Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (January 12, 2008) - Representatives of eight Kyrgyz political parties will visit the Kingdom of Sweden during January 15-22 in order to get acquainted with Sweden experience in implementing the gender approaches to political parties programs. This trip will be held within the Promotion of Women in Civil Service and Politics project of the Kyrgyz Republic President Administration, Kyrgyz Government Apparatus, and UNDP with assistance of Sweden International Development Agency (SIDA).

Political parties became important components of political structure of society and subjects of political processes including the sphere of human rights security and gender equality. Now-a-days in majority of political parties of Kyrgyzstan there is no data of gender aspects in a system of governance, internal structure and in political programs.

In order to apply gender approaches to the activity of political parties it is necessary to raise the potential and increase the opportunities of women participating in politics on the base of equal-partners. It requires a lot of work on integration of gender to the process of party development, gender trainings and acquaintance with the experience of those countries who have made progress in this direction, in order to change the gender regimes within parties and values of party leaders.

Thus, the trip within this project is aimed at introducing to the Swedish experience of equality politics, which is considered to be one of the most advanced in the world and guarantees the high level of human development, observance of human rights, transparency and effectiveness of state governance.     

Trip agenda includes – visit of the Parliament, state regional council and local council of Stockholm, meeting with the representatives of the Center party, Liberal party, party of Greens, Sweden conservative coalition party and Social Democratic party.  Besides, it is planned to visit the biggest insurance company of Sweden to get acquaintance with the model of promoting the gender equality in business structures. 

Delegation was formed according to the representatives of political parties which took interest in it and did certain work towards promotion of women in their parties within this project:

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) – is the UN global system in the development sphere, addressing to the positive changes in peoples’ life, providing the countries-members an access to the sources of knowledge, experience and resources. Our activity is on the territory of 166 countries, contributing to searching for the global and national issues in the development sphere. During the potential development process, the countries use an experience and skills of the UNDP staff and its partners’ community.

For more information, please refer to:

Aizada Kalmamatova

ka@dgov.undp.kg

Tel.: 312 316311