ISLAMABAD  -  The Potohar Organization for De­velopment Organization (PODA) Saturday organized a training fo­cusing human rights and women’s rights; political rights of women and women awareness on relevant clauses of the Election Act 2017.

“To strengthen women’s voice and agency in electoral process­es, it is crucial to ensure wom­en’s participation, maximize it and remove hurdles which bar them to play their vibrant role play in the progress and devel­opment of the country,” said Ms. Sameena Nazir, President-CEO PODA on the occasion of the training of trainers held in Is­lamabad. The one-day Training of Trainers for Building the Ca­pacity of Rural Women Leaders to Promote Votes without Vio­lence was organized here at a lo­cal hotel which was attended by 15 promising rural women lead­ers belonging to different tehsils of district Rawalpindi.

Imparting knowledge and skills to enhance capacity build­ing of rural women, at the initial stage PODA with the support of NDI aims to empower a batch of 240 women from four provinces across the country. Ms. Nazir fur­ther said that strengthening hu­man rights knowledge of rural women leaders based on our con­stitutional rights envisioned in the constitution of Pakistan will support them to take on leader­ship role in politics. “We need to tackle the issue of violence and its alarming severity by enhanc­ing women’s capacity to deal with it at all levels to encourage more women to participate in politics actively,” Ms. Nazir added. 

“It is an acknowledged fact that when more women are elected, it is directly linked with better policy-making that favours com­munities and marginalized seg­ments of the society at large,” CEO PODA said. 

The training sessions were fo­cused on the thematic areas in­cluding universal system of human rights and women’s rights in the constitution of Pakistan; consti­tutional rights and political rights of women; women’s struggle for their political rights and laws pro­tecting women; and awareness on relevant clauses of the Elections’ Act 2017 and NADRA’s procedure for the documentation.