The Civic Democratic Initiative Support Foundation (CDF) in Yemen created local level “shadow committees.” These parallel structures to official policy-making bodies promote issues related to women’s rights and women’s participation in development. The capacity building process not only enhanced the ability of local women to advance their issues in their local public political sphere but also resulted in local level NGOs promoting women’s rights.

Photo credit: Local vendor. Yemen. Scott Wallace / World Bank

Empowering Women Through Local Shadow Committees

CDF carried out a number of steps to develop the local level shadow committees:

1. First, based on a set of objective criteria related to the situation of women’s participation, CDF established a list of governorates and rural areas they wished to target.
2. Second, CDF identified female participants to take part in a training on facilitation skills. This prepared the women to implement workshops in the pre-selected targeted areas.

CDF conducted a series of twenty workshops in 15 governorates. 500 women attended these workshops from a wide variety of socio-economic backgrounds. They aimed at creating shadow committees at their local levels. Through these shadow committees, women were able to provide policy recommendations to decision makers related to women’s roles in local development. The media covered several of these meetings with decision makers in different regions.

Advancing Women’s Roles Through Persistent Advocacy

It was not an easy task in the beginning to set meetings with the governmental offices. It was not familiar for public servants to conduct meetings with women’s groups in some rural areas. Some offices even refused to meet with women shadow committees. Moreover, the discussions that took place between the local authorities and the shadow committees regarding the incorporation of women issues in the local council’s yearly plans were difficult to lead.

In spite of the challenges, the dynamics generated by the creation of shadow committees enabled issues related to women’s participation in local development to move forward. For example, 5% of the targeted women in the trainings were able to get professional promotions. They became managers of education and health services offices in their localities. In addition to enhancing the knowledge and skills of women and giving them opportunities to advance their cause in the public-political sphere, they integrated women’s recommendations into the yearly policy planning of local councils and development schemes.

This was significant especially at the educational level where a paramount importance was given to facilitate access of girls to schools. It was not possible to reach that level without the large number of meetings held between the shadow committees and the decision makers based on priorities set by the women’s groups themselves. Another benefit that resulted, women gained incentives to present their candidacy to the parliamentary elections. In fact, 100 women out of 156 of 2006 elections were trained through the project and participated in its process; however, only thirty-nine were elected and won seats in the local councils. In addition, several local level NGOs promoting women’s rights were created.

Building Democracy and Civic Engagement in Yemen

CDF is non-governmental, non-profit, independent organization, registered in the Ministry of Social Affairs Ministry in Yemen. CDF has network of civil society advocates dedicated to advancing community-based civil and democracy in Yemen. It strengthens the role of local authorities with focus on local councils as accountable institutions by promoting effective cooperation among councils, NGOs and government ministries to address concerns of citizens in community development issues, and by mobilizing citizens to communicate their views effectively. CDF’s global aim is to strengthen democratic and civic initiative in the Yemeni society through democratic values, human rights principles and equal opportunities.