The Independent National Commission on Human Rights (INCHR), along with the National Election Commission (NEC) and other civil society organizations has kicked off a two-day high-level panel dialogue in Monrovia aimed at discussing elections and human rights across the country.
The two-day basic review session for the electoral and human right actors started yesterday, October 24, 2024 at the Bella Casa Hotel, with a focus on enhancing and protecting civic space and people’s participation in elections as a way of making every democratic process inclusive for all.
The session started with a turnup of representatives from the elections and human rights commissions, the Ministry of Justice, with law enforcement personnel, the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights (OHCHR), along with civil society actors from National Union of Organizations for the Disabled (NUOD), among others.
Making remarks, the chairperson of the board of commissioners at INCHR, Counsellor Dempster Browne, noted that transparency which is one of the key components of an electoral process serves as a gateway to peace.
He said the gathering was made to have different stakeholders around the table to share views of the country’s democratic landscape and review different reports from monitors on findings from the 2023 elections conducted in Liberia.
As part of the conversations, it is expected that the many different challenges alarmed during the election will be discussed by the panel in other to initiate measures for the avoidance of reoccurrence.
The INCHR boss graded the 2023 general and presidential elections as one of the best elections ever conducted in Liberia and Africa at large where a precedent was set by then incumbent president, George Weah, giving out state power to President Boakai while results were still being announced by the elections commission.
With positive signs of good and transparent elections, Cllr. Browne also lamented that there were other problems reported by monitors during the election which call for rectifications.
“There were parties campaigning before the opening of the campaign process, that was a violation. Many parties used youth as militants and there was violence caused by them in places to include the interior”, he said.
For his part, the political affairs officer of the national elections commission, Ignatius Wesseh, lauded the human rights commission for the review session which is done to look at the commission’s workings during the conduct of elections for improvement.
Wesseh said, as part of the normal review system of NEC, those at the election body are currently working on different reform mechanisms to have Liberia on par with other countries that are observing international best practices in line with more transparent and inclusive elections.
He then conveyed NEC’s appreciation to the Liberian people for conducting themselves throughout the last electoral process that enabled the commission to stair its responsibility to the fullest.
Ignatius Wesseh also revealed that NEC is committed to doing more work with the civil society organizations, human right groupings and other actors that seek its attention to promote democracy through political participation and other parts of its target.
During day one of the ongoing dialogue, several presentations were made on different topics surrounding the historicity of elections in Liberia, the Role of NEC and other actors in election and many others.
The dialogue will be climaxed after a daylong deliberation on Friday, October 25, 2024.
