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Welcome to the Online Toolkit for Electoral AssistanceA new home for tools to help plan, design and implement electoral assistance projects in an effective and coherent manner. Elections are the means through which people voice their preferences and choose their representatives. Elections are a powerful tool: they can confer legitimacy on the institutions or representatives that emerge from them, or call their legitimacy into question. Elections are fundamentally political processes and are a critical element of the UN’s mandate and UNDP’s democratic governance work. Ultimately, UNDP assistance aims to ensure that elections are credible and fully owned nationally, that there is awareness of elections being part of a broader democratic governance framework, and that elections provide a vital means to safeguard human rights, exercise choice and express opinions. To advance these goals, UNDP helps countries acquire the necessary skills to organize elections that are both credible and enjoy the confidence of electoral stakeholders. These days, many technical assistance initiatives offered by UNDP are increasingly targeted at institutional development of electoral management bodies (EMBs) in the periods between electoral events, taking the Electoral Cycle Approach. This Toolkit is designed to guide UNDP colleagues and other electoral practitioners at different stages of electoral cycle projects, by explaining core concepts at each stage, procedures to be followed, and linking to useful tools that are available both in UNDP and outside of UNDP. This is a living Toolkit, one that evolves over time by addressing new issues and presenting fresh resources. The Democratic Governance Group, Bureau for Development Policy (DGG/BDP) will regularly update the best practices and links, in keeping with the UNDP practice of sharing knowledge from around the world. |
