Democratization Participants discuss how women can strengthen their political campaigning capacities at a seminar co-organized by ODIHR on increasing women’s participation in political parties in Georgia, Tbilisi, 26 April 2012. (Photo: Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy) and local levels. To implement its activities, the Office supported the organization of roundtables, seminars and conferences, facilitated peer-to-peer exchange through workshops and study tours and promoted the sharing of good practices through the development of research reports, handbooks and advocacy tools. ODIHR continued implementation of its project “Women in Political Parties” in Albania, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Moldova during 2012. Recognizing that political parties play a key role in facilitating women’s political advancement, the project aims at building the capacity of parties to adopt voluntary measures to promote women as party leaders, decision-makers and candidates for public office. To this end, ODIHR continued to develop the Handbook on Women in Political Parties, focusing on how to strengthen 32 ODIHR Annual Report 2012 internal party democracy as a means to promote greater gender equality within parties. The Handbook integrates good practices identified during training seminars delivered in four of the five pilot countries in 2012: from 23 to 25 April in Tbilisi, from 18 to 20 June in Tirana, from 4 to 6 September in Chisinau, and from 22 to 24 November in Astana. Each event consisted of an interactive roundtable featuring political party leaders, followed by intensive training for potential women candidates and leaders. In its activities to promote women’s political participation, the Office co-operated with OSCE field operations and other partners, including governments, gender equality bodies, civil society and academia, and continued to promote its baseline study Gender Equality in Elected Office: A Six-Step Action Plan. Upon the request of the Irish Department of Justice and Equality, ODIHR contributed to the conference “How to Elect More Women?”, held on 20 January in Dublin. ODIHR also participated in a conference on electing more women in Northern Ireland, organized on 9 March in Belfast by the Centre for the Advancement of Women in Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, and the Christiansborg Seminar on Women in Politics, organized by the Danish Institute for Parties and Democracy on 11 and 12 September in Copenhagen. On 17 April in Warsaw, at the workshop “Women in Politics” organized by the Polish Institute of Public Affairs, experts presented an ODIHR-commissioned report on women’s electoral representation in Poland. As a follow-up to this event, ODIHR contributed to four regional workshops on women’s political leadership organized by the School