By Libya Herald staff.
Tripoli, 5 November 2014:
Women members of Libya’s House of Representatives and of the Constitutional Drafting Assembly (CDA), together . . .[restrict]with Libyan women activists, attended a four-day workshop in Cairo from Saturday until yesterday.
The workshop, with the theme “Libya Women’s Demands for the Constitution” was organised by the Women’s Empowerment Section of UNSMIL, the UN Development Programme and the UN Women Regional Office of Arab States.
The aim of the workshop was to build the capacity of women leaders in Libya and provide them with knowledge about international good practices in the constitution-making process. It culminated with participants drafting a list of demands that will be further worked on by civil societies inside Libya and then submitted to the CDA. These demands contained general issues concerning to constitution as well as gender issues.
Over 60 women participated in the workshop which included debates, small group participation and technical assistance from regional legal experts.
The workshop follows a meeting held last week in Cairo in which the organisers of the workshop heard from various activists about the desires and needs of women in Libya in regards to the constitution. The workshop focused on actual drafting the demands. Participants were divided into groups to discuss a draft for the constitution that was written with gender issues in mind.
An advocacy strategy was agreed upon on the final day of the workshop that included lobbying the CDA and also working within the framework of existing civil society organisations in Libya.
UN Special Envoy to Libya Bernardino Leon participated on Saturday in the opening sessions. He urged women to participate in the political dialogue process currently being sponsored by the UN. He also stressed the importance of their participation in the constitution drafting process.
A question and answer session was held during which Leon responded to questions about the dialogue process.
Libya’s representative to the Arab League Ashour Bourashed and a representative of the Libyan Foreign Ministry, Omar Bouzeid Al-Sanussi, also attended the opening session. [/restrict]
