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Forum Brings Kenyan Youth Together Across Party, Ethnic Lines

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Young Kenyans sign the pledge.

With the motto “unity in diversity,” Kenya’s Inter-Party Youth Forum (IPYF) is bringing together young political party activists from across the political spectrum to collaborate on solutions to the most pressing issues facing the nation’s youth, including unemployment, substance abuse and disenfranchisement.

Coalition Finds Some Shortcomings in Angola’s Generally Free and Peaceful Elections

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Pictured: A group of domestic election observers trained by NDI for the 2012 Angola elections. 

While generally free and peaceful, some aspects of the recent general elections in Angola lacked transparency, which undermined the credibility of the electoral process, according to a report by the Coalition for Election Observation (Coligação para Observação Eleitoral, COE).

In Central African Republic, Civic Groups Seek to Improve Public Services

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Workshops focused on advocacy, political organizing, identifying local issues of concern, creating consensus and data analysis.

Citizens living outside of Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR), get little attention from the country’s central government and have poor access to public services like health care, electricity and education. But that situation may be changing.  The National Elections Observatory (Observatoire National des Elections, ONE), a collection of 80 civil society groups, is taking on the issue.

Nigerian Film Challenges Young Citizens to Engage with Elected Leaders

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Cast and crew prepare to film a scene on the set of “Aftercount, I Vote Wetin?”

A civic education film recently released in Nigeria asks the question, in Nigerian pidgin, “Aftercount, I Vote Wetin?” or “I Voted, Now What?” It was made by the Youngstars Foundation, a Nigerian nonprofit organization, with the goal of encouraging younger Nigerians to stay involved in the political process between elections. The group is run primarily by young people and has reached tens of thousands of youths in rural and urban Nigeria.

Persistence by Rights Group in Macedonia Leads to a Significant Win for Citizens with Disabilities

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Poraka members visit Assembly Speaker Trajko Veljanoski to urge ratification of the U.N. Convention.

It took many years, but disabled citizens in Macedonia now legally have the right to equal treatment under the law.

The change came late last year when the Assembly of the Republic of Macedonia ratified the U.N. Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a set of government commitments to give full rights to disabled persons rather than treating them as objects of charity and institutionalization. Macedonia’s ratification of the convention resulted from a long-term advocacy campaign led by a disability rights group that overcame considerable political and institutional obstacles to see its goal realized.

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