15 May 1997

Bonn, Germany: In a repeated support effort the United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV), headquartered in Bonn, is providing assistance for the municipal elections in Bosnia on 13/14 September held under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This coming weekend 600 UNV-recruited electoral supervisors will travel via Zagreb to Bosnia.

IThe electoral supervisors come from 35 countries. They will oversee the elections and return to their home countries following the counting of the votes. The assignment will begin with on-site training. In total, 2,300 supervisors will track the voting at the same number of polling stations.

With the recruitment and organization of electoral supervisors, UNV continues the successful cooperation with the OSCE that began more than one year ago during parliamentary and presidential elections in Bosnia. UNV sent approximately 650 of the total 1,200 electoral supervisors for those elections. In the preparatory stages for the present municipal election, roughly 175 experts were also recruited by UNV to help with election registration and to act as adjudicators.

United Nations Volunteers has supported international election missions for years. The last such mission was in July 1997 in Liberia. Hundreds of UN Volunteers provided electoral support at each of the UN electoral missions in Cambodia (1993), Mozambique (1994), South Africa (1994) and Haiti (1995). The cooperation with the OSCE in Bosnia in preparing and supervising the parliamentary and municipal elections represents the first time that UNV has provided large scale support for the work of a regional organization.