Assessment of Bosnia and Herzegovina capacities for elections observations

Detailed description of project Back

The elections in BiH have been fully administered by the BiH authorities since 2005 and have been generally conducted in line with international standards. However political crisis has escalated in the last couple of years and as such the 2014 general elections will be held in a challenging political atmosphere and deteriorating socio-economic conditions. Political parties are currently the main actors in implementation of the election process. They are both the candidates and legislators; the election process observers as well as election process organizers. From 2002, when the last large-scale civil NGO observer mission was implemented, to 2008, there were no significant problems in implementing elections. At that time an opinion prevailed that the election process in BIH was running smoothly, with the organization and control of local authorities, i.e. mostly by BH Central Election Commission. However, that concept, according to which the entire election process is left to political parties, becomes completely inadequate after 2008, as the political parties less and less preserve the integrity of elections and more and more resort to cooperation around control of the elections, and making room for illegitimate collection of votes.

It is therefore key to uphold the credibility and integrity of elections to support the establishment and the development of a network of BiH NGOs performing domestic observation of the entire election process. The EUD/EUSR wishes to contribute to this process and the specific objectives of this contract are therefore to :

• Provide expert advice for the 2014 elections in the area of media/advocacy strategy and detecting and addressing irregularities including frauds in the elections’ process;
• Prepare simplified project scope/or grant of EU funded project for capacity building of local NGOs in elections observation as of 2015;
• Assess media coverage during the election period, as well as overall media environment.

Type of services provided

B&S Europe provides the services of the Team Leader, while PROMAN provides a Capacity Building Officer and a Media Analyst Officer. The Team is expected to :

• Oversee the domestic election observation process in 2014 general elections;
• Prepare and perform capacity building assessment of the umbrella network of CSOs involved in elections monitoring in BiH for 2014 general elections;
• Prepare an internal report on the findings and recommendations on future EU activities in BiH in the field of electoral technical assistance;
• In line with these findings prepare simplified project scope/ description of an action for long term (3 years) capacity building grant project for CSOs to monitor elections;
• Involve the Central Elections Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as other relevant stakeholders;
• Prepare ad hoc reports that may be requested in connection with election process in 2014 elections;
• Develop and implement a media/advocacy strategy;
• Establish the methodological framework for monitoring the most important media outlets.