On Thursday, the Women’s Support Unit at Libya’s High National Elections Commission (HNEC) launched a platform to monitor violence against women in elections.
This came during a ceremony attended by the Chairman of the Elections Commission, Emad Al-Sayeh.
According to the Commission’s statement, the platform, which is organized with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), “is one of the most important projects of the unit’s plan for the year 2023.”
HNEC member, Rabab Halab stated that the platform “would provide recommendations alerting the need to draft laws that would deter anyone who infringes on women’s rights, to participate in the electoral process.”
She explained that the platform is used in many countries, including Tunisia, Lebanon, and Peru. This is to enhance the integrity of elections, fight false and misleading news and hate speech, and monitor electoral irregularities
Halab added that “methodologies and action plans were reviewed, and samples and models of violence and electronic crimes directed against women were monitored on social media. The data collected through questionnaires monitored women’s regression from participating in the electoral process.”
Halab noted that it was concluded that “the greater the percentage of women’s participation in elections, the greater the electoral violence.” This indicated the importance of a strong platform to monitor electronic violence and electoral irregularities, which contributes to developing a strategy to address and reduce it.
In turn, the Chargé d’Affairs of the Canadian Embassy and UNDP members confirmed their joy at being a part of the unit’s work.
They stressed the importance of this program as it “paves the way for broad participation of Libyan women in the elections, by monitoring and eliminating practices that hinder their participation.”
The program includes several topics, a general introduction to the process of monitoring social networking sites during elections and combating misleading and false news, and violence against women in elections on the Internet.
