12 February 1999

Bonn, Germany: One hundred electoral monitors recruited by the United Nations Volunteers programme left for Nigeria to render support to the National Assembly and Presidential elections. The balloting is scheduled for 20 and 27 February. For a period of three weeks, the monitors will be in close contact with the local election administration, with political parties and community representatives in order to observe and report on the campaigning activities and the conduct of the elections. In teams of at least two persons, they will be deployed to one of the 12 national and regional sub-offices that the UN Electoral Assistance Secretariat has established throughout the country.

Funding is provided by the European Union; the monitors come from 13 EU member states. For the second time in the course of less than a year, the United Nations Volunteers programme is thus partnering Europe in providing electoral assistance. The July 1998 elections in Cambodia marked the first cooperation between UNV and the European Commission. More than 40 international and national UN Volunteers served at that time as long-term observers and interpreters.

In Nigeria, an advance team of twelve international and 12 national UNVs has since December been involved in the preparations for the balloting. The UNV team's task was to establish offices in the major cities of the Federation of Nigeria's 37 states. These offices will now provide logistical support for the hundreds of international monitors who will observe the elections.

Organizing and observing elections has been a key area of work for UN Volunteers since the early 1990s. Thousands of qualified professionals have since been recruited by the Bonn-based UNV programme to provide assistance to the electoral processes in Cambodia, Mozambique, South Africa, Haiti, Liberia, the Central African Republic and Bosnia.