The promotion of women's participation in elected assemblies will remain among the top priorities of the authorities, which will continue their relentless efforts in this regard, Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said Tuesday in Algiers in the opening speech read on his behalf by Minister of Relations with Parliament Mahmoud Khedri at the International Conference on "Women's effective and sustained participation in elected assemblies."
Sellal underlined Algeria's "huge efforts" for the promotion of women's political participation, especially the great interest attached by President of the Republic Abdelaziz Bouteflika to this question given the nobleness of the cause."
In this regard, Sellal recalled the speech delivered by the President of the Republic on the occasion of the International Women's Day in 2009 when he said that the protection of women's political rights is a "legitimate right."
The meeting is an opportunity to adopt recommendations to encourage experience sharing and the setting-up of strategies necessary for the strengthening of local programmes of the fight against all forms of marginalization and exclusion against women, and to further involve them in all sustainable development programmes, said Sellal.
The Premier also underlined the long march of Algerian women through the different popular resistance movements and during the National Liberation War as activists, moussabilat (volunteers), fidaiat (women who sworn their lives to their country), mujahidat (war veterans) and shahidat (martyrs).
"Algerian women have not given up their role in the struggle against terrorism and in the defence of the Republican values of the State," he added.
