Honduras, Gender & Elections, UNDP
16-18 August 2022
Honduras
Gender and elections workshop for Honduras EMBs
Tegucigalpa, 16 to 18 August 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 Peacebuilding team 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 Gender and Elections and another one on Inclusion for the three institutions together, and three workshops, one for each one of the institutions, on Strategic Planning. This article refers to the Gender and Elections workshop.
In the process of organizing this Gender and Elections workshop it was decided to include some representatives of the National register of people (RNP). At the end a total of 36 people participated from 16 to 18 August: 12 from the UFTF, 8 from the CNE, 7 from the TJE and 7 from the RNP. 23 women (64%) and 13 men (36%).
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. Edith Martínez, gender specialist of the UNDP Honduras office, made a key presentation on the women political representation in the country.
The objectives of the workshop (all of them evaluated as achieved) were to get an overview of the BRIDGE methodology; to learn and discuss concepts like gender as different from women promotion, elections and democracy; to review the Honduras legal framework and data on women participation and violence prevention; to learn and discuss strategies to promote women participation on the electoral cycle, and finally to facilitate the networking among the four institutions.
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 (in contents, methodology and facilitation) of the workshop from the almost total amount of participants was that the workshop was successful and more importantly useful to improve their approach in promoting women political participation in each one of the institutions.
