Transition Monitoring Group

ion and Monitoring by Citizen Organizations and Code of Conduct for Nonpartisan Citizen Election Observers and Monitors embodies TMG’s approach to rights, responsibilities and ethical obligations of nonpartisan citizen election monitoring. Thus, TMG is based on the precepts that: Authority of government derives from the will of the people expressed in genuinely democratic elections; Everyone has the right to participate in government and public affairs, including by seeking to be elected and to vote in genuinely democratic elections; Elections therefore belong to the people, and citizens have a right to know whether elections honestly and accurately reflect the people’s will. Nonpartisan (politically impartial and independent) election monitoring by citizens is an extension of the rights to genuine elections, to participate in public affairs, to associate and to seek, receive and impart information in the electoral context. It is both an exercise of fundamental rights and a form of human rights defending, because nonpartisan election monitoring by citizens seeks to safeguard electoral integrity, including the rights to participate in electoral and political processes. That is inseparable from defending the ability of citizens to exercise a broad array of civil and political rights and is affected by the actions of a range of governmental authorities, as well as political contestants.