Strengthening Electoral and Legislative Processes (SELP)

Status: On-going
Start Date: Aug 2018
End Date: Mar 2020
Geographic Coverage: 3 Districts in Punjab
Focus Area: Women Political Participation
SDG Goal: 5 Achieve Gender Equality and Empower all Women and Girls
Implementing Partner: SPO
Funding Partner: Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (TDEA)

SPO has been implementing the “Strengthening Electoral and Legislative Processes” (SELP) project in Districts Bahawalnagar, Sahiwal and Lodhran in partnership with the Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (TDEA). The programme focused on SDG goals 5 which aim to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

More than 12.5 million women in Pakistan are not registered with NADRA as of 2019 and the number of unregistered women has been increasing day by day. The situation has led to gender deficit in the eligible voters’ lists which, obviously, is a great concern to State departments and for CSOs.

The Objective of the Programme was:

• To strengthen women’s political participation by registering them with National Database & Registration Authority, Pakistan in three districts of Punjab.

SPO successfully initiated an identification process in May 2019 and till date 19000 unregistered women were identified. The overall target of identification that SPO has to complete by October 2019 is 53,000. Community groups were engaged through social mobilization activities. The 2000 identified and verified unregistered women were facilitated to obtain CNIC from NADRA Registration Centers (NRCs). Furthermore, the mobilization sessions sensitized community influential groups on women’s rights and improved women’s access to social services which are linked with their possession of CNICs.