The Weekly Chronicle

The meeting was chaired by ECP's Additional Director General (DG) Gender and attended by representatives from the Trust for Democratic Education and Accountability -- Free and Fair Election Network (TDEA-FAFEN), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Development Alternative Initiatives (DAI) Tabeer Project, and Network for Electoral Participation (NEP). TDEA-FAFEN representatives presented their mobilization and facilitation efforts, as well as their robust monitoring methodology implemented across 103 districts. The ECP representative emphasized the need for civil society efforts to be synergized to avoid duplication and encouraged the organizations to implement TDEA-FAFEN's methodology in the second phase of the Women NIC and Voter Registration Campaign. The European Union's Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM) shared their detailed report on the 2018 General Elections with TDEA-FAFEN representatives. The report was presented by EU-EOM's Chief Observer, Michael Gahler, and TDEA-FAFEN representatives shared their views on the report and provided recommendations for future electoral reforms in Pakistan. A round-table discussion was also organized by EU-EOM to discuss the findings of their observation report in detail, with TDEA-FAFEN representatives in attendance. Mainstream media outlets in Pakistan provided extensive coverage to FAFEN's observation report on by-elections. FAFEN's trained non-partisan citizen observers were deployed on polling day to observe and report on the election environment, incidents of electoral and political violence, pre-polling preparations, voting and counting processes, ECP forms-filling processes, and barriers to women's voting. The media coverage highlighted FAFEN's report and provided links to the reports. The Citizens' Voice Project (CVP) shared FAFEN's election media updates with Election Support Group (ESG) members and other stakeholders via email. The updates were prepared on a daily basis through monitoring of print and electronic media and aimed to analyze key electoral developments and share them with relevant stakeholders. Six FAFEN election media updates were shared with ESG members via email from October 25 to 31, 2018.