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Dear Friends, 

We are happy to be given the opportunity to present our organisation and our activities in this forum as we are also dealing with elections activities, though from a different perspective. 

The Center for Civic Initiatives (CCI) is a BiH NGO working to promote citizen's active participation in democracy and elections. 

Beyond the establishment of a democratic government, there is nothing more important in a democracy than the role of its civil society actors. Advocacy is important in a free and democratic society, because effective advocacy secures a place at the table of power and decision-making for all its citizens, including the youth, women and other groups who have been historically marginalized. 

CCI and the NGO network comprising of 12 regional coalitions that counts 254 NGOs conducted the Election Monitoring Campaign in every municipality in BiH. The goals of the campaign were to: ensure free and fair elections, to increase voter turnout and to strengthen the NGO network in BiH. 

"We will have to take control of our own Elections and that can only be done if we take an active part in all aspects of the election process."

The Municipal elections in April marked a transitional process in which a bigger share of the responsibility was given to the national officials. BiH citizens and election officials will take over the responsibility for the elections, as the international community will decrease its involvement substantially in the near future. With international supervisors decreasing in numbers, it is very important that we enhance the capacity of BiH citizens to monitor their own elections and to ensure that they are conducted in a free and fair manner. We will have to take control of our own elections and that can only be done if we take active part in all aspects of the election process. 

Through seminars with small groups CCI educated, face to face, 4600 citizens on the following topics: significance of elections, election rules and regulations, responsibility of election officials, significance of election monitoring, how to vote. Through its historic initiative CCI managed to engage more than 4200 citizens in monitoring activities, and consequently more than 2100 polling stations in the April elections had CCI-coordinated observers in place on election day. A final report on the monitoring activities will be published in June 2000. 

The activities foreseen in the coming months cover voters registration, work of the municipal election commissions, location of polling stations and political parties election campaigning. 

We are looking forward to working with you on some of these issues in the future. 

Thank you. 

For more information on previous and future activities please contact our Project Manager, Ljubo Janjic, phone number 066 195 675 or Public Relation Officer Majda Behrem Stojanov, phone number 066 175 767.