(Cairo, 14 September 2011) In its continuing effort to enhance women’s role in the Egyptian political sphere and follow the mechanisms and means that guarantee equality in women’s representation, ECWR is going to monitor the 2011 Parliamentary and Shoura Elections from a gender perspective. For this purpose, ECWR is preparing its Operation Room that will be in charge of the monitoring and will undertake the following missions:
First Mission: Technical Support
ECWR is working on:
- Providing trainings to female candidates. The trainings will aim to equip candidates with management skills in order for them to run their campaign efficiently.
- Providing legal consultations related to the election process and the constituencies through a specialized team of lawyers that will reply to all queries,
- Supporting women in the media through the Media Observatory. The Media Observatory aim is to highlight stories of women who are struggling to run in the election and draw public attention to their experiences.
- Preparing female youth leaders to assist in the electoral campaigns and equip them with leadership skills so that they can run for local elections.
Second Mission: Monitoring the Election
ECWR will monitor all the phases of the electoral process from a gender perspective. Based on the daily follow-up of all the phases, ECWR will issue press releases to analyze the following:
- Women’s participation as voters and candidates,
- The impact and influence (positive or negative) the electoral process may have on women’s participation.
- The extent of support that the Egyptian political parties or any other body provide on a political, financial and/or technical level.
The monitoring process covers the following phases:
- The Nomination Phase: During this phase ECWR will focus on all the procedures of nomination, partisan arrangements, legal procedures, election symbol allocation (i.e. make sure that the symbols don’t contain any discriminatory elements). During this phase, ECWR will also follow up the complaints and appeals.
- The Electioneering phase: This includes the extent of support that the female candidates receive, the obstacles and the challenges that they face, and any other abuse they may be subject to.
- Voting Phase: This includes all the phases of voting from the opening to the closing of the polling stations and includes the voting process, the role of the High Commission of Elections in the voting process, the work of the deputies of female candidates.
- The phase of the Results: This includes counting and announcing the results, the legal procedures for sorting ballots, as well as re-election and election appeals.
- ECWR began working on the monitoring process through a hotline that receives the complaints, inquiries and questions related to the management of the election campaign at 015 19 44 80 71 /25271397.
