Enhancing Domestic Election Monitoring in Southern Africa
Background
The Southern Africa Development Community Parliamentary Forum (SADC PF) was launched in 1996 as a vehicle to advance the harmonization of governance standards within the southern Africa region. The Forum supports good governance by promoting: respect for the rule of law and human rights; peace, democracy, security and stability on the basis of collective responsibility; and dialogue and cooperation. The SADC PF is comprised of elected representatives from 12 of the 14 parliaments within the SADC member countries (exceptions are the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Seychelles) and has a constituency of 1793 sitting members of parliament. Each parliament has a four-person delegation to the SADC PF that includes its presiding officer. Every delegation must include both members of government and opposition parties and at least one female MP. As a regional body of elected officials, the Forum has a particular interest in promoting free and fair elections. Until recently, key political actors in the SADC region have not had a significant presence at regional elections and as a result, monitoring has been conducted by international institutions from outside the region. In an effort to increase the capacity of regional institutions to manage their own democratic election processes, the SADC PF and NDI established a partnership to develop the Forum's capacity to observe and report on elections in the southern Africa region.
Program Activities
With technical assistance from NDI, the SADC PF has conducted a series of election observation missions in Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Mauritius, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zanzibar. NDI and the SADC PF have worked together to build on the Forum's previous election observation experiences through activities that enhance the Forum's capacity to implement, manage and observe elections in the region. Ongoing training is provided to parliamentary staff on all aspects of election monitoring, including: deployment, logistics, monitoring, and reporting.
NDI has also provided technical assistance to the SADC PF to establish a website, the SADC PF On-Line Information Center. The objective of the website is to promote democracy, conflict resolution, gender equality, regional integration and inter-parliamentary communication. This two-year program consisted of securing necessary human and computer resources, developing the website, training forum staff in the maintenance of the website, training MPs and staff at member parliaments to use the website, and creating a system for collecting information from member parliaments to include on the website.
Currently, the Institute is working with the SADC PF to develop adatabase of comparative information on national HIV/AIDS policies, strategic plans, legislation, and reports from the SADC region and beyond. NDI and the SADC PF also surveyed over 70 parliamentarians, NGO representatives, and ministers of health to identify best practices and challenges in national interventions to mitigate the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in SADC countries. The database and report on the survey findings will soon become available on the SADC PF website, www.sadcpf.org.
Contact Information
For more information on NDI's work in Southern Africa, please contact:
Brionne Dawson, Program Officer
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Updated August 2005
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