Algeria has higher rate of female MPs than UK

The Algerian government has today praised country’s female MPs, who now make up nearly 30 percent of the current government, it emerged today. A recent report by the country’s Inter-Parliamentary Union, presented at a UN conference in New York yesterday, found that significant progress has been made for women’s rights in Algeria.  The figures listed Algeria, Senegal and Timor-Leste as the countries which have the highest rate of women in parliament in the developing world. "Election results in Algeria put the country ahead of all others in the region, with 31.6 percent women MPs in its lower house," stated the report.  "This has not only catapulted Algeria ahead of Tunisia (26.7 percent) and Iraq (25.2 percent) but also made the country the first and only Arab State to have more than 30 per cent women MPs," it read.  Algeria is unique in a region "which failed to deliver on the promise of democratic change in the Arab Spring countries,” notably in Egypt and Libya, the report added. Astonishingly, the findings show that Algeria has a higher rate of female MPs than Britain, where women only make up 22 percent of the UK’s parliament.