Second mission of the Club de Madrid project in Uganda Print

Second mission of the Club de Madrid project in Uganda

The Club of Madrid with support from the European Commission and CIDA is implementing the African Women Leadership Project through its local partner, AWEPA-Uganda. The overall Project objective is to contribute to the strengthening of female political leadership, and in the long term, to greater public confidence in women political leaders and increased women's political participation.

Some of the major activities of the Project include leadership capacity and experience- sharing workshops, gender awareness workshops for female and male political leaders and high level meetings with national authorities to advance policy agenda of women’s political participation. These activities are organised in the form of missions and AWEPA- Uganda has so far conducted two of them, the latest having been carried out in the last week of May 2008.  The mission that took place 26 - 29 May 2008, aimed at enhancing the capacity of female and male Members of Parliament, religious leaders, members of the civil society and the media in advocacy for gender legislation through sensitisation and experience sharing dialogues. Other objectives were:
  • To sensitise and share experience with female and male Members of Parliament in gender budgeting,
  • disseminate information on the status of existing laws on reproductive and maternal health  to both female and male MPs,
  • boost communication and advocacy skills for female members of parliament in gender legislation through sensitisation and experience sharing,
  • enhance communication and advocacy skills for CSOs in gender legislation,
  • enhance awareness and share experience with religious leaders in domestic violence  and women’s rights and sensitise and share experience with the media on gender issues and rights.
The mission was conducted in five experience-sharing sessions and three high level lobbying meetings. The sessions that were facilitated by the CoM experts and technocrats from Uganda focused on gender budgeting, maternal health laws, domestic violence, women’s rights, communication and advocacy skills. The high level meetings were held with the State Ministers for Health, and Gender, Labor and Social Development and the Speaker of Parliament. The purpose of the meetings was to inform the Ministers and the Speaker about the existing gaps within maternal health laws and lobby their support towards the passing of the Domestic Violence, Domestic Relations and Sexual Offences Bills that have been pending for a long time. The Ministers and the Speaker committed themselves to the passing of the pending gender legislation.
 
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