Some 20 organizations from across the globe met recently in Johannesburg, South Africa, to review and compare different approaches to combating election-related conflict and violence. The two-day workshop entitled “Towards a Global Framework for Managing and Mitigating Elections-related Conflict and Violence” was convened by International IDEA.
The workshop succeeded in bringing together international and local actors in the area of electoral conflict management, share experiences, and explore ways for further collaboration. Workshop participants agreed on the longer term goal of creating a global framework for managing and mitigating election-related conflict and violence. They also agreed to set up immediately a global network on electoral conflict management which will undertake further work on conflict mapping, monitoring, capacity building, knowledge creation, and network and partnership building.
Participants saw the need to develop a consensus on precisely what the global framework for election conflict management means and, to assist this process, to also develop a common glossary on related issues. The workshop further agreed to embed the network in the current ACE network which deals principally with electoral matters and includes a component on conflict management.
International IDEA’s Regional Director for Africa and the Middle East Programme, Mustaq Moorad, said election-related violence has become widespread - especially in Africa - and there is a pressing need for electoral assistance providers and others to come up with a means of mitigating conflict during elections. This was a key objective of the workshop.
There were a number of presentations from various organizations involved in electoral conflict management. The workshop also reviewed methodologies and tools developed by these organizations (including International IDEA, UNDP, and IFES). International IDEA’s Programme Officer Sead Alihodzig presented IDEA’s ‘election early warning tool’ (EWT), describing it as a robust means to gather and analyze information so that electoral decision makers can act rapidly to combat electoral violence. The EWT identifies key areas of potential conflict during the electoral cycle and provides a weighting to each in order to calibrate tailor-made responses to specific threats.
The UNDP guide to preventing election violence produced in August 2009 highlights key areas of concern when mapping the risk of violence during elections. It underscores the need to promote social cohesion, local ownership, stakeholder involvement, effective electoral dispute resolution, and also to promote key principles for democratic elections: rule of law, transparency, credibility, and accountability.
Other tools discussed at the workshop included those developed by IFES, such as the election violence education and resolution (EVER) whose core values entail conflict mapping, monitoring, networking, training and capacity building especially for civil society. EISA, ACCORD and Idasa also presented their work in the area of conflict management. All three emphasize the importance of stakeholder involvement - such as political party liaison and conflict management panels - to resolve election conflict.
