Governor of Van Mehmet Niyazi Tanılır expressed his views on the UNJP to Local Facilitator Ayşe Sargın:
 The Governorate of Van, in the framework of national and international legislation and practices for achieving gender equality, has taken towards protecting and promoting rights of women and girls. In order to ensure participation of poor women in social and economic life, a micro-credit project has been in effect for two years. Further, the Women's Handcraft and Training Center was established for the displaced women and girls.
The Provincial Monitoring and Coordination Committee for Fighting Violence against Women and Girls was formed and in order to protect women and girls who are victims of violence, a women's shelter was established by a joint work of the Governorate and Municipality of Van.
In our province where traditional sexist social structure is still prevalent, it is very important to increase and sustain the number of such works.
The fact that Van is included among 6 provinces where the UN Joint Programme is being carried out is important in respect of technical and expert support to works currently being carried out by local governments in our city.
The new local governments legislation charges important responsibilities to local governments and encourages participatory service provision. The Joint Programme has created a platform on which public agencies, local governments and civil society organizations work together, and allows the realization of the relevant parts of the local governments legislation.Under the Joint Programme, a total of training works were conducted on Project Development and Women Friendly Local Services for the employees of the Governorate and Municipality and representatives of civil society organizations. Along with the Van Local Equality Action Plan to be prepared under the Joint Programme, policies and practices will be institutionalized and accelerated to protect and promote rights of women and girls in our province.
The participative and cooperative approach in the Joint Programme is important in that it sets an exemplary model to similar works being carried out in our Governorate.The eradication of gender discrimination and ensuring gender equality are important milestones to become a modern democracy. Toward achieving these goals, important steps were taken in the last 10 years particularly in our country including mainly the legislation, and in various fields. In order to protect rights of women and girls and ensure gender equality, it is very important that this new legislation should be fully carried out in life, girls' school enrollment rates should be increased, women's participation in labor market and political life should be increased, and violence against women should be prevented. All this works should be carried out both at national and local level, particularly the gender-sensitive local service approach should be generalized and service provision to women should be improved.
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