The Centre for Democratic Institutions (CDI) has been awarded $1 million from the Federal Government for a program to help women in Papua New Guinea gain skills in democratic politics. Announced on 12 October 2011 by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the funding will go towards a Women Candidates Training Strategy, developed in partnership with the PNG Office for the Development of Women (ODW) and the UN Development Program (UNDP).
CDI Director Dr Stephen Sherlock said PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill visited the University on Wednesday. “Mr O’Neill recently introduced legislation to provide for 22 reserved seats for women in parliament,” he said. “Our aim is to assist the women who want to contest these new reserved seats, as well as those standing in the existing seats open to both women and men.
“The program will help encourage women to participate in politics in the Pacific nation, where involvement has been particularly low.” Dr Sherlock said that a number of the activities in the initiative have already been completed, including a ‘training the trainers’ workshop for facilitators from local civil society organisations. “The strategy, which was developed by ODW with assistance from CDI and UNDP’s Women in Leadership Project, is a home-grown response to the poor political representation of women in PNG,” he said.
CDI’s Deputy Director Grant Harrison added that the only woman in PNG’s Parliament, Dame Carol Kidu, would not be re-contesting her seat in next year’s election, so the country faced the prospect of having no women MPs at all. “ODW’s Strategy aims to increase the chances of women being elected by proposing a structured sequence of training and advisory events for women candidates and their campaign managers in the 10 months leading up to the election,” he said. “It draws on the experiences of female candidates in the 2007 elections and on CDI’s experience in conducting candidate training for women in the Solomon Islands and Bougainville.”
Dr Sherlock said the extra funding would make a significant and positive contribution to the outcomes of the program for women in PNG politics.
Click on the links below for Prime Minister Gillard's announcement and more detail on activities under the PNG Women Candidates Training Strategy:
