Foreign agents’ law prohibits citizen observation of elections
EPDE STATEMENT: “Foreign agents” law and its impact on independent citizen election observation in the Russian Federation ahead of the September 2021 State Duma election. On the eve of the federal parliamentary election campaign, the Russian State Duma hastily passes a whole package of repressive laws aimed at restricting Russian citizens’ participation in political and […]
Foreign agents law expanded ahead of 2021 State Duma election
Interior of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, January 20, 2017. Source: hrw.org (Reuters) With each national election in Russia, the presidential administration develops a strategy for achieving the Kremlin’s electoral goals. One element of the strategy for the 2021 State Duma elections that became obvious early on, is to allow a large […]
Statement of Solidarity over the Arrest of Citizen Observers of the Uganda 2021 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections
Campaign posters for declared winner Yoweri Museveni in Uganda’s 2021 presidential election. Source: dw.com EPDE joins the Global Network of Domestic Election Monitors (GNDEM), a network of 251 citizen observer groups located in 89 countries, in condemning the arrest and detainment of 27 citizen observers on January 14, 2021. The arrests made at the […]
Human Rights Situation in Belarus in 2020
SUMMARY the 2020 presidential election took place against the background of continuous repressions, including against direct participants in the presidential race: members of nomination groups and nominees, as well as bloggers, political activists, journalists and independent observers; the election themselves did not meet the standards of free and democratic elections, as they were marred by […]
EPDE Condemns Killing of Mohammad Yousuf Rasheed
Interior of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, January 20, 2017. Source: hrw.org (Reuters) EPDE joins the Global Network of Domestic Election Monitors (GNDEM) to condemn the murder of Mohammad Yousuf Rasheed, the Executive Director of the Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA), a fellow GNDEM member organization from Afghanistan. EPDE condemns the […]
Electoral code amended, concerns about further changes remain
Election poster in Budapest for Viktor Orban, 2018. Source: nytimes.com (Adam Berry/Getty Images). As 2020 is coming to a close, the agenda of the Hungarian parliament’s last sessions are dominated by concluding debates and voting on pending legislative initiatives, among them on the amendments to the electoral code submitted to the parliament by the […]
Post-Election political standstill, flawed electoral complaint practices, and the one-party parliament
Opposition supporters attend a rally against the results of a parliamentary election in Tbilisi, Georgia November 14, 2020. Source: REUTERS /Irakli Gedenidze Second Round of Elections On 21 November, Georgia held the runoff in 17 single mandate constituencies. The opposition candidates withdrew from the contest and did not run electoral campaigns. However, their names […]
Final observation report shows electoral process did not comply with international standards
The non-partisan observation initiative “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections” has published the final analytical report on the results of observation of the 2020 presidential elections in the Republic of Belarus. The document draws final conclusions about every phase of the election. The electoral process at all its stages did not comply with a number […]
UPDATE: Results of parallel vote tabulation
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) conducted a preliminary, internal audit of the results of the parallel vote tabulation (PVT) of the October 31 Parliamentary elections. The internal audit is a standard procedure and consists of four stages: 1. Audit of data sent by observers; 2. checking changes to the PEC protocols […]
Post-election detainees deprived of the right to a fair trial – finds new report
A coalition of Belarusian human rights defenders presented today a report entitled “Belarus. August 2020: “Justice” for Protesters.” It highlights violations of the standards of a fair trial after tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators protested the rigged presidential election and thousands were detained en masse and were convicted in August 2020. The report was […]