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Parliamentarians paid homage with a minute’s silence to the innocent victims of the 1988 devastating earthquake today before starting the regular sitting. The draft law on Local Self-Government was debated at the sitting.

Parliamentarian Tevan Poghosyan came up with a proposal to set out 20 percent women’s representation in the self-government bodies by a legislative provision.

“We should include women in our party lists in communities where elections through proportional system are conducted. As we look at the election results in the expanded communities, we see no women represented in the respective Council of Elders. This speaks of the women’s role decreasing trend” Poghosyan stated and raised the question of including a legislative provision, envisioning at least 20 percent of women representation in the local government.

Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Development Vache Terteryan, who acted as the main reporter of the proposed legislative changes, welcomed the suggestion.

“Actually we pursued that goal as well. We tried to promote women’s participation at the local level within a UN program, to encourage them to better participate in the governance processes of their communities in a competitive climate. It didn’t’ gave the desired results first time. This is undoubtedly of our concern,” the deputy minister said.

Meanwhile, he suggested to come up with respective proposals, since different mechanism have been discussed with no solutions found yet.