Elections Monitoring Capacity Building

The project is designed to help ensure a transparent competitive and inclusive electoral process during the 2012 parliamentary elections in Ukraine. One of the project’s components provides funding and technical assistance to Opora a Ukrainian civil society group in order to strengthen its ability to carry out domestic election observation efficiently. Project initiatives also include the deployment of 250 long-term domestic observers to Ukrainian regions for the purposes of analyzing and reporting on the electoral process. Observer responsibilities include pinpointing fraud in electoral district formation and identifying irregularities related to party processes campaigning and procedural adherence to electoral law. The project’s second component focuses on strengthening Opora’s public relations and outreach strategy which integrates gender equality issues. The strategy relies on media coverage geographic information systems mapping and social networking tools to communicate electoral violations and to ensure widespread public awareness of election processes.

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include: increased effectiveness of domestic long-term observation efforts for Ukrainian elections; and increased responsiveness of election stakeholders to key electoral process issues in Ukraine that are identified through domestic long-term observation efforts.