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SEMINAR EXPLORES POSSIBILITY OF ELECTION MONITORING COORDINATION BETWEEN OAS AND OTHER INTERNATIONAL ELECTION OBSERVATION GROUPS

Election monitors from the Organization of American States (OAS) could team up with other groups to observe elections in regions such as Asia or Africa, and invite outside monitors on its missions covering electoral processes in its member countries, under proposals explored by a group of international election monitoring experts.

These were among highlights of a two-day seminar that concluded Thursday at OAS headquarters, where international election observation experts considered ways in which organizations could better coordinate efforts and be more consistent in terms of evaluating elections. The participants—from 32 international institutions engaged in international election—also spoke about concerns and challenges faced by international observation missions.

Summarizing the outcomes of the Second International Meeting on the Implementation of Principles for International Election Observation, Director of the OAS Department for Electoral Cooperation and Observation Pablo Gutierrez said the experts were emphatic about the need for electoral observation missions to more strategically coordinate efforts on the ground. The OAS has been at the vanguard in this respect, he said, noting how for the first time the organization unveiled details of an electoral observation to the public.

OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza had opened the seminar and delivered the keynote address. He told the participants about OAS initiatives to standardize its election monitoring work, and urged greater coordination of efforts and information sharing. Meanwhile, Director of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), Christian Strohal, spoke about the centerpiece Declaration of Principles and the Code of Conduct as the first universal effort to outline a code of practice for safeguarding the integrity of objective and impartial election observation as a shared global activity, and as a shared global contribution.

Criteria for assessing democratic elections were also a major focus of the seminar, which identified among concrete results flowing from the Declaration of Principles surveys administered by observers, who can now assess more precisely the depth of democratization and electoral processes. That Declaration is the joint effort of the OAS, the United Nations and a number of other organizations such as the Carter Center, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the National Democratic Institute—a coming together of multilateral agencies and non-governmental organization engaged in electoral observation.

Seminar participants also noted that electoral observation missions should consider joint workshops before leaving a country, in order to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of an election that had been observed. They also discussed the idea of conducting mid-term reviews, about two years after an election monitoring exercise, to help determine the extent to which recommendations have been taken into consideration and what else could be done before the next electoral process.

The meeting was organized around four panels, covering: sharing best practices on electoral observation criteria; harmonizing approaches to electronic technologies in elections; post-election follow-up: translating observer recommendations into action; and further cooperation among endorsing organizations: identifying challenges and ways forward in the Declaration of Principles process.

Reference: E-293/07