Pakistani women leaders to undergo training on political process

Pakistan's women ministry has launched a new programme with the support of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for the education and training in political processes of female leaders and representatives of local bodies across the country.

"The Women's Political School [WPS] project will help in institutionalising the process of training of women political leaders, taking into account the dynamic political climate of the country and the upcoming local government elections in 2005," Nilofar Bakhtiyar, an adviser to the prime minister on women's development, told IRIN in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

The UN's development agency UNDP has granted US $4.5 million for the WPS project, an integral component of its Gender Support Programme for Pakistan.

The WPS project has been designed to sustain the gains of the Women's Political Participation Project (W3P), which ran from February 2002 to March 2004. More than 80 percent of elected women councillors from the local government elections of 2000-2001 were given training under the W3P project…