UN Women to monitor violence against women during elections

UN Women in partnership with Civil Society Organisations has developed a gender elections engagement room which will monitor violence against women during the forthcoming elections.

Speaking during a press conference the UN Women country representative Dr Maxime Houinato said: "We have a monitoring room equipped with several computers and internet and we will deploy 100 observers that have been trained to monitor what is going on in the country so that violence against women is not dealt with afterwards but right in real-time."

He said that during the electoral process, there is often intimidation and gender-based violence against women.

"Women are specifically targeted during the electoral processes in terms of intimidation to sometimes to prevent them from exercising their right to elections," Houinato said

In partnership with the ministries of finance and gender, they are implementing a programme on women economic empowerment to ensure that the economic development policies of the country also benefits women.

Uganda expects to carry out presidential and Parliamentary elections in 2021. Recently, the Electoral Commission launched a countrywide voters' register update.

The executive director of Uganda Women's Network (UWONET) Rita Aciro said they are going to train 6000 women countrywide to effectively participate in the forthcoming elections.

She said "While we might not be able to give women hard cash we shall give them knowledge and skills through training. In our training materials, we have aspects of resource mobilization on how women can mobile resources."

Aciro said her organisation will ensure that the Electoral Commission gives people the information they need to participate effectively in elections.

"We are going to work with all political parties who will be selecting their representatives to run for different positions and we shall ensure that we train women to run effective campaigns. We will also be able to observe elections," she added.

The programme specialist at UN Women, Agripinner Nandhego, said one of the main reasons why there are fewer women taking up leadership positions it is because of the negative perceptions in society.

Nandhego further explained that "both men and women believe that women cannot be good leaders. Very many people believe that leadership is for men, so for us to get women into these positions, we need to change the perceptions in communities, that is why we work with cultural because they hold the key to change this perception and we work with religious leaders to see that they can help us change this."