TRAINING SESSION: INDEPENDENT AND NEUTRAL OBSERVATION CONTRIBUTES TO BOOSTING INTEGRITY IN ELECTIONS PROCESS (CNDH President)

The Moroccan National Human Rights Council (CNDH) organized a training session on the observation of elections for more than 140 participants, from 6 to 8 October 2011, in Harhoura, Temara (suburb of Rabat).

“This training session is held within a particular framework”, Mr. Driss El Yazami, CNDH chairperson, said during its opening session. He added that the Council (CNDH) is in charge, by law, of the election observation, the accreditation of national and international observers, and their training, not mention the new Constitution according to which the Parliament is the primary source of legislation. The next Parliament is thus of paramount importance. That's why the credibility of the process is important, he concluded.

This training session concerned CNDH and civil society trainers. Civil society actors will play a major role in the upcoming election observation, far more important than that they played in 2007, he said.

Mr. Driss El Yazami highlighted the main lessons learned from the previous CNDH election observations. He asserted that independent and neutral election observation largely contributes to boosting moral integrity in the process, improving the process through legal and organizational recommendations, etc.

For his part, Mr. Mahjoub El Haiba, Inter-ministerial Delegate for Human Rights, said that the application of civil society has a legal and constitutional basis now, “which is an important achievement for the observation of elections”.

Mr. Jeffrey England, representative of the National Democratic Institute, praised Morocco's commitment to promote a legal framework for regular observation. He noted that his institute observed the elections of 2007. It was present in 375 polling stations in 12 regions. The Institute’s observers will be part of the observation team for the 2011 parliamentary elections.

Mr. Kamal Lahbib, representative of a Moroccan network of civil society associations for election observation, highlighted various issues related to the election observation. He drew attention to the relationship between funding availability and the success of mobilization efforts for election observation. The number of observers, he said, decreased from 3200 in 2007 to 630 in 2009, to only 300 in the 2011 constitutional referendum.

This training session was organized in partnership with the National Democratic Institute (NDI). It was the first of a series of four training sessions. The other three sessions will be held on 15-16, 22-23 and 29-30 October 2011, for more than 640 participants.

These training sessions are designed to enable beneficiaries to fully grasp the principles and techniques of independent and neutral election observation and the legislative framework governing parliamentary elections in Morocco and exchange on national and international experiences in the area.