Democratization plurality of opinion and to broaden the reach of public debate throughout Kyrgyzstan. III. Gender equality As a vital part of its democracy-building agenda, ODIHR works to foster women’s participation in governance structures and promotes equality of rights and opportunities among women and men in political and public life. These efforts are designed to counter recurrent trends in many of the OSCE participating States, where women tend to be significantly underrepresented in decision-making fora. ODIHR has been addressing this issue by developing platforms for interaction between civil society and governments and by supporting mechanisms for integrating gender expertise into government policies. ODIHR supports collaboration among women’s networks in the South Caucasus, Central Asia, and Eastern and South-Eastern Europe in order to promote women’s political participation and an increased role in decision-making processes. ODIHR has been implementing a multiyear programme aimed at increasing the participation of women in democratic governance. Activities focus on fostering women’s leadership, political participation, and coalition-building among women’s NGOs to enable them to promote awareness of gender equality and foster the policy reforms necessary for combating gender-based discrimination in all areas of public and private life. Programme activities also contribute to developing a greater capacity of state structures to promote gender-sensitive policy-making. Examples include trainingof-trainers workshops on gender equality and women’s rights, capacity-building seminars for women’s NGOs and networks, providing assistance in developing expertise within state institutions for the promotion of gender equality, and providing training for state structures and NGOs in preventing and combating violence against women. Strengthening women’s organizations and networks In order to promote reforms aimed at increasing the representation of women in governance structures, women from grassroots and national civil society organizations need to be strong leaders and actively participate in public life, including through effective advocacy and lobbying for legislative and policy changes. ODIHR conducts activities in the field of women’s leadership development in order to provide assistance to strengthen new and existing women’s networks and coalitions. ODIHR initiatives in this field are designed to provide support to these groups in policy analysis, project development, advocacy and public information/media campaigns for promoting gender equality and combating domestic violence. In Kyrgyzstan, the Regional Women’s Network — established with ODIHR support — continues to foster women’s leadership and to promote opportunities for women to participate in decision-making processes at the local level. In 2007, ODIHR continued to provide expertise and funding to the Network to develop initiatives in monitoring local media outlets to assess the quality of gender-sensitive reporting and the development of public information campaigns on gender equality in the decision-making process. These activities served as an important factor in mobilizing women across the civil society sector to advocate for special measures in the Constitution and the Election Code that would ensure a substantial increase in the representation of women in parliament. After constitutional reforms brought early parliamentary elections and changes to the Election Code that ensured women candidates higher positions on party lists (every fourth position is required to be of a different gender), ODIHR provided expertise to the Network in support of wide-scale voter-education activities for women in rural areas, as well as training workshops for promoting women’s leadership and political participation in all regions of the country. In Georgia, ODIHR continues to assist the Women’s NGO Coalition in developing its Annual Report 2007 29