At today’s session of the NA, member of the Armenian Lawyers Association Mariam Zadoyan presented the organization’s recommendations concerning the increase of the level of involvement of women provided in the Electoral Code. In the interview with Iravaban.net Mariam Zadoyan said as a result of time limit she had an opportunity to introduce only two proposals, whereas there were much more.
Mariam Zadoyan said that publication of the report was made possible in the framework of “Influencing the Women’s Rights Agenda” Project with the assistance of the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in the Republic of Armenia provided to the Armenia Young Lawyers Association (AYLA) in 2015. AYLA conducted the Legal Monitoring of the Implementation of the UN “Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women” (CEDAW) in Armenia, including Legal Monitoring of the Latest (combined 5th and 6th) Reports of the RA submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 2014. The report includes suggestions and recommendations, which were submitted to the RA Government, Ministries and the National Assembly. Further, the recommendations on women’s participation in legislative and executive powers were discussed at the working group of the Council on Affairs of Ensuring Equal Rights and Equal Opportunities between Men and Women in the Republic of Armenia at the Prime Minister and the Thematic Group on Gender Issues, which operates under the co-chairmanship of the UN, OSCE and Government representatives.
The recommendations refer to reviewing the proportion of men and women proposed in Article 84 (parts 3 and 9) of the new Draft Electoral Code making it 30/70 instead of specified 20/80. According to current regulation the women’s participation should be starting from the second number and 2-6, 6-11and subsequently in each integer group of five. In order to enhance the representation of women till 70% it is suggested to change the number of representatives in integer group from 5 to 3.
In addition, it is unclear why the calculation starts from the second number, thus providing no actual opportunity to women to be the top five. It is therefore recommended to involve women starting from the first number of the list.
It should be noted that the regulation provides for the participation of women only in the electoral lists. Consequently, it fails to ensure women’s participation in elected bodies. Currently, participation of women in parliament is only 9,98 percent. The study of international experience showed that there are also so-called equality of opportunity quotes, which are applied by a number of countries. For example in Ruanda this quota that provides 30% for women’s participation raised the percentage of women’s participation from 29 to 64 percent.
It is therefore recommended,
In case of withdrawal by the candidate from the party list quota as well as in case of waiver of the mandate his place must be occupied by the next candidate included in the list who has the right of quota.
As for the claims that this regulation could work to the detriment of women, while the man next in the list withdrew his candidature and according to the same logic the next male candidate will come to the parliament, Mariam Zadoyan said that this regulation could be made more flexible and provide that it might be applied to the representative of the gender which representation in the parliament does not exceed 70 percent.
The answer of the Minister – Chief of Staff of the RA Government davit Harutyunyan in the video.
It is due to note that all proposals have been drawn up in the scope of the Shadow Report on Legal Monitoring of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.
The English text of the report is available here: Monitoring-report_CEDAW_eng
The Armenian text of the report is available here: Monitoring-report_CEDAW_arm
