Status: Completed Start Date: Oct 2011 End Date: Feb 2015 Geographic Coverage: National – All provinces Focus Area: Democracy and governance SDG Goal: 5 Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls Implementing Partner: SPO and Other National NGOs Funding Partner: National Democratic Institute (NDI)
Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) with the financial support of National Democratic Institute implemented this project.
The objectives of this collaboration were to;
Strengthen relationship between civil society and political parties in Pakistan.
Convince political parties to incorporate the voices and concerns of the common people into their policies and manifestos.
Support to individuals during the voting process, in order to ensure maximum voting.
The first phase of Political Parties Development Program (PPD) was of two years, which ended in October-2013, while the second phase started in March-2014 and ended in February 2015.
The programme aims to strengthen the relationship between civil society and political parties in Pakistan, in order to foster a participatory political milieu aligned with the principles of democracy.
SPO has been engaged in the identification of key experts to be part of the CSO forums, which were organized for all the mainstream political parties, namely, Pakistan Muslim League, Quaid-e-Azam (PML-Q), Pakistan Peoples’ Party/Sherpao (PPP-S), Awami National Party (ANP), Pakistan Muslim League/Functional (PML-F), Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), National Party (NP) and Pakistan Peoples’ Party Parliamentarian (PPPP).
Two CSO forums were arranged in Islamabad; one with Pakistan Tehrek-e-Insaaf (PTI) and the other with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), with the aim to initiate political discourse between civil society and PWGs. The speakers at the forum included prominent civil society activists and subject specialists who deliberated at length upon key policy issues. These forums provided a much needed platform for both the civil society as well as the political parties to understand and benefit from each other’s perspective.
