WIMAGE EXPANDS ITS GLOBAL FOCUS AND ASPIRATIONS AS THE ORGANIZATION SPREADS AROUND THE WORLD
By Kabs Kanu, Public Relations and Information Department
WIMAGE International, Washington DC, USA
The Washington DC-based international elections monitoring organization—Women in Auditing and Monitoring Global Elections ( WIMAGE ) has expanded its modus operandi worldwide.
Still striving with determination to make a difference globally, WIMAGE has expanded its operations from monitoring elections around the world to other important spheres of influence that touch the lives of women, especially, and people in general.
According to the Chief Executive Officer ( CEO), Madam Khadija Sesay, who served the Government of Sierra Leone as Director of the Open Government Initiative ( OGI ) and the Open Government Project ( OGP)—An internationally-funded organization that was designed to promote socioeconomic and political inclusion in the Sierra Leone political landscape, social justice, integrity in governance, and public accountability —WIMAGE has made a significant breakthrough in other areas of sociopolitical activism as the organization continues to spread around the world.
“WIMAGE has expanded so widely that we are going to do much now, besides elections monitoring around the world”, Madam Sesay intimated the media. “We had always wanted women to make a difference in this world and that was why in addition to elections observation, we set up the post-election Global Agendas on Women ( GAOW ) Project, which is an action plan document/report to gauge the number of women who participated during an election and how many got promoted after the polls and work on an action plan to improve the situation in the next electoral cycle. GAOW will remain the linchpin of WIMAGE’s aspirations. Everything we are doing is centered around GAOW. That is why in any country we go, we do not just monitor elections; we set up a GAOW project. However, we are going to do more now, encapsulating our desire to build a women’s global community. We have to change the mindset that the world is just for men and so we have extended our outreach to the world beyond elections monitoring and observation.
The Director of WIMAGE, Mr. Patrick Koigi, who is based in Nairobi, Kenya, also heads the WIMAGE Branch in the East African country, and he took the time to elaborate on all the new areas that the organization will be operating in moving forward.
According to Mr. Koigi, WIMAGE is going to stretch its arms into INTERNATIONAL ADVOCACY to champion women’s rights and empowerment, human rights and justice. The organization has observed from monitoring elections in various countries that these nations have weak and ineffectual institutions which are not able to help their nations deliver the noble ideals mentioned above . Some of the countries rightly formulate strong policies but the governance institutions are too weak or lack the political and moral will to implement them. WIMAGE will be doing robust advocacy to help countries build strong institutions.
WIMAGE is now also going to help countries fight GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE, Mr. Koigi emphasized. The team of WIMAGE operators in the various countries have observed that where gender-based violence is prevalent it is because women do not have a say in their own affairs and national business. The United Nations defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”. Gender based violence is a human rights abuse “It is an unrelenting assault on human dignity, depriving people of their human rights. Freedom from violence is a fundamental human right, and gender-based violence undermines a person’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem. It affects not only physical health but also mental health and may lead to self harm, isolation, depression and suicidal attempts”, according to the Council of Europe ( An association of European states founded in 1949 to safeguard the political and cultural heritage of Europe and promote economic , social cooperation and human rights ). The development of women in general is enshrined the Sustainable Development Goal 5 and is a critical component of the World Bank Gender Strategy 2024 – 2030.
Another lofty goal that WIMAGE is undertaking is the setting up of a WOMEN UNIVERSITY NETWORK. The organization is exploring every opportunity to advocate, promote and inspire the accruement of leadership skills from as low as the high schools and as high as the university level.
WIMAGE is also going to engage in a data-collection drive. This the organization will undertake by using all its coordinators to work with universities to air out their challenges and prospects. The data will be used to initiate change in women’s transformative leadership and governance. “There is a deficit of sufficient women participation in governance . That is why, in this data-driven world, we will evaluate the participation and performance of women to see what we can do to get more women into governance”, Mr. Koigi added.
WIMAGE has monitored elections in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The organization is working in collaboration with USAID , the European Union ( EU), the Women’s Forum in Nigeria, the Global Peace Movement of the United Kingdom , the International Aid Transparency Initiative ( IATI), the Association Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); the United Nations ( UN ) and the African Union ( AU) .
WIMAGE is now fully operative in the U.S, United Kingdom, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Gambia, Zambia, Mauritania, Ghana, Nigeria, Liberia, DR Congo and Uganda.
