This UNDP guide is designed as a knowledge product for practitioners in the field of governance and electoral assistance. It identifies strategic approaches and forms of programming that can help to anticipate and prevent the types of violent conflict that frequently accompany elections and set back development in emerging democracies or post-war societies.
Entry points and sustainable programming
- Technical assistance to electoral processes and activities such as training and education projects provide a strategic entry point for conflict prevention programming. Because electoral assistance is often provided throughout the electoral cycle, this gives an opportunity to give operational practice to the idea of mainstreaming, short-term crises often generate the need for long-term reforms.
- Technical assistance is directly related to capacity development, particularly in the context of extending the reach of professional standards and best practices. This lesson resonates in several of the case studies. UNDP was often seen as well-suited to addressing professional standards and codes of conduct by the news media and in the arena of voter education. In addition, UNDP’s work with political parties in many of the case studies stands out as a particularly effective focus of effort with regard to conflict prevention.
- Conducting programming that focuses on stakeholder consultations and inclusive dialogue processes has proven time and again to be an effective approach to conflict prevention programming. Indeed, virtually all of the case studies illustrate in a direct way the value of a dialogue-based approach to programming. While it is not in all cases easy or inevitable to involve all major stakeholders in such dialogues, the principle of inclusiveness recurs as an important lesson learned in these cases. Local ownership and leadership development seem to be the critical ingredients of successful dialogue processes, along with the importance of focusing the substance of the dialogue on general principles which all stakeholders can support.
- While focusing on electoral cycles and key election events (e.g., voting, counting, proclamation), many of the case studies reveal the importance of revisiting the electoral system and constitutional and legal frameworks under which elections are held. In Ghana, for example, a lesson learned is the need to engage the stakeholders in dialogues with experts on the range of electoral system options available and the matching of these options to local conditions. Similarly, it was deemed important in Sierra Leone not just to focus on high-profile national elections that make the international press, but also on local or municipal elections that may garner less attention from outside but are critical to establishing processes and relationships among local stakeholders.
- There are clearly limits to what UNDP can achieve in volatile contexts. Even though a widespread and well-considered assessment of risks was conducted in Kenya, for example, and a program of preventive measures was put into place, the violence that erupted after the December 2007 election results were announced unfolded too quickly and with too much ferocity for it to be fully prevented.
- Likewise, even the best intentions and well-considered ideas, if pushed from outside, may meet stiff resistance from local stakeholders. In both Bangladesh and Kenya, a sensitive and ‘light-touch’ approach by the international community can be counselled, even though there is a risk that internal resistance will mean a less effective conflict prevention effort. Another clear risk is seen in programming that is designed or imple-mented ‘late’ in the electoral cycle, as was the case with training of police officials in Nigeria when the training took place late in the process and too close to the voting period.
- Even when all due diligence is done to evaluate the context, strategically design programming, and put into place measures to pre-empt a turn to violence, preventive measures are not inevitably successful. It is never clear whether more preventive action would have been successful, or whether the preventive actions that were taken helped to prevent a bad situation from being even worse. The limits to understanding what could have been done—or done differently—to prevent a worse outcome are inherent in the challenge of conflict prevention when crises and violence erupt.
- Similarly, because electoral conflict is related to longstanding and deep-rooted social tensions, preventive efforts are long-term processes that involve transformation of these root causes over time. This lesson counsels some degree of patience in working with local stakeholders and their relationships, and for the need for resources and strategic design that focuses on long-term, sustainable efforts over several electoral cycles. Just as an electoral event passes, it is never too early to begin working to begin the analysis, design, and programming in anticipation of the very next electoral process.
Minimising risks, maximizing returns
