FENA News

ODIHR launches an election observation mission for the upcoming local elections in BiH

SARAJEVO, August 30 (FENA) – The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) today launched an election observation mission for the local elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will be held on October 6 this year.

The head of the ODIHR election observation mission, Corien Jonker, said at a press conference in Sarajevo that the Mission begins its work after the official invitation of the competent institutions, and after the needs assessment mission was carried out in May this year.

“Our Mission consists of a core team consisting of eleven international experts with headquarters in Sarajevo. In addition to our core team, 20 long-term observers will arrive next Wednesday and will be deployed throughout the country. In addition, ODIHR intends to engage 300 additional observers in the short term, who will arrive in Bosnia and Herzegovina a few days before the elections,” said Jonker.

According to her, the mission will assess whether the elections are in compliance with the conditions of the OSCE and other international obligations and standards of democratic elections, as well as with domestic legislation.

Jonker added that the observers will carefully monitor all key aspects of the election, including the campaign and activities offline and online (on social networks), the work of the election administration at all levels, the election legislation and its implementation, respect for fundamental freedoms, the work of public and private media and solutions disputes related to elections.

The observers will also assess the implementation of previous ODIHR recommendations.

Meetings with representatives of authorities and political parties as well as representatives of organizations civil society, the media and the international community, Jonker added, are an integral part of the observation process.

“As far as our reporting is concerned, we are not interested in the election results, but rather in the election process. The role of our election observation mission is not to carry out supervision, our only role is observation, that is, monitoring, and our evaluations will be published in the reports,” added Jonker.

According to Jonker, the interim report will be published approximately two weeks before the elections in order to inform the public and the media about the activities of the observation mission.

The day after the election, a statement on preliminary observations and conclusions will be issued at a press conference.

The final report with an assessment of the entire election process, which will also contain recommendations, will be published a few months after the end of the election process.