The national legal framework should be supported by concrete measures and mechanisms for implementing them at the local level. This way, the participation of women, ethnic minorities and persons with special needs in the local elections can be stimulated, said experts invited to IPN’s public debate “Participation of women, ethnic minorities and persons with special needs in local elections”.

Head of the Public Policy and Legislation Division of the Ombudsman’s Office Svetlana Rusu said all the public policies, the national legal framework when they are worked out take all the persons into account as the principle ‘not to leave anyone behind’ is applied. Namely this principle implies an approach based on the human rights. Inclusion actually represents additional measures for particular categories of persons or groups of persons who are underrepresented or meet with particular impediments in the realization of their rights. In the local elections, the women are underrepresented and this fact is proven by evidence, by statistics. The persons with disabilities are also underrepresented and the actions of the authorities should be accompanied by positive measures and additional measures should be designed so as not to leave this category of people behind.

Alina Andronache, gender policy expert of the Center “Partnership for Development”, said that the Republic of Moldova the past years made enormous progress in adopting or amending the normative framework and the legislation on gender equality. “In 2019, the law was readopted together with the placing provisions saying that four places per each ten places should belong to the opposite sex. We call this system ‘double quota’. For the local elections of 2019, there was a special provision – three places per each ten places should belong to the opposite sex - as the law was adopted several months before the elections. Nevertheless, we had the largest number of female candidates and women elected as councilors the past 16 years. Now we do not yet have all the data, but the preliminary data shows that the number of women in councils will also be higher as the ‘double quota” system stimulates the women to run despite the barriers and brings them to executive posts,” stated Alina Andronache.

INFONET Alliance executive director Victor Koroli spoke about people’s perceptions of the persons with disabilities. “First: the charity or philanthropic perception meaning “God protect me not to experience the same situation as he/she”. We often hear such words in society. Second: the medical perception according to which disability is believed to be a medical problem that should be dealt with by doctors only: Third: the socio-functional perception that refers to sign language interpreters. If we had had more sign language interpreters, society could have offered more solutions. Four: the perception that should be actually promoted and that is yet awaited in our society – the perception based on the equality of rights. So, it doesn’t matter if it goes to older persons, persons with disabilities, women, children and so on. The state should create confections for everyone to be able to assert oneself equally. A lot of work is yet to be done here,” stated Victor Koroli.

Cornelia Ursu, coordinator of training programs at the Public Association “Institutum Virtutes Civilis”, said the progress in promoting gender equality at the local level and diversity was obtained by hard measures, but this is not an irreversible process. The processes should be supported by soft measures.

“To maintain this progress, we should also implement soft measures, such as activities to educate and inform society, to train women and to carry out awareness-raising campaigns,” stated Cornelia Ursu. Speaking about the challenges in the election process, she said that the women lack training in electoral matters, skills to speak in public and to have debates and argue their position. The domestic chores take a lot of time and they do not have spare time to conduct election campaigns. The stenotypes are yet the most important aspect as these influence and have a psychological impact – lack of confidence in themselves.

The public debate entitled “Participation of women, ethnic minorities and persons with special needs in local elections” was staged by IPN News Agency as part of the project “Stimulation of discussion in the mass media about traditional particularities of local elections and the need for Europeanization” which is supported by Soros Foundation Moldova.