News
Women from Coalition 1325 Network in Azerbaijan Elected to High-Level Posts
Date: 4 April 2006
Hijran Huseynova, an active member of Azerbaijan's "Coalition 1325," has been appointed chair of the country's new governmental body on gender, the State Committee on Family, Women and Children Issues. Her appointment follows the election of two other Coalition members to Azerbaijan's Parliament in November: Havva Mammadova, from the National Network of IDP Women, and Bahar Muradova, who was re-elected and appointed vice-speaker of Parliament. In addition, another founding member of the Coalition, Tamam Jafarova, became a member of the Central Election Committee (CEC), one of only three women on the thirteen-member committee.
The Azerbaijani Coalition 1325 was created with UNIFEM support in September 2002. Comprising 22 women from various professional backgrounds, the group has focused on increasing women's participation in decision-making, conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Azerbaijan. The Coalition is linked to two other "women for peace" networks in Armenia and Georgia, as part of a UNIFEM regional programme in the Southern Caucasus. The programme works with governments and women's peace networks to foster an enabling environment in support of peacebuilding, particularly by bringing women from all three Southern Caucasus countries together to dialogue and exchange experiences.
The fragile situation of "no-war-no-peace" in the region, and the impact this has on women and girls, is complicated by the fact that there are few women in high-level leadership positions, so these recent successes are a welcome boost to members of Coalition 1325. The women all agree that their achievements were possible only because they formed a united front in their efforts to advance gender equality. "We all represent different parties and organizations that often do not intersect in everyday life. But under the flag of the Coalition, we've managed to unite our voices for common values," Huseynova told UNIFEM.
For more information, contact Yelena Kudryavtseva, yelena.kudryavtseva [at] undp.org
