u.s. officials speeches Iraqi Women Receiving Democracy Training Ahead of Elections Washington, DC September 27, 2004

State Department implementing $10 billion in grants through democracy initiative By Stephen Kaufman Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- With Iraqi national elections approaching, the State Department has begun implementing a $10 million grant program in which several nonprofit organizations are training Iraqi women in the skills and practices of democratic life. Through the Iraqi Women's Democracy Initiative, thousands of Iraqi women will be trained in political leadership, advocacy, entrepreneurship and organizational skills -- knowledge that could facilitate and encourage their participation in Iraq's January 2005 elections, according to Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky. In her September 27 remarks at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, Dobriansky said the initiative, originally announced March 8 by Secretary of State Colin Powell, was specifically designed to fund projects "to help women become full and vibrant partners in Iraq's developing democracy." "We will give them the tools to manage their own associations and to build coalitions with others, and we will provide the information and experience they need to run for office, lobby for fair treatment and lead Iraq's emerging institutions," Dobriansky said. According to information provided by the State Department, six out of a planned 10 grants have been awarded in four key areas: political organization and training; leadership training and coalition building, democracy education and training; and entrepreneurship projects. Dobriansky said the grant proposals were selected based upon which were "the most time relevant and time sensitive," as well as upon criteria put forward by Iraqi women, including the Iraqi Minister of State for Women's Affairs Narmin Othman and Iraq's Ambassador to the United States Rend al-Rahim. They and other Iraqi women "specifically indicated those areas and those kinds of proposals that would be the most meaningful in this very limited span of time before the January elections," Dobriansky said. Minister Othman also addressed the Foreign Press Center, as well as Iraq's Deputy Minister of Culture Maysoon Al-Damluji, and Zainab Al-Suwaij, the founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress. Othman acknowledged that the limited time left before the elections presents some difficulties in attaining the goals of the initiative. But, she added, with hard work "we can have an impact" on the elections. Dobriansky said many of the nonprofit organizations implementing the projects had already been working in Iraq, facilitating their ability to begin work immediately. "There's been a continuum," she said. In a number of cases, the funds will not only sustain the momentum of what they have been doing, but will target their efforts more specifically towards women's initiatives and "what the women of Iraq have specifically asked for." Speaking earlier at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, Dobriansky said one grant recipient, the Johns Hopkins School of Strategic and International Studies, is working with Iraqi nongovernmental organizations to collect and translate national constitutions, international covenants and other conventions on women's rights into Arabic to serve as resource tools in an Iraqi women's rights center they will build. Another, the Kurdish Human Rights Watch will work with Iraqi women and other groups to help mobilize 6,000 households to engage in the electoral process, she said. With the approaching elections, "there is an attempt ... to build upon a number of training initiatives," such as voter education, organizational skills, and political leadership. Some of those programs have already been in place, she said, "but they need to be much more targeted and particularly to women's needs." Michelle Bernard, a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum (IWF), said that, with the grant money, her organization has already started to recruit 150 Iraqi women to participate in a Woman Leaders Program and Democracy Information Center. "[W]e'd like to train 150 pro-democracy women on the fundamentals of democracy, women's political activism in a democracy, and to exchange ideas ... basically to enable Iraqi women to participate in their country and help Iraq develop a democracy that best suits the needs of that country," Bernard said. Those ideas, she said, would come from Muslim, western and eastern texts about democracy. Bernard said IWF's program would begin with a five-day training seminar on governance issues, intra- and intergovernmental affairs, democracy building, campaigning and the role of the media. She said IWF has also planned a five-day conference in December that will be held in Amman, Jordan, followed up by quarterly meetings that will take place throughout Iraq to continue the women's training. IWF was not necessarily recruiting Iraqi women who plan to run for public office, she said. "We're just looking for people who want to participate at the community level, people who are interested in education, [or] people who might want to be policy makers in the equivalent of a think-tank here," Bernard said. Under Secretary Dobriansky said Iraqi women are now playing a significant role in their country's transition towards democracy. She said six of Iraq's 11 cabinet ministers are women, as well as one quarter of Iraq's new interim national council, in which representatives have been appointed to seven of 11 council committees. One hundred women have also joined the Iraqi police and women are serving in the Iraqi military for the first time, she added.

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