Organized crime increasingly poses a threat to the exercise of democratic politics in most countries in the world. It is therefore imperative for governments to find creative ways to detect and tackle this problem.
International IDEA is responding to the demand by developing the Organized Crime in Democratic Politics (OCDP) threat assessment tool. Embedded in the Protecting Politicsproject, this tool will support users such as electoral management bodies, ombudspersons, security sector agencies and NGOs in analyzing the threat of nexus between organized crime and democratic politics.
Unlike other analytical tools the OCDP Tool consists of a software platform that links theoretical knowledge, analytical instruments—such as maps and trend charts— and a prevention and mitigation framework. If this all sounds familiar it is because some of the inspiration has come from International IDEA’s much used ERMTool.
The ERMTool success inspired us to create a similar instrument, integrating the ERMTool platform and the SoD Assessment framework.
The tool became a reality when the Peruvian National Elections Tribunal (NET) decided to embark in the first pilot of the OCDP Tool ahead of the 2016 April general election. They hired a highly qualified team of three researchers to implement the tool, aiming at institutionalizing it in the long-term.
In December 2015 NET convened dozens of institutions and agencies to launch the initiative and request their active engagement in sharing information.
Later, Interntional IDEA provided technical training in Lima and Stockholm for the NET team in order to use the software.
Today, International IDEA’s Lima office with support from our experts in Stockholm are closely monitoring the implementation of the tool. And overall the ‘protecting democratic politics’ project is going strong in Peru with USAID’s support.
