Madam Maimunah Mohd Shariff

Creating a Malaysian Human Rights City

“A city belongs to the people and the people belong to the city,” says Madam Maimunah Mohd Sharif, President of the Municipal Council of Seberang Perai (MPSP). “Together we must work to make it a sustainable city for today and for the future generations.”

Since being appointed the first female President of the MPSP – the equivalent of a mayor – in the city of Seberang Perai by the Malaysian government in March 2011, Madam Maimunah has made every effort to tailor her administration’s actions to that sentiment.

Having grown up in relative poverty, the prospect of rising to her current position may have seemed completely out of reach. Madam Maimunah’s break came when she was given the opportunity to study in the United Kingdom. From 1980 until 1985 she studied at the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, graduating with an honours degree in town planning studies. Madam Maimunah’s time abroad also served to increase her awareness and interest in human rights issues, an interest she carried home. When she arrived back in Malaysia to take a position as a town planning officer, her own experiences lent her the “urge to work, give back and share her experiences with the people around her.”

Madam Maimunah’s entire career has been dedicated to Seberang Perai. Upon returning from the United Kingdom, she immediately began work as a city planner, a position she maintained until 2003 when she became Director of the Department of Planning. Madam Maimunah assumed increasingly important roles within the city administration, eventually becoming the first General Manager of the George Town project in 2009. George Town was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008 and Madam Maimunah was given the task of establishing the World Heritage Office and developing the site itself. Working with UNESCO brought Madam Maimunah onto the global stage while keeping her close to her real passion: the people of Seberang Perai. As she stated in her Gwangju News interview, the “future generation has the right to know their history, so heritage is very much a human rights related topic.”

Given her long history of service to the community and her increasing global exposure through her affiliation with UNESCO, it is not surprising that Madam Maimunah was a prime candidate to become President of the MPSP. She has not been idle since taking the reins. Working from the premise that the role of a city government is to “engage, consult, and encourage city participation in [its] service delivery,” Madam Maimunah was quick to begin reforming how Seberang Perai did business and how it approached its relationship with its citizens, and in the last three years Seberang Perai has received awards for quality management, sustainability, green initiatives, and e-governance.

Two areas became a primary focus: gender inclusion and public consultation. Madam Maimunah took the position that MPSP “had to be courageous enough to address the issue of gender equality and social injustice” rather than ignore these concerns and carry on with business as usual. Her starting point for these efforts was to develop more gender-inclusive programs and governing structures. One of Madam Maimunah’s first acts was the creation and funding of the Penang Women’s Development Corporation in November 2011.  The corporation’s mission statement is to “contribute to the transformation of Penang based on principles of substantive equality and good governance” through the “recognition of women’s diverse identities, women’s representation in all spheres, and the equitable redistribution of resources.”

MPSP and the Women’s Development Corporation have been engaged in a three-year pilot project for gender-responsive budgeting at the People’s Housing Project Ampangan. First, a demographic survey was conducted on the low-income housing complex, owned by Seberang Perai and home to some 1200 people. This was followed with focus groups on gender-based need and voting on budget allocation priorities. Armed with this information, MPSP was able to create a project plan that reflected the needs and desires of the residents. Project implementation is ongoing, with the MPSP “working out how to meet the other remaining priorities that have been highlighted by the residents.”

In addition, the MPSP under Madam Maimunah has increased public accessibility and involvement in the municipal government. They began with an MPSP Watch Facebook page where users could register concerns or complaints, which gained 10,000 members. The page has since been upgraded to Citizen Action Technology, designed with input from stakeholders, to facilitate communication between the citizens and the government. In an effort to further include the citizens in municipal governance, representatives from a plethora of interest groups are included in fiscal discussions.

Recognizing the “need to be gender-sensitive and gender-aware before we can be gender-responsive,” these projects have been accompanied by an ongoing training program for municipal employees developed with guidance from gender experts like Dr. Regina Frey and Dr. Elisabeth Klatzer, gender-based budgeting experts from Europe. All of these initiatives feed into gender- responsive and participatory budgeting, a unique model that Madam Maimunah notes “we quite proudly refer to as the ‘Penang Model,’ [since it] has proven to be quite effective and popular among the local community.”

Given Madam Maimunah’s own approach to governance, it is unsurprising that she was drawn to Gwangju’s World Human Rights Cities Forum (WHRCF). Madam Maimunah has been a regular attendee of the WHRCF since the inaugural session in 2011 and has been an active participant in several of the panels and discussions. During last year’s forum she presented a paper on Seberang Perai’s initiative on human rights in the city and served as a panel speaker on the topic of human rights and civil servants. She was later able to apply forum lessons in Seberang Perai through the creation of a panel on civil service, called the “Human Resource Development Committee,” to advise on issues such as recruitment, training, and service awards for the municipal staff.

Conceptualizing cities as human rights organs also matches well with Madam Maimunah’s perception of the roles of the various levels of government. When asked about the role of city (as opposed to national) governments in forwarding human rights, she indicated the question is really one of proximity: the city government is closer to the people who are most vulnerable to human rights abuses, and so the city has an essential responsibility to ensure that those rights are protected. Ultimately, the “city government is the implementing agency” and its role is to “engage, consult, and encourage city participation in our service delivery.”

Madam Maimunah continues to attend the forum, hoping to “collaborate and share our best practices with other cities and vice versa.” This fits well with this year’s WHRCF theme: “Towards a Global Alliance of Human Rights Cities for All.” This year’s forum should be an excellent opportunity to further strengthen ties between Gwangju and Seberang Perai. As a spin-off of the 2013 WHRCF, Gwangju and Seberang Perai signed a Friendship Exchange Agreement pledging both cities to cultural, educational, and economic exchange. June 9-13 will see Gwangju fulfill part of its promise for educational exchange by sending 14 students, two teachers, and an officer to Seberang Perai. Madam Maimunah’s return to Gwangju may be seen as the honouring of Seberang Perai’s own pledge for educational exchange. Certainly, there is much to learn from her.