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Topic Discussion III
Participation in
Democratic Decision-Making:
The Vital Voices of Women, Civil Society and
Pluralism
Room 5
(16 of 22 pages)
Speaker: In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, thank you
for giving me the opportunity to speak. But I wanted to talk about a different issue. My name is Mohammed Abdul
Elgypsy (ph). I'm a member in the Yemeni Parliament and a Member in the National Council. We talk a lot about participation,
but I'm afraid that we will lose time allocated for this meeting without getting to a conclusion on what are the
real barriers facing this participation.
As my colleague said, we in Yemen, we don't have any problem when it comes to legislation and there is no problem
when it comes to religion. The constitution nor the religion impose no barriers on the participation of women.
But all the legislations guarantee the women participation and it's role in the political parties. I'm sorry to
say that we use -- we don't -- to hear that we are accused that we use women as decoration in political parties.
This is not true at all. We together work with women in thinking, organizing and in electing our representatives.
But as my colleague has just said, we -- neither we nor them, I mean women, take part in the decision making process.
So both of us are not. So when there are legislations but they are not applied, this is a different issue.
When it comes also to the traditions and the capabilities, I was really happy when I heard that in Malawi there
is a special Ministry for human rights. We do hope and aspire that we'll have in Yemen, a special Ministry for
example, for human rights, because such a Ministry would really help. And I was really even more happy to hear
from the Malawi representative that there are codes to support democracy and funds presented by the donors. So
we do hope that such institutions would support us through guaranteeing, having the legislation -- having the application
of the legislations done.
I wanted to -- I mean, I can see for myself now that you've been talking about the participation of women only.
I mean, that we want to talk of the participation of all sectors of the society and all specializations in the
society, because it's true that in Yemen we have this system of election that allows the one district election,
as it is the case in some other countries. But what I want to say in this regard is that we should recommendations
out of this forum on setting the obstacles that are hindering the Yemeni society from participation. I want these
recommendations to state and to list the problems facing the Yemeni society. As I said, legislations nor religion
are not a problem.
Lily Kapanda: Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm Lily Kapanda appearing from Malawi. I was a member of
parliament for eight years and a deputy speaker for five years. Unfortunately I lost my position last week during
the general elections. I just wanted to add a few points which my colleague didn't mention. Since you heard his
presentation, he didn't mention much on women, so I just want to add on that.
Someone said women don't love each other. It may be true, but that is not true. Women love each other, but men
make women to hate each other. They will work through women to de-campaign their fellow women. And speaking on
my own example, as I've already said, that I was a member of parliament and men have contributed to my loss.
Fifty-two percent of the population are women in my country and you find that women are under represented in parliament.
Like the last parliament, we had 177 seats, but only nine were women and only two were Cabinet Ministers. So you
can see the number to represent the 52 percent of the women were not enough.
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