UN wraps up electoral assistance after Nepal polls
7 May 2008 - The United Nations Electoral Assistance Office in Nepal is wrapping up after providing technical aid and advice to
the country's Election Commission for last month's Constituent Assembly polls.
"The role of the Electoral Assistance Office has ended," Fida Nasrallah, Chief Electoral Advisor with the UN Mission in
Nepal (UNMIN), said today. She will deliver a final report in June based on the written reports of electoral advisors.
"I would describe the experience overall as having been extremely successful," she said, adding that it was "very
challenging, demanding a lot of patience and diplomacy."
All 25 political parties winning seats in the 10 April polls have now submitted their lists of candidates to the
Election Commission, with the percentage of women candidates at just below one third of the elected Constituent
Assembly, up from 6 per cent in the previous election.
Once the Commission announces the final results of the election, the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly must take
place within 21 days, UMNIN said. The Assembly will then be tasked with drawing up a new constitution for the country,
which has emerged from a decade-long civil war that claimed an estimated 13,000 lives before the Government and Maoist
rebels signed a peace accord in 2006.
On election day, UN electoral advisors visited polling centres to monitor the process, and since then have helped
analyze the election results. They have also trained political parties in selecting candidates to meet quota
requirements, as well as setting up media monitoring for non-electoral periods.
ENDS