Needs Assessment Mission

 

This NAM was conducted from 1st March to 15th March by the PEV-SADC Project Director, Fabio Bargiacchi, PACTE Coordinator, Eva Palmans, PACTE Political Expert, Juvence Ramasy and Olivier Rakotonirina. Being the first NAM in the framework of the Action taken together with the current political and electoral situation of Madagascar, particularly the fact that since the independence of the country, a chronic instability is noticed within the political environment, the NAM called for an in-depth assessment of the civil society in the light of the elections 2013. Indeed, Madagascar experienced three electoral transitions the last ten years and a severe political crisis since 2009. Against this background, the main interlocutor for the mission was the civil society organisation and election observer platform KM/CNOE, which is the Malagasy member of the SADC-ESN.

 

KMF/CNOE was created in 1989 in order to observe the elections held the same year, and is currently covering all the 22 regions of Madagascar. The last 20 years, KMF/CNOE worked on citizen's education, electoral observation and was focused on its main target, which is promoting and consolidating democracy, social justice, good governance and citizen education. To reach that goal, KMF/CNOE made several trainings and operations of sensitization including few thematic such as technique of sensitization and observation, leadership, participation of citizen. Most notably, the NAM showed that there is no statistical information about electoral violence and conflict in Madagascar but that the emergence and imminent threat thereof is more of a reality in Madagascar than in many other countries in the SADC region. KMF/CNOE have previously carried out a few activities relating to issues of ERV, electoral or post-electoral conflict yet only few training on conflict management was done until the time of the mission.

The main recommendations of the mission stressed that several training occasions on conflict management would support KMF/CNOE and other CSOs to deal with issues of ERV, specifically because of the political situation since 2009, and the elections that took place 2013 – a crucial precondition for ending the crisis and longstanding state of insecurity. It was also suggest that a framework of interaction and exchange has to be put in place, allowing interaction between CSOs and other electoral stakeholders such as political parties, media and citizen, allowing CSOs to have greater impact and partaking in decision-making processes. Research on ERV is essential in order to formalise indicators and create a fundamental framework, used for measuring and assessing the evolution of ERV in Madagascar.

 

TRAININGS:


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Research Activity

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Madagascar Documentary

In the framework of the «Projet d'appui à la crédibilité et la transparence des elections » (PACTE), in close collaboration with the PEV-SADC project, a series of street-interview was done from 03 to 16 June 2013 in six regions of Madagascar. Those interviews were made in order to gather spontaneous opinion of people from different area of work, social class and level of education about the coming elections and the political situation in Madagascar.

 

More than hundred persons were interviewed. People expressed themselves about their vision of politic, desire to exercise their right to vote, the current situation of Madagascar, changes that they are expecting when the new president will be elected. A short documentary titled "my voice, my freedom" was done on the basis of these street interviews. Given the political situation of Madagascar, these interviews permit to have a small view of people's expectation which was mainly the end of the crisis and the return to the rule of law. Three other documentaries titled 'if I were president..." consisted of interviews of student from three different universities of Madagascar were also made.

 

Working with Jarreth Merz, producer of the film "An African election" about the Election in Ghana on 2008 and three Malagasy producers, a production of a documentary on electoral process is ongoing. This documentary is consisting of interviews of citizens, students, candidates, politicians, political stakeholders including Civil society and other important figure of Malagasy and international society such as several head of mission or delegation involved in the electoral process. The National Electoral Commission of Transition "CENI-T" and its president were also part of the main interlocutor for this documentary.