3. Political parties and parliaments
● Treat the 25% quota as a floor, not a ceiling, by adopting party‑level targets for Kurdish and
Arab women to head lists and win seats through direct votes, not only through quota
mechanisms.
● Ensure women MPs, both Kurdish and Arab, are appointed to influential committees (legal,
finance, security, digital transformation), so they can directly shape reforms on GBV,
cyber‑crimes, and electoral law rather than being confined to “women and family” portfolios.
● Require parties to publicly report how many women they nominate, how many head lists, and
how many hold executive positions, making visible whether women are treated as genuine
political actors or as quota fillers.
● Encourage party leaders to issue clear, public statements during campaigns that condemn
online and offline violence against women in politics and commit to internal disciplinary
measures when perpetrators are party members.
4. Civil society and NGOs
● Establish specialized support units and hotlines that provide digital security assistance,
psychosocial support, and legal referral services for women candidates and activists
experiencing online harassment during the electoral cycle.
● Conduct public awareness campaigns that frame online attacks on women in politics as forms
of gender‑based violence and as threats to democratic participation, using locally resonant
narratives and examples in both Arabic and Kurdish.
● expand media and digital literacy and programme to include identifying gendered
disinformation and abuse
●
●
●
Develop targeted training programmes for women candidates on digital campaigning,
narrative framing, and strategic responses to smear campaigns, including safe engagement
practices and systematic documentation of abuse for evidence and advocacy.
Partner with media, platforms, and electoral authorities to monitor and publicly report
patterns of TFGBV, feeding evidence into advocacy for stronger regulation and platform
standards.
develop early warning systems to identify emerging campaigns and support the development
of counter narratives
74