the establishment of equal representations of men and women at all levels in executive, legislative and judicial bodies, public institutions, and appointments in central and local government bodies. Bodies named as responsible for achieving gender equality include the Assembly of Kosova, the Government and ministries, and local government bodies.
According the Gender Equality law, the Government has developed the Kosova Program for Gender Equality. It calls for the establishment of an inter-ministerial council comprised of Gender Affairs Officers to be appointed within each ministry. These officers must be responsible for the implementation of the gender equality strategy as set out by the Gender Equality Law and in conjunction with the Office for Gender Equality. Gender Affairs Officers must be appointed in each municipality and an Office of Gender Affairs created by local government bodies.
In the other hand, there is a lack of information from the responsible institutions about the progress that has been done in creating and developing the necessary structures and concrete action plan or any remarkable result.
Considering this reality, we consider very important the deep monitoring of the implementation structures of the Gender Equality Law, as an effective method in creating the favorable environment to the civil society to make pressure and lobby toward responsible structures in implementation of this important law.
In the meantime with the new reality (that central – local institutions are responsible in the treatment of the gender problematic) the civil society stakeholders, especially the NGO-s that operate in the Gender issues have not a meaningful experience in shrinking the gap between public institutions and citizens. This new role of the NGO-s has to be improved. Our approach in improving this situation is the Regional cooperation with the presentation of the Best Practices in “Gender Legislation Implementation” of each Western Balkan country and then through comparing Western Balkan experience with best EU practices.
Goal
- Monitor the implementation of the Gender Equality legislation from the responsible public institutions and improve the role of the civil society in facilitating the concrete implementation of this legislation.
Objectives
- Monitor the responsible executive structures of Gender Equality law implementation
- Make transparency for the citizens through making public every monitoring result.
- Improve the role of Ngo-s working in Gender Issues in monitoring and facilitating the Gender Equality law implementation.
- Initiate an active exchange process of Best practices in monitoring and facilitating the implementation of Gender legislation through Western Balkan NGO-s.
Advance the exchanging Best Practices with the very specialized EU NGO-s in watchdog, monitoring, interlocutors of Gender legislation implementation.
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