Asia

Myanmar has a decades-long history of brutal ethnic conflicts. In view of this the party of democratic struggle did unexpectedly well in last year’s election.

We have to shift the focus from women’s individual agency and capacity towards structural and constitutional constraints, to understand the barriers for women’s substantive representation in political decision making, says Dr. Farzana Bari in her research study “Bridging the Fault Lines? Rethinking the Gender Quota Approach in Pakistan”, launched by the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Pakistan on 26th January 2016 in Islamabad.

Nichlagarh, an adivasi village in the forest region of Southern Rajasthan, is caught between the bureaucratic regime of the Forestry Department (FD) of India and progressive legislation that claims to restore the traditional rights of commoners.

In 2015, the hbs head office in collaboration with regional offices in Afghanistan and Pakistan arranged a delegation visit to Berlin and Brussels from to discuss country situation, women parliamentarians performance, gender equality, peace building, shrinking spaces for women rights activism, and share the findings of the comparative study “Unmaking Political Patriarchy through Gender Quotas?” with a wide range of stakeholders at the European level.

On December 23, 2015, World Wind Energy Association (WWEA), in cooperation with Heinrich Böll Stiftung Pakistan (hbs), launched the policy paper “Mapping the Growth of Pakistan’s Wind Energy Market: Lessons Learned and Policy Solutions"

The Series: Heinrich Boell Stiftung initiated a series of workshops for the Journalists in Pakistan under the title “Journalist on Climate Change”. The purpose of the workshops is to orient journalist community with the latest updates on climate change, bring the journalists together at one platform, and enable them to influence public discourse on climate change at all levels.

Women’s participation in political decision-making and their networking beyond borders play an essential role for peace-building in the region. This is one of the most important lessons learnt from a delegation visit of Afghan and Pakistani women parliamentarians to Berlin and Brussels in early November 2015.

With a backlog of more than 350,000 asylum applications, Germany is under pressure to speed up the asylum process. But efforts to quickly process Syrian refugees shortchange Afghanis and others.

The research project highlights the national level parliaments and critically reviews quota designs, practices and experiences of women parliamentarians on both quota seats as well as general seats. A delegation of women parliamentarians, together with civil society activists from Afghanistan and Pakistan, went on a visit to Berlin and Brussels to discuss the first key findings.

Thida Khus is the Executive Director of SILAKA, a Cambodian NGO that has been working since 1997 to increase the participation of women in Cambodia. Thida will be speaking at the Heinrich Böll Foundation about the situation of women in Southeast Asia.