Kyrgyz Republic: Special Measures to Ensure that Gender Quotas Bring More Women into Local Politics

In promoting women’s participation in local representative institutions, the key achievement was adoption of the amendment (No.117) to the Law on Elections to Local Councils (“Keneshes”) as of 8 August 2019, reserving 30% of mandates in local councils for women deputies. The introduced quotas are temporary special measures that provide a mandatory reservation of seats for women candidates irrespective of their share of votes. These measures were a needed and timely intervention, addressing the regression of women’s political representation in local councils since 2005, which had reached a low point of 10.8% in 2018.