Bangladesh Mahila Parishad - Norad

36government in power, and the current government is seen to be positivelyinclined towards women’s rights.3) Relations with political parties are a sensitive area. Advocacy for women’spolitical rights involves strategic decisions on how best to secure women’spolitical rights, such as reserved seats versus party nominations, and directversus indirect elections. Advocacy on specific issues relating to intrahouseholdgender relations is probably even more sensitive. Relationsbetween civil society and political parties are full of dilemmas. While closerelations with political parties are often necessary to exert political influence,civil society organizations are weary of the values that political partiesrepresent and of being unduly influenced by them. Nevertheless, strategicdecisions need to be made about which parties to work with, and how towork with them.4.7 Alignment of the Norwegian and Danish fundingThe DANIDA funded project focuses on democracy, good governance andwomen’s human rights through advocacy with stakeholders at the grass-root leveland empowerment of grass-root women, holding elected women membersaccountable to their constituency. The Danish funding will be used for awarenessraisingon women’s rights locally, targeted at grass roots women, political leaders,local line ministry officials, the local media, and other stakeholders. The project willalso strengthen the capacity building of elected women representatives throughtraining programmes. The project will be started as a pilot project in 10 districts.Head office had carried out a survey in advance of the start up to identify relevantissues to be addressed through the project. The Local Government (Union Parishad)Second Amendment Act 1997 provided direct elections to reserved seats for womenin local elections.The Danish funded part of the programme on political empowerment differs fromthe Norwegian funded programme. The Norwegian project focused on achieving theparticipation of a critical mass of women in the national parliament and also had acomponent for providing support for members and supporters of BMP to run forelection in the local government.4.8 Recommendations from previous reviewsThe ToR asks for an assessment of the extent to which recommendations fromearlier reviews have been taken into account and how the organization learns from itswork. The recommendations from the 2009 review were discussed thoroughly withinBMP, and by BMP and the Embassy (Aminuzzaman and Kasem 2009). This reviewalso served as an appraisal of the current phase of the project. The key management andfinancial recommendations were the following: