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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (157557)	2/2/2005 10:48:31 AM
From: GST	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

What the UN Did in the Iraqi elections: <The efforts of the UN’s election support and assistance have directly contributed to a number of significant milestones, including: • Training of Election Workers: UN election experts, both inside and outside of Iraq, trained more than 8,000 Iraqi electoral workers to assist the IECI in conducting a fair and free election. In the run up to the elections, ongoing violence took the lives of 8 of these brave Iraqis. • Voter Registration: It is estimated that 14.2 million Iraqis registered to vote. To encourage voter participation, Sunnis living in the especially violent cities of Falluja, Ramadi, and Mosul were able to register and vote on the same day and cast ballots anywhere in their province. • Party / Candidate Registration: Roughly 21 million ballots were distributed with the 223 political entities registered, comprising more than 19,000 candidates. 111 of the registered parties, representing 7,785 candidates, ran for the national elections while the rest competed for regional and local assembly votes. These candidate rolls reflect diversity and coalition building, suggesting that the proportional representation system recommended by the UN has been successful in accomplishing a significant goal – encouraging the participation of Iraqi moderates. • Candidate lists included mainstream Shiite groups, Sunni Arab groups, and Kurdish groups as well as representatives from other tribes and minority religious sects, showing that groups used the electoral process to form alliances and attract widespread support. All lists also included a large contingent of women candidates (almost 25%) as recommended by the UN and required by the interim constitution. • Voting in Iraq: Voting took place on January 30th, 2005. The UN helped to recruit and train up to 148,000 poll workers for the 5,300 polling centers and 29,000 polling stations established mostly in government schools and other neutral buildings. It is still too early to determine how many Iraqis voted, but early reports indicate that voter participation was higher than expected, even reaching 100% in some Kurdish areas. It is estimated that it will take at least 10 days to count all of the votes. They are being counted at the polling stations and will then be transported to polling centers. More than 200 employees working on 80 computers will tabulate the results. • Expatriate Voting: UN staff who helped Afghan voters in Iran and Pakistan were redeployed to help Iraqi nationals living abroad to vote. The International Organization for Migration coordinated the voting for the roughly 1.2 million expatriate Iraqis. There were 75 registration facilities operating in 14 countries in North America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East and voting took place January 28-30. The UN established a technical assistance program, through the Electoral Observation Trust Fund, to support the IECI in monitoring the out-of-country voting initiative. Early estimated indicate a 94% participation rate abroad. • Election Monitors and Observers: Between party agents and national observers, it is estimated there were more than 55,000 Iraqis monitoring the election. Because the UN provided technical assistance, it could not be a monitoring body. • UN presence: The Secretary-General has pledged to provide adequate UN staff and resources to Iraq for the election process. There are currently 58 substantive and support staff in Iraq, 22 of whom are elections experts led by Carlos Valenzuela. In addition, the UN disbursed more than $100 million from a UN Elections Trust Fund to help organize the vote and coordinate the assistance of the international community.>