CEC started implementing the “Empowering Women to Political Participation” project mid 2015 funded by the Norwegian Government and in cooperation with both UN Women and the Palestinian Ministry of Women Affairs. The project started with building the strategic plan for enhancing women’s political participation, then building the capacities of the commission’s trainers in the topic of empowering women’s political participation, and creating capable women trainers qualified to give awareness workshops, then ending with completing 120 hours of awareness workshops in the topic of political participation of Palestinian women.

 Gender and Elections Guide (Arabic)

Project objectives:

Empowering Palestinian women and enhancing their political participation.

Introducing Palestinian women to their political and electoral rights stated by the law.

Enhancing women’s leadership, participation in decision making processes and occupying state representative positions.

Qualifying CEC’s trainers and enabling them in the topic of gender and elections.

Enabling 69 women to present awareness workshops for different social groups about empowering women’s political and electoral participation.

Reaching different social groups and categories, especially women in marginalized least represented areas to raise their awareness about women’s political and electoral rights through workshops.

Targeted groups:

Central training courses: targeting activists in women’s rights, workers in women organizations and civil society organizations (CSOs), and local councils’ members.

Workshops: targeting employees and volunteers of governmental civic and security organizations, (CSOs), universities, women organizations, youth forums, PWD organizations, and local councils.

Phases of project implementation:

Phase one: announcing the project through CEC’s website and social media pages, in order to have a list of candidates based on set criteria.

Phase two: counting and categorizing the submitted applications for participating in the training courses.

Phase three: organizing 3 training courses in the West Bank (WB) and Gaza Strip (GS) for the accepted candidates to enable 69 women in the topic of Gender and Elections.

Phase four: selecting 38 participants to do the awareness workshops and starting the preparations for the workshops implementation.

Phase five: counting and categorizing the applications for participating in the workshops and completing the final number of participants.

Phase six: organizing 120 hours of workshops in the WB and GS for over a month.

Project outcomes:

First: Central Training Courses

Training and enabling 69 activists in women’s rights about the topic of integrating gender in elections.

Strengthening partnerships with public and civil society organizations in the field of enhancing women’s participation.

Selecting 38 participants from the central training to be qualified trainers in the awareness workshops.

Second: Awareness Workshops

Empowering 38 women trainees in the project to become trainers in the awareness workshops about integrating gender in elections and the actual involvement of women in this field.

Organizing 120 hours of workshops about integrating gender in elections in different areas.

Benefiting 2889 people (women and men) from the awareness workshops.

Expanding CEC’s partnership base with local organizations to include a wide range of organizations in all the governorates.