Milestones in EISA's involvement in the DRC
In recent years, Congolese stakeholders have been regularly associated with and invoved in EISA's election-related activities in SADC, such as
- SA General Elections of June 1999: Ms Anne Kalonji (Christian Women for Democracy and Development) participated in the SADC ESN observer mission
- Zimbabwe Parliamentary Elections 24-25 June 2000: Jerome Bonso from the LINELIT was part of the SADC ESN team
- Zimbabwe Presidential Elections March 2002: A delegation from the Ligue des Electeurs, led by Paul Nsapu joined the EISA mission
- Delegates from the DRC participated in observer missions to the recent elections organised in South Africa (April 2004) and Malawi (May 2004).
Several Congolese political parties attended an EISA conference on Electoral Systems Reform in Johannesburg, September 2003. Among participants PPRD, RCD, UDPS can be named. The MLC apologised for not attending.
EISA organised a conference in Kinshasa, from the 21 to 24 January 2003, on Electoral Perspectives and the Process of Democratisation in the DRC: Lessons from SADC. This conference brought together more than 120 participants from all 11 provinces of the DRC and experts on election processes from the SADC region
EISA has been instrumental in the drafting, development and promotion of a set of electoral standards for electoral management bodies, civil society organisations, political parties, elections observers and monitors. This led to the adoption of common guiding principles named Principles for Election Management, Monitoring and Observation in the SADC region (PEMMO). A strong EISA-sponsored delegation made up of representatives from the DRC IEC and civil society took an active part in the process and in the regional conference on PEMMO held in Johannesburg, from 5-6 November 2003.
EISA sponsored the visit of teams for the DRC IEC to South Africa in November 2003. With the collaboration of the South African Independent Electoral Commission, the team participated, in the registration of voters. In March 2004, once again under the auspices of EISA, a strong delegation of the DRC IEC visited the Botswana IEC.
EISA developed and implemented various conflict prevention, management and transformation, as well as election-related training programmes, aimed at enhancing capacity with key role-players to deal with electoral conflict.