Campaign increases 4.5m women voters in 7 months

ISLAMABAD: The Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) and civil society’s efforts in registering eligible-age women have successfully led to an unparalleled increase of 4,307,553 women on the electoral rolls in the last seven months.

This increase indicates the success of the ECP’s Women NIC and Voter Registration Campaign as only around 4.9 million women voters were registered between May 2013 and September 2017. Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability (TDEA), supporting the ECP’s ‘Women NIC/ Voter Registration Campaign’ initiated for reducing gender gap on electoral rolls, implemented interventions in 103 districts across Pakistan, targeting an outreach of 1.8 million women.

Supported by the USAID, the first phase of these interventions was implemented by a select number of Free and Fair Election Network’s (Fafen) member organisations across the country. This phase covered identification and listing of one million unregistered women in 24 districts which successfully concluded on April 30, 2018.

TDEA arranged a ceremony on Thursday, to acknowledge the valuable contribution of citizen volunteers engaged by Fafen, and thank the ECP, Nadra, USAID, UNDP, political parties, citizens, civil society and media for their collaborative efforts in recognising and confronting this issue of under-registration of women.