Sarajevo Open Centre, INFOHOUSE and CURE Foundation, will tomorrow, on 27 February 2015, hand-deliver the request for compliance with the Gender Equality Law when appointing the Ministers, to the Chairman of the Sarajevo Canton Assembly, which was also submitted in writing yesterday.

After Sarajevo Open Centre, together with the Center for Legal Assistance for Women and Infoteka from Zenica, on 23 February of this yea,r sent a request to the Assembly of Zenica-Doboj Canton in which they asked the Assembly not to allow the appointment of government without any woman (since the coalition partners SDA, DF and HDZ BiH in the Canton proposed only men to form the government), and to not violate the Article 20 of the Gender Equality Law, which clearly provides for the representation of both genders in the executive power, or at least 40% of the under-represented sex and the Collegium of the Assembly at its fourth session on 24 February 2015 recognized this remark of civil society as valid and responded by calling all the coalition partners to also propose female candidates for ministers in the cantonal government, as well as for the Prime Minister of Cantonal Government postion, Sarajevo Open Centre, started another joint initiative with organizations from Sarajevo Canton – INFOHOUSE Association and the CURE Foundation, requesting from  Sarajevo Canton Assembly the consistent application of the Gender Equality Law.

Civil society organizations in BiH believe that a government where there is no relevant number of women represented can not be legitimate and that there is no reason to ignore half of the population.

Request sent to the Sarajevo Canton Assembly in B/H/S languages can be downloaded here.

Invitation to the Chairman of the Canton Sarajevo Assembly for meeting is available in B/H/S languages here.