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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 1
(16 of 16 pages)
Miss Bilqis: Thank you. In fact I have different interpretation of democracy
and because with my limited experience in this, I have found that our Yemeni women have the right to vote, have
the right to participate in political life. But I'm really struck by the fact that during something like 10 or
15 years, I mean this is the period in which we exercised, which we in fact gained this right, women did not exercise
these rights. We have to in fact, during this brief period, 10 or 15 years, women have not in fact achieved anything
regarding exercising these rights within the framework of [inaudible] or position parties, and there are always
contradictions. Reservations of use about the services of the rights to be granted to women, as if women could
not do anything themselves. In fact women did not do much to be able to exercise their rights.
And as regarding the civil society and women, most of NGO's in Yemen are engaged in matters relating to allegation
of poverty, economic hardships and things like this, and I do not think that any NGOs try to promote the participation
of women in politics. With exception of external support, foreign support sometimes. Sometimes where there elections,
foreign institutions may give some donations. So in fact NGOs do not do much in order to promote the rights of
women. I do not want to say that the ruling system or the ruling party dominates all NGOs, but there are indicators
that the freedom of movement of NGOs is very restricted in political life. It may be in existent in fact except
for NGOs with are [inaudible] to the rule of party or to the government in some way or the other. Thank you.
Frank Loy: Thank you, I'm sorry that point didn't come up earlier because it deserves really more discussion
about the freedom of movement of the NGOs that you describe. However we are near the end and in fact I gave the
last word to Mr. Luis Beccar of Bolivia.
Luis Beccar: Thank you very much. I will just clarify just three points about participation in my country.
First of all its very difficult to participate in a political system nowadays because its like a marketing, it's
like you sell a product and if you don't have the money, its very difficult to sell the product. Therefore it's
a lack of literature as well as the leadership stays forever. They like to own parties.
In terms of all the role of the women, pretty much women don't like to participate in politics, even though there
has been a lot has passed in congress, that 30 percent of the women can be in congress, its very difficult to meet
the gap. Therefore you can say that women in Latin America, especially in Bolivia like to get married and try to
avoid politics. There's a lot of space, but they don't take that space that's there for them.
And last but not least the role of the international community as well as the NGOs. You can say that nowadays it's
much better because they are more organized through the minister of finance. But I can say that there is still
a lot of bureaucracy through the process to get project done and the problem is not probably the international
community's fault, but it is the problem of the government that the lack of continuity among the programs from
one government to another one, if you change one government, they change everything. They change even the guys
at the elevator that go up and down. So it's not only the lack of continuity, but also the very poor civil service,
where you don't meet the demands for international community and the NGOs to develop what they wanted to in the
countries. And also the corruption that what is really the biggest problem for emerging democracies.
In conclusion I would like to say that the challenge here is for emerging democracy such as Bolivia that has been
only 17 years, is first of all fight corruption, second, have a really good service, civil service participate
in politics and try to create new laws to participate in, for new leaderships to participate in politics. I thank
you very much.
Frank Loy: Thank you. Well I'm sorry we've run out of time. I know that I promised the floor once again
to Mr. Aout (ph), but we have run out of time. And despite the fact that we've run out of time, we really haven't
definitively resolved any of the issues probably here. Which gives us reason to meet again tomorrow and in fact
it probably reflects the complexity of the subject. There are so many different stages of emerging democracy and
so many different histories, it's not surprising that we have different views of what the problem is. The problem
of multiple parties for example that was described several times by representative of Morocco is not the problem
in some other countries, and the problem of the space for the NGO community is a serious problem in some countries,
and not at all in others. Nevertheless, let me thank you all for your inspired participation, and congratulate
you on really well made points and well made contributions and I hereby pronounce this session to be adjourned,
and I thank you very much.
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