Advocacy & Lobbying
The Folashade Bada Ambrose has warned that delays in passing the Reserved Seats Bill for women could significantly weaken female representation in governance ahead of the 2027 elections.
Ambrose raised the concern on Tuesday during the 2026 International Women’s Day event held in Alausa, Ikeja, noting that time constraints may hinder the bill’s effectiveness.
She explained that recent adjustments to the election timetable by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) have reduced the window available to implement reforms aimed at increasing women’s political participation.
The time available to operationalise critical proposals that expand participation, especially through the Reserved Seats Bill for women, is now shorter,” she said.
According to her, if the bill is not implemented before party primaries, it would have little or no impact on candidate selection or election outcomes.
“If they do not influence candidacy, they cannot influence outcomes. And if outcomes remain unchanged, a significant portion of the women population will remain underrepresented for another electoral cycle,” she added.
When Aminata Sesay decided to run for the Port Loko District seat in 2023, she knew it would be tough. She did not expect to be shot at.
The retired nurse had returned from the United Kingdom to enter the race, only to find her native Sierra Leone a "bloody and violent" electoral climate, just as friends and family had forewarned it would be.
As she would later find, this is the norm for women in politics across Africa, compounding the financial and political strains already obstructing their paths to power.
On Monday, 13 April 2026, key stakeholders, civil society, political parties, the legal community, and development partners convened at the Abuja Continental Hotel, Abuja, for the Strategy Advocacy Meeting on Advancing Women’s Leadership: Strengthening Pathways to Inclusive Representation in 2027.
The meeting served as a strategic platform to galvanize support for increased women’s political participation in Nigeria, with a strong focus on the Special Seats Bill currently before the 10th National Assembly as part of the ongoing Constitution Review process.
The event was convened by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre (PLAC) in collaboration with the Nigerian Women Trust Fund (NWTF) and the Nigerian Bar Association Section on Public Interest and Development Law (NBA-SPIDEL), with support from the European Union under the EU-Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN) Programme.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) conducted a consultation forum on March 18, 2026, in Addis Ababa with stakeholders regarding the legal protections provided for women political party members, independent candidates and journalists within electoral contexts. The forum brought together women in politics, journalists and relevant stakeholders.
During the forum, issues concerning the protections granted to women during elections under international and continental human rights conventions, as well as under national legal frameworks were presented and discussed. Furthermore, issues regarding women’s right to equal participation with men in elections and public administration affairs were addressed, including the right to establish or join political parties, engage in election campaigning, participate in peaceful demonstrations and meetings, take part in debates and voice constructive criticism.
March is more than a marker on the calendar. It is a season of reflection, recognition, and renewed resolve. As the world observes International Women’s Day 2026, attention turns not only to the achievements of women, but also to the inequalities that persist beneath the surface of progress. In Nigeria, this moment carries a particular weight. Women are visible everywhere—in markets, in classrooms, in businesses, and in the daily work of sustaining families and communities yet they remain strikingly invisible in the spaces where power is exercised.
This contradiction is not abstract; it is measurable. Women make up nearly half of Nigeria’s population and form a significant share of its voting strength, yet their presence in political office tells a different story. In a National Assembly of 469 members, only a small fraction are women. The Senate, with 109 seats, has historically had fewer than ten female senators at any given time, while the House of Representatives, with 360 members, and has rarely had more than 20 women. In practical terms, this means that for every woman in the legislature, there are more than 15 men shaping national decisions. At the state level, the imbalance is often even more pronounced, with some assemblies having little or no female representation at all.
These figures place Nigeria near the bottom of global rankings on women’s political participation. The gap becomes even clearer when compared with other African countries. In Rwanda, women occupy more than 60 percent of parliamentary seats, a transformation achieved through deliberate constitutional reforms after 2003. Senegal moved close to parity following its 2010 gender parity law, while South Africa has steadily increased women’s participation through party-based quotas since the mid-1990s. These examples show that change is possible when it is intentional.
When women lead, democracies thrive. Yet, in Bangladesh's electoral landscape, the voices of women remain critically underrepresented. While women are active voters, their transition to leadership roles is alarmingly slow, a challenge that recently brought together the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Bangladesh Election Commission (BEC) for a crucial strategic dialogue.
The dialogue, held on 16 March 2026 to honour International Women’s Day, set a collaborative tone from the outset. It opened with a symbolic performance titled “Women to Discover, Develop, and Lead,” jointly presented by UNDP and the BEC to champion women's voices in the democratic process.
Following this, the discussion moved beyond gestures to address the deep-rooted barriers hindering female participation. UNDP provided an evidence-based overview of the challenges, while the Election Commission reaffirmed its commitment to gender-sensitive reforms.
The core of the issue is stark. Bangladesh’s Representation of the People Order (RPO) mandates a goal of 33% female representation in political party committees by 2030. However, the current reality stands at a mere 2.33%, a gap that officials agree requires immediate and concerted action.
Across the globe, deliberate illiberal strategies that exploit entrenched gender inequality are increasingly being used to weaken democratic institutions from within. The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was not simply a byproduct of chaos at the beginning of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. Rather, it followed a well-documented authoritarian strategy in which attacks on gender equality are used to consolidate power, narrow civic space, and make democratic governance harder to defend. While the process of dismantling the agency that administered U.S. government foreign assistance has been well documented, significant gaps remain between what insiders witnessed and what the broader public understands. This gap in understanding is not benign. When the public perceives these events as isolated policy shifts rather than coordinated institutional erosion, it diffuses accountability, obscures the impact, reduces resistance, and allows similar tactics to be redeployed without scrutiny.
The administration’s early actions targeting gender equality, women’s empowerment, LGBTQI+ initiatives, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility functions operated not as peripheral policy disputes but as frontline tactics that weakened foreign assistance infrastructure, government institutions, and democratic norms. Trump has used this approach since at least 2016. It was mapped out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. Drawing on firsthand experience and technical analysis, this report situates these actions within an effective authoritarian pattern of leveraging patriarchal norms and cross-ideological gender bias to justify institutional retrenchment, create administrative compliance, and accelerate structural dismantling. Ultimately, the strategic sidelining of gender equality functions increased institutional vulnerability. Although the Trump administration’s targeting of those functions did not create the vulnerability, it recognized, exposed, and exploited it as part of a wider effort to erode democratic norms. Rebuilding democratic systems and foreign assistance architecture, therefore, will require treating gender equality as a core resilience safeguard rather than a peripheral policy concern. Its strategic targeting is central to the broader authoritarian assault on democracy. Democracy stakeholders must name that pattern, examine the decisions that enabled it, and learn from what unfolded.
Since Tunisia’s 2011 revolution, digital platforms have become central to political participation in the country, enabling female politicians, elections candidates, activists and public figures to mobilise communities and shape public debate.However, this visibility has drastically exposed women in politics to various forms of Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) : Online harassment, sexualised abuse, defamation, threats and coordinated smear campaigns are routinely used to undermine women’s credibility, silence their voices and deter their participation in political life. Beyond the severe harm inflicted on individual women in politics, TFGBV constitutes a structural threat to all women’s political rights, democratic pluralism and freedom of expression. By reinforcing misogynistic norms and normalising sexist intimidation, it erodes hard-won gains of women’s political participation in Tunisia.
What is at stake extends beyond Tunisia. The 2011 Revolution of Dignity which ended the Ben Ali dictatorship marked a historic turning point, igniting the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and positioned Tunisia as a symbol of democratic possibility in the region and on the African continent. Earlier milestones, from the Personal Status Code of 1956 to progressive reforms including Organic Law No. 58-2017 on the elimination of violence against women and girls (Law 58), have long cast Tunisia as a reference point for women’s rights and legal reform. Tunisia’s trajectory sends signals across Africa and the Middle East about what becomes possible when women’s rights are defended and what collapses when they are politically sacrificed.
This webinar focused on barriers, challenges and strategies pertaining to the issue of gender parity for women in politics. Our guest speaker for the discussion was Dr. Mona Lena Krook.
Applying an intersectional lens the webinar discussion drew on research from Dr. Mona Lena Krook’s book, Elect Women for a Change: The Path to Gender Parity in Politics, Dr. Krook presented a core thesis: the global political community must move beyond aspirational "critical mass" targets (typically 30%) toward a non-negotiable 50/50 parity framework. This shift represents a transition from viewing women’s participation as an elective "add-on" to recognizing it as a fundamental requirement for democratic legitimacy.
Over the past decade Somaliland has seen a worrying convergence of political exclusion for women and active pushback against progressive sexual-offences laws and gender-equity measures. The result is not only weaker legal protection for survivors, but social environments that enable sexual violence and silence victims. This article examines recent examples and reports, connects them to the rollback of protections and low female political representation, and outlines the human-rights and social costs for Somaliland’s women and girls.
This article is released by the Women’s Human Rights, Education & Environment Association (WHEEA), with KOMBOA through the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) Network. It aims to expose the growing impact of backlash against the women’s rights movement in Somaliland, particularly following the rejection of progressive sexual-offences legislation. By documenting recent cases of sexual violence, political exclusion, and institutional failures, the article highlights how resistance to women’s rights has deepened impunity and vulnerability for women and girls. In addition to analysis, the article provides concrete policy recommendations for lawmakers, religious leaders, civil society, and international partners to strengthen protection, accountability, and women’s political participation in Somaliland.
This brief provides an overview of how the UN system has advanced global efforts to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls (VAWG) over the past five years. Drawing from the contributions of 36 UN entities and mechanisms for the Inventory of United Nations activities to end violence against women and girls, the brief highlights collective progress achieved through coordinated action, joint programming and partnerships with governments, civil society and women’s rights organizations. The brief documents the UN system’s role in advancing global norms and standards, with notable developments in violence in the work environment, technology-facilitated violence, conflict-related sexual violence and harmful practices. It showcases how coordination mechanisms and flagship joint initiatives—such as the spotlight initiative, the UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women and other inter-agency programmes—have mobilized resources, strengthened laws and policies, expanded access to survivor-centered services, scaled up prevention efforts and improved data and evidence. At the same time, the brief underscores persistent gaps, including uneven implementation of laws, limited financing, fragmented prevention efforts, data challenges and growing backlash against gender equality. It emphasizes the central role of women’s rights organizations and feminist movements in driving sustainable change. Looking ahead to 2030, the brief calls for the UN system to deepen coordination, strengthen accountability, invest in evidence-based interventions at scale and reinforce locally led, whole-of-society approaches to end VAWG.
Mitigating violence against women in politics in Africa – insights from Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe
A new book maps how electoral violence affects women in local politics in Ghana, Kenya and Zimbabwe, showing how they are systematically targeted in ways that limit their participation and help maintain male-dominated political systems.
Drawing on 134 interviews with politically active women, this new book – Making politics safer –documents a wide range of violence and abuse, including physical and sexual attacks, psychological pressure, economic manipulation and symbolic humiliation. It also highlights intimidation, online harassment, disinformation and violence within political parties as common tools used to sideline women.
Younger and unmarried women, those from marginalised ethnic groups, and those in opposition parties are found to face the highest risks. Even in countries where gender quotas exist, such as Kenya and Zimbabwe, a higher number of women in elected positions has not resulted in safer conditions.