Democratization: Gender Equality team of local experts with strong expertise in integrating gender aspects into the legislative and budgetary processes. The ODIHR continued to provide expertise and resources to the Regional Women’s Network by conducting training workshops and information seminars on gender-budgeting and gender-mainstreaming in media and public-information campaigns. II. Increasing women’s political participation and access to decisionmaking The ODIHR’s long-term work in the South Caucasus and Central Asia on increasing women’s political participation and access to decision-making focuses on strengthening women’s leadership and development of co-operation among women leaders and political parties. A number of initiatives such as roundtables on political participation and platform development strategies, as well as meetings with representatives of civil society, political parties, and women constituents from various communities, are carried out to promote opportunities for women’s advancement in political parties and in local councils. In Armenia, the ODIHR provided expertise and financial assistance to the Association of Armenian Women with University Education in order to increase women’s political participation before the parliamentary elections in May 2007. Programme activities, conducted by the Association in conjunction with experts from the Armenian National Assembly and leading political parties, included information seminars and workshops for women members of political parties and women leaders from rural communities. Activities were developed to promote awareness of the political and economic aspects of equal rights and opportunities for women and men and methodologies for integrating gender-equality objectives into political-party platforms. Additional training seminars were organized for women from various political parties on political campaigning and programme development methodologies, as well as on the existing international commitments and standards in promoting democratic electoral practices. In Georgia, in the run-up to the local elections in October, the ODIHR conducted a series of training workshops for the Women’s NGO Coalition to develop strategies for increasing women’s participation in local elections both as election candidates and as voters. At the outset, a workshop looked at developing community-level strategies for increasing the number of elected women in local councils. Following this, the ODIHR facilitated several workshops for developing an action plan for the Coalition with tailor-made objectives and a set of activities for all areas of the Coalition’s work (political participation, economic opportunities, social and health-care issues, education, peace-building, and the environment) and for all 11 regions of Georgia. Priorities for activities were identified by members of the Coalition in all regions and focused on education of rural women (including women in ethnic-minority regions and women in IDP communities) on the mandate and structure of local self-governments, assisting women candidates in developing effective outreach campaigns towards constituent communities, and integrating gender issues into their electoral programmes. Based on an analysis of party structures and the internal decision-making practices of all major political parties conducted by the Coalition in 2006 in the framework of the ODIHR’s interactive political-party assessment project, 5 Coalition members worked with politicalparty leaders and party candidates to ensure increased attention to gender equality in their electoral platforms and to raise awareness among the electorate of issues related to internal party democracy and women’s political participation. Overall, 197 women were elected out of a total of 1,734 members (11.36 per cent) of district and municipal councils. Despite fears among women’s NGOs of a decrease in women’s representation as a result of changes that revoked local self-government at the level of 5 See “Civil Society and Democratic Governance”, p. 34. Annual Report  39