Honduras, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Elections, 13-15 June 2022, UNDP

Diversity, equity and inclusion workshop for Honduras EMBs                    

Tegucigalpa, 13 to 15 June 2022

The UNDP electoral project “Support to the electoral cycle in Honduras for peaceful and transparent elections” 2020 – 2022 (PACE-H), in close cooperation with the National Electoral Council (CNE), the Justice Electoral Tribunal (TJE) and the “Financing, transparency and inspection unit (UFTF), held a lesson learned workshop in March 2022. As a result of this exercise, it was decided to enhance the capacities of the three EMBs using BRIDGE methodology.

The UNDP electoral Project and the three EMBs, with the support of the Governance and peace building office of the UNDP Regional center for Latin America and the Caribbean, agreed to design and develop five BRIDGE thematic workshops for representatives of the three EMBs: One workshop on diversity, equity and inclusion and another one on gender and elections for the three institutions, and three workshops, one for each one of the EMBs, on strategic planning. This article refers to the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” workshop.

Each one of the three institutions selected 10 participants; at the end a total of 31 people attended the workshop, 21 women (68%) and 10 men (32%).

The face-to-face workshop was designed and developed by three BRIDGE accredited facilitators: Gabriela Nones, Isabel Otero and Jorge Guzmán (accrediting facilitator). Wilmer Castañeda conducted the Virtual classroom and the support platform for the workshop. José Luis Segovia and Linda Castro, from the Honduras UNDP office team, were crucial for the logistics and the coordination of the participants.

The main themes developed and discussed during the three-day workshop were: BRIDGE methodology main elements, gender, electoral cycle, national and international legal framework for democracy; principles of diversity, equity and inclusion; main barriers for women, youth and ethnic groups political participation; how to involve key electoral actors on the promotion of all vulnerable groups in the electoral cycle; revision of institutional and inter institutional strategies to promote political inclusion of vulnerable groups, and main elements for the design of an institutional policy on gender and inclusion.

According to BRIDGE methodology, the workshop exercises started either with a short presentation of main concepts, or with compilations of the participants ideas, which lead to discussions and consensus on the different topics regarding the possible role of the different institutions in overcoming barriers and promoting women political participation and prevention of violence based on gender. The general evaluation of the workshop (in contents, methodology and facilitation) from the almost total amount of participants was that it was successful and more importantly useful to improve their approach in promoting equal access to the electoral process in each one of the institutions.