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SARAJEVO, March 8 (FENA) - Bosnia and Herzegovina has a large number of strong, educated and capable women whose greater participation in public and political life needs to be ensured, it was concluded at a thematic session "Ahead of the 2018 Elections", which was organized today in Sarajevo by the Gender Equality Commission of the House of Representatives of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH PA).
The organization of the sessions was supported by the Agency for Gender Equality of the BiH Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees, the Sarajevo Open Center and the OSCE Mission to BiH.
Chair of the Gender Equality Commission Mirsad Isaković said that women, as well as men, participate in the electoral process by exercising their constitutional right, i.e. active and passive electoral right to elect and be elected.
However, he stressed that statistics show that women in BiH are not sufficiently represented in the legislative and executive authorities.
The position of the Commission, Mr. Isaković said, is that it is necessary to adopt a new law on political parties that would oblige them to establish in their statutes the principle and mechanism of equal representation of the sexes in the party bodies and on the electoral lists.
He said that if BiH wants to achieve gender equality in the near future, it will have to introduce guaranteed seats for the less represented gender in the legislative bodies as a temporary measure that will lead to full equality of women in BiH.
The Head of the OSCE Mission to BiH, Ambassador Bruce Berton stressed that women around the world faced different kinds of discrimination in various spheres of life. However, as he said, we recently had a chance to see, especially in the United States, that women are uniting and raising their voice against abuse and drawing attention to the problems they are facing.
“In BiH, in addition to all this, there is an issue of involving women in political life. Although we have been talking a lot about the Election Law in the last few days, we did not mention the fact that the Election Law guarantees at least 40 percent of the less represented gender in the electoral lists,” said Mr. Berton.
However, the ambassador points out that the reality is somewhat different, so the actual representation of women after the elections was somewhere around 20 percent at the entity and state level, and at the local level it was even lower.
“It is not only the problem of women, we all have to get involved in solving this problem, especially the men,” Mr. Berton said.
The main message that the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to BiH Anders Hagelberg wished to convey at today's gathering was the need for political leadership to be involved in the creation of a gender-equal society.
“Gender equality depends on the structure and approach to addressing this issue and on public opinion,” said Mr. Hagelberg, adding that it is possible to achieve good results at the same time.
He noted that if there is no equality within the political life, then gender equality in other areas of society cannot be expected.
Head of the Office of the Council of Europe in BiH Drahoslav Štefánek emphasized that gender equality was an important issue for the Council of Europe, permeating all their programs.
He noted that the Council of Europe, together with BiH authorities, was currently preparing a new Action Plan covering issues such as providing more media coverage for women and helping the BiH Gender Equality Agency find better solutions in the fight against discrimination.
“I believe there is room for greater participation of women in public and political life and we are prepared to work with the authorities in BiH, using the tools of the Council of Europe,” Mr. Štefánek said.
UN Women Resident Coordinator David Saunders believes that BiH is well-known for strong and capable women who are good leaders, so there is no reason or excuse to say that these women have no major influence on political and public life.
He conveyed a UN message that says that if we want to change the future, then the way of thinking must be changed.
He concluded that gender equality was not an option but an obligation.
(FENA)
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