Staff Reporter:
The joint National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) Tech-nical Assessment Mission deployed to Bangladesh to monitor potential violence before, during, and after the country’s January 7, 2024 parliamentary election has released its final report.
“This report provides a valuable roadmap for more peaceful elections in Bangladesh’s future,” Manpreet Singh Anand, NDI’s Regional Director for the Asia-Pacific said.
“Leaders across the socio-political spectrum – including political parties, the government, and civil society – have a responsibility to reform the rules, practices, and norms of electoral politics toward nonviolence,” he added.
The document provides a thematic analysis of different types of election-related violence and in-cludes recommendations to the Bangladesh Election Commission, the executive and legislative branches of the government, political parties, civil society, and other stakeholders based on IRI’s and NDI’s comparative experience, to mitigate the risks of violence in future elections, in the fur-therance of international cooperation and with respect for the sovereignty of Bangladesh.
The mission found that the 2024 national election, including the campaign period, election day and immediate aftermath, had less physical and online violence compared to previous election cy-cles – primarily due to the absence of nationwide partisan competition and the state’s increased focus on election security, said a media release issued from Washington on March 16.
However, the Mission also found that the quality of the January election was undermined by inci-dents of violence, as well as a pre-election environment characterized by increased political polari-sation, violence among political actors, contracting civic space, and worsening freedoms of expres-sion and association.
“Election violence is a key deterrent of citizen participation,” said Johanna Kao, IRI’s Senior Direc-tor for the Asia-Pacific Division. “For Bangladesh’s elections to be fully inclusive and participa-tory, all sides need to prioritize nonviolent politics.”
During its stay in Bangladesh, the Mission’s five accredited long-term analysts met with election and government officials, security actors, political party leaders from across the political spectrum, journalists, civil society organizations including those focusing on youth, women, persons with disabilities, and religious minorities, as well as with accredited international observer missions.
This mission follows a joint pre-election assessment mission that NDI and IRI conducted from Oc-tober 8 to 11, 2023.
The observations from the pre-election assessment mission informed the structure and scope of the technical assessment, which was conducted in accordance with the laws of Bangladesh and con-sistent with the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, endorsed in 2005 at the United Nations.
IRI and NDI are nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations that support and strengthen demo-cratic institutions and practices worldwide. The Institutes have collectively observed more than 200 elections in more than 50 countries over the last 30 years.
