ODIHR Director: commitments for democratic elections remain a firm and permanent promise

VIENNA, 22 April 2005 - Election observation methodology, as well as compliance with OSCE commitments for holding democratic elections, were discussed and debated at a two-day meeting, which concluded in Vienna today. Around 200 election experts, and representatives from OSCE 55 participating States and non-governmental agencies attended the meeting.

"Commitments are not abstract concepts - they are a firm and permanent promise to the 1.1 billion people in the OSCE region. This promise has to be realized, over and over again, through periodic, genuine and democratic elections enabling all voters to freely express their will, and to see it respected," said Ambassador Christian Strohal, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, in his closing remarks.

ODIHR, a leading election observation agency, organized the meeting together with the Slovenian OSCE Chairmanship.

The election discussion touched upon three main areas: OSCE commitments for holding democratic elections, election observation and electronic voting.

The OSCE commitments go back to the 1990 Copenhagen Document, where all OSCE participating States pledged to hold and promote democratic elections, based on universality, accountability, transparency, secrecy, freedom, fairness, equality, and respect for fundamental human rights. Several suggestions were made for a working group to be established to discuss the possibility for additional commitments.

Electronic technologies were also discussed, especially e-voting. The discussion centered on the practices of some States regarding e-voting as well as their investigations into the feasibility of introducing or expanding the use of e-voting.

A lively discussion about election observation of international and domestic organizations touched upon issues such as methodology and integrity and the role of the observers.

In his summary of the meeting and its recommendations, the ODIHR Director said: "I share suggestions to continue our work at collecting best practice and making it available. I share the importance placed on training of observers, and we certainly will continue to participate in training programs.

"We also will continue giving further input to discussions on emerging issues, along the broad range identified, from electronic voting to election rights of internally displaced persons. And we certainly are ready to further develop our capacity to assist participating States, together with other institutions and field missions."

An expanded version of the OSCE/ODIHR election observation handbook was released at the meeting. The handbook was first developed nine years ago and has since been used by over 12,000 election observers.

This fifth edition provides a thorough overview of the OSCE/ODIHR's observation methodology and is based on the accumulated experience from more than the 150 elections that the OSCE/ODIHR has observed to date. The book can be downloaded from:

//www.osce.org/odihr/item_11_14004.html