Raising the Bar

— filed under: Governance

Deepening Normative Frameworks for Election Assistance and Applying these Lessons Learned to other Areas of Democracy Assistance

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Democratic elections require more than a transparent process for accurately counting ballots on elections day. Over the years, international consensus on democratic elections has expanded to cover a broad range of issues in the pre-election environment. In this session, Partners for Democratic Change discussed some of the work that they have done in monitoring the pre-election environment in Albania. From the National Democratic Institute, Matthew Frumin discussed recent efforts to further strengthen and deepen the international norms governing election processes, including the development of the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, endorsed by 35 intergovernmental and international nongovernmental organizations in the field. Scott Hubli discussed how successful methodologies from the elections field (building international consensus on norms and standards, coupled with support for increased infrastructure for international and domestic monitoring) are being applied in other areas of democracy assistance, whether in terms of norms for democratic political parties or benchmarks for democratic parliaments.

Panelists:

Juliana Hoxha, Director, Partners for Democratic Change Albania

Mrs. Hoxha has over ten years of experience in NGO sector development and good governance. Her experience includes a long and successful working relationship with USAID, other international donors and local organizations in Albania. She has a rich background in organizational development and management, project design, proposal writing, cross-sector relations, program evaluation and good governance. Mrs. Hoxha also has extensive experience in grant program design and management, especially umbrella grants for local organizations. She has excellent interpersonal skills and proven supervisory, organizational and leadership skills. She has developed strong professional relationships with the Albanian NGO community, local government, donor community and relevant government institutions and has seven years of experience managing three USAID cooperative agreements and grant programs. Mrs. Hoxha is an expert trainer and consultant in and outside the country, mostly in NGO sector development and its relation to other sectors. Mrs. Hoxha facilitated the discussions of the first NGO-government working group on drafting a new NGO law in Albania, a five year long initiative. She assisted with the design of a transparent process to ensure public input into the draft law. In addition, she has designed and implemented several policy advocacy campaigns including the Albanian Constitution, several draft laws and public campaigns. She was also the recipient of the ORT International Award of Achievement for the Contribution to the Advancement of Civil Society in Albania in December of 2000.

Matthew Frumin, Senior Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa, National Democratic Institute

Matthew Frumin is a senior advisor to NDI’s Middle East and North Africa programs, based in Washington, D.C. He is an expert in international electoral matters and has been affiliated with the Institute since 1992, having participated in international election observation missions to and provided election law commentaries for more than a dozen countries in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia and the Middle East.

Before joining NDI fulltime in 2007, Mr. Frumin was special counsel at the law firm of Steptoe & Johnson. In 2000, he ran for Congress as the Democratic candidate in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, located just west of Detroit, comprising northwestern Wayne and southwestern Oakland counties, where Mr. Frumin was born and raised. During the Clinton administration, Mr. Frumin served as a special assistant to the Under-Secretary of State for Global Affairs, where he provided policy advice and support to the undersecretary on matters relating to democracy, human rights, labor, women’s issues and the rule of law. Mr. Frumin graduated from George Washington University Law School, having earlier earned his BA in American Studies from the University of Michigan.

K. Scott Hubli, Director of Governance Programs, National Democratic Institute

K. Scott Hubli is the director of governance programs at NDI. He previously served as a senior advisor with NDI’s Executive Office, and has directed the Institute’s governance programs once before, from 2000 to 2006. From 2006 to 2007, he served as the lead parliamentary development advisor with the Bureau for Development Policy at the United Nations Development Programme in New York. In this capacity, he provided policy and technical support to UNDP’s 50 parliamentary development programs around the world; he also directly managed UNDP’s $8-million Global Programme for Parliamentary Strengthening (GPPS). In partnership with DFID and the World Bank Institute, UNDP’s GPPS hosted a major conference that assembled all of the donors actively engaged in parliamentary strengthening to review trends and best practices. GPPS also includes a robust regional program in the Middle East and North Africa, and, in addition to supervising staff in the region, Mr. Hubli conducted program design and evaluation missions in Algeria and Lebanon. Also while at UNDP, he was asked to present evidence at the House of Commons in 2007, along with co-panelist then-DFID Secretary of State Hillary Benn, in support of an Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group inquiry on parliamentary strengthening.

As the director of NDI’s Governance programs for six years, Mr. Hubli provided technical support to the Institute’s legislative strengthening, public integrity, rule of law and local governance programs worldwide. During his tenure, he conducted assessments or training missions in 25 countries, including several joint parliamentary assessments with USAID. He has been an advocate for greater donor coordination on parliamentary development, as well as for the development of international minimum standards for democratic parliaments. While at NDI, he conducted the first comprehensive review of Sweden’s parliamentary development portfolio. He has played a leading role in facilitating international consensus on normative standards for democratic parliaments, participating in the expert working group advising the International Parliamentary Union on its book, Parliament and Democracy in the 21 st Century: a Guide to Good Practice and supporting the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association’s Benchmarks for Democratic Legislatures.

Moderator:

Teresa Crawford, Director, Partners for Democratic Change

Teresa has over 10 years of experience working with civil society organizations to help them make better use of information and information technology in their work. She has worked in over 30 countries on issues as diverse as eradicating violence against women in war, disability rights and minority civic participation. From 2006 to 2009 she was the Director of the Advocacy and Leadership Center at the Institute for Sustainable Communities and built a robust training and capacity building program for CSOs with a focus on collaborative advocacy and transformational leadership. An experienced trainer, manager and researcher Teresa is also the co-founder of IPKO, the first post-war Internet service provider in Kosovo. IPKO is now a multimillion dollar company and Teresa is on the board of IPKO Foundation, the first endowed local foundation in the region. Teresa has a degree in politics and peace & justice studies from the University of San Francisco and a Master's degree in nonprofit management and policy from NYU.