27 May 1999

Bonn, Germany: More than 60 short-term EU electoral monitors will leave for Indonesia within the next few days to join 30 long-term EU Monitors recruited by the United Nations Volunteers programme.

The European Union monitors will offer support to Indonesian electoral officials, political parties and local communities. Balloting is scheduled for two weeks, as of 7 June 1999. 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 two persons, they will be deployed in thirteen provinces throughout the country.

The European Union provides funding; the 92 monitors come from 13 EU member states. For a third time in the course of less than a year, the United Nations Volunteers programme has assisted the EU 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 February 1999 over 100 electoral monitors served in Nigeria.

The advance team of 30 long-term monitors has been deployed in Indonesia since mid-May to prepare the ground for the 62 short-term monitors who are to arrive by the end of this month. The EU team's task is to observe in a neutral and an impartial way the national electoral process. After the elections 15 of the long-term electoral monitors will continue to observe and monitor post-electoral activities and developments.

Organizing and observing elections has been a key area of work for UN Volunteers since the early 1990s. Over 5,000 professional electoral observers have since been recruited by the Bonn-based UNV programme to provide electoral assistance in Cambodia, Mozambique, South Africa, Haiti, Liberia, the Central African Republic and Bosnia for the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union.