Guinea's 2019 Law on Parity for Electoral Lists

In Guinea's 2013 legislative election, women — 51.7% of the population and 50.8% of registered voters — won only 25 of 114 National Assembly seats (21.9%), despite a nominal 30% quota that had never been reached in practice.

On 2 May 2019, Guinea's National Assembly unanimously adopted a Law on Parity requiring exactly 50% women candidates on every list for national and local elections and elective public bodies, with mandatory alternation between male and female candidates; non-compliant lists are legally inadmissible. UN Women and UNDP, with funding from the Government of Canada, supported the law's drafting and advocacy.

According to the Institute for Security Studies (ISS Africa), the 2019 parity law 'was never enacted,' a gap attributed to friction with the pre-existing (and separately unmet) 30% quota, limited political will, weak enforcement capacity, entrenched patriarchal norms, and a 22% female literacy rate (Afrobarometer). Women's representation has since moved in the wrong direction at the ministerial level: from 14.9% of parliamentarians before Guinea's 2021 coup to just 10% of ministers (6 of 29) under the current government, short of that government's own 30% commitment — though women held 30.86% of seats in the temporary post-coup National Transitional Council.

This case is included as an honestly-documented instance where a well-designed, unanimously-passed parity law failed to move from statute to practice, illustrating that legal text alone does not guarantee representation without enforcement mechanisms and sustained political will.

Read the full analysis: https://issafrica.org/iss-today/strengthening-women-s-political-participation-in-guinea