In the National Assembly Building, the members of Women’s Parliamentary Network, the UN Representatives for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment and the delegation of the Republic of Albania spoke about the position of women and women’s empowerment in the social and political life.
The member of WPN Gordana Čomić presented the results achieved by WPN. She highlighted that all WPN members wished to force the government of Serbia to work more to improve women’s rights, but that they also wished to inspire women in local self-governments to fight for better positions.
“Where are we? What do we stand on? We stand on the shoulders of those women who fought for our rights many years before us. We are here to build the future, and we want to be involved in every dialogue. This is why I am particularly happy for having the opportunity to talk with women parliamentarians from Albania. I also live for the day when the Brussels Dialogue will no longer be the ‘Brussels’ dialogue, but our own,” said Gordana Čomić.
The Coordinator of WPN Dubravka Filipovski presented the activities and the scope of work of WPN. She said that WPN was established on February 13th 2013 and that it consisted of 16 women MPs from different MP groups chaired by one coordinator who was elected every three months. She presented the goals of WPN, which included adoption of new laws, oversight of implementation of the existing laws, elimination of violence, women’s empowerment, education of women, and active participation of women in the political and public life.
Continuing her speech, Ms. Filipovski presented the activities implemented in the previous periods, highlighting that on October 6th 2014 the first Report on the work of WPN was adopted in the National Assembly. She also added that WPN organised three National Conferences resulting in the creation of 53 women’s networks in municipal assemblies at the local level. She stated that in March 2015 the Southeast European Conference was organised with the aim of creating a regional network of women parliamentarians, resulting in a signed Memorandum of Cooperation.
She particularly underlined that, in December last year, during the parliamentary debate, WPN proposed six amendments to the Law on Budget, related to gender sensitive budgeting, out of which four were adopted. She also stated that in 2016 38.1% of MPs in Committees were women, whereas the representation of women in managerial positions stood at 11%.
In the continuation of the meeting, Milana Rikanović, head of the UN Women Office in Serbia, welcomed the participants wishing them a constructive debate.
During the meeting, the participants exchanged their opinions and experiences on gender equality in different areas of social life.
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Meeting between members of Women’s Parliamentary Network, UN representatives for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, and delegation of the Republic of Albania
