The main goal of the event, organized by a UNDP project “Legislative and Institutional Capacity Development for Women’s Empowerment in Uzbekistan” in cooperation with Women’s Committee of Uzbekistan and Institute for Civil Society Studies, is to imtpove potential of female members of political parties, ensure respect of gender equaility principles in political parties’ programmes and actions, and improve women’s political activity.

The training includes theoretical and practical parts for representatives of political parties including People’s Democratic Party, Adolat, Milliy Tiklanish and UzLiDep on state policy on women’s support, main goals of the parties, the parties’ work with women, the country’s legislation on election and international agreements.

Training participants are expected to develop action plan of female members during and between elections. The action plans will focus on determining place and role of political parties in public and political development of the society and their participation in improvement of women’s status in the country.

The training in Urgench will be followed by trainings in Samarkand, Karshi, Namangan and Tashkent, and will subsequently be held in all 14 regions of Uzbekistan.

The UNDP project “Legislative and Institutional Capacity Development for Women’s Empowerment in Uzbekistan” is implemented in cooperation with Women’s Committee of Uzbekistan. The project is aimed at supporting and building capacity of the government, civil society and mass media in reducing gender gaps via raising awareness on and implementing the recommendations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW Committee) to Uzbekistan given in August 2006.

The CEDAW Convention adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, is an international document on the rights of women. Uzbekistan was one of the first Central Asian country to ratify the convention in 1995. It has reported four times to the CEDAW Committee on its implementation.