The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) has reaffirmed it’s commitment to support the Parliament of Kenya in its bid to attain the elusive two-thirds gender rule.
The Kenyan Parliament has since the promulgation of the 2010 constitution failed to enact and pass legislation that would guarantee equal gender representation in both houses.
CPA Secretary-General, Hon. Stephen Twigg, says that they have put in place to empower women to vie for different political positions.
Twigg noted that enhancing women representation is an agenda they strongly support as CPA and thus the creation of the Commonwealth Women Parliamentarians (CWP) network.
“At CPA we have both the legislatures that have no women representatives at all, and others like South Africa and New Zealand that have 60 per cent and 50 per cent women representatives, respectively,” he said.
“We have therefore, developed tools that we have used to run a series of workshops aimed at increasing women representatives and also to empower men to be champions of women representation,” added Twigg.
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Currently, the National Assembly has 81 women legislators, five more than the 12th Parliament.
Twigg spoke in Mombasa when he raced the post election seminar for members of parliament that was officially opened by President William Ruto.
The four-day seminar themed, Equipping the 21st century legislator for Effective Service Delivery will see members of the National Assembly learn from experts across Commonwealth from a range of panel discussions designed to examine the core elements of Democratic governance and parliamentary procedure.