During 2023 the National Network team prepared a Shadow Report on Chapters 7 and 8 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), with the support of the National Democratic Institute (NDI). Civil society organizations participated in the finalization of the Shadow Report and gave their views on the situation with discrimination against women in politics, as well as violence against women in politics.
On September 15th, a workshop was organized, attended by 15 representatives of women’s civil society organizations. The purpose of the workshop was the presentation of the key findings from the report, which were discussed together with the participants, and later joint recommendations were proposed that should be included in the report as proposed solutions to the presented challenges. The participants of the workshop additionally gave their reflection from the daily work with women’s rights and discrimination against women.
The findings of the electronic questionnaire on “Perception of women in political and public life” were also presented, which included questions about violence against women in politics.
Representatives of civil society organizations expressed their concern about the general situation with discrimination against women in political and public life, lack of transparency of institutions at all levels regarding their work, composition, gender-disaggregated data, as well as the low representation of women in decision-making positions in the state. The small number of female ministers, mayors and list holders in the local election cycles is particularly worrying. However, what is extremely important and is the focus of this report, are the facts that women politicians suffer various forms of violence such as hate speech, digital violence, insults, harassment, threats, and blackmail, as well as physical and sexual violence.
The shadow report can be viewed at this link.
This activity was carried out within the project “Preparation of a Shadow Report on the implementation of CEDAW in the Republic of North Macedonia”, supported by the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
