Summary
Laws must be consistent with international human rights.
Election Parts
Issues
- The Legal Framework and Dispute Resolution
- Legal Framework and Vote Counting and Tabulation
- The Legal Framework and the Media
- The Legal Framework for Electoral Systems and Boundary Delimitation
- Choice of the Electoral System
- The Legal Framework and Voter Registration
- The Right to an Effective Remedy, Including Challenging Election Results
- The Legal Framework and Candidacy and Campaigning
- The Legal Framework and Election Management
- International Human Rights Obligations and the Legal Framework
- Legal Framework for Voting Operations
- The Legal Framework and Voter Education
Criteria
- The legal framework for elections included the protection of fundamental rights and made international obligations domestically binding
- The principles of rule of law were promoted
- Electoral dispute resolution took place in accordance with the principles of the rule of law
- The electoral system allowed multiparty participation and actual and equal representation
- The legal framework provided citizens with an effective (timely and enforceable) remedy throughout the electoral process
- The legal framework for elections was consistent with international human rights
Quotes
- The Contracting Parties shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms set out in the present convention.
- Member States recognize that the rule of law involves not only the promulgation of good laws that are in conformity with the provisions on human rights, but also a good judicial system, a good system of administration, and good management of the State apparatus.
- The High Contracting Parties shall secure to everyone within their jurisdiction the rights and freedoms defined in Section I of this convention.
- The Member States of the Organization of African Unity parties to the present Charter shall recognize the rights, duties and freedoms enshrined in this Chapter and shall undertake to adopt legislative or other measures to effect to them.
- Where the exercise of any of the rights or freedoms referred to in Article 1 is not already ensured by legislative or other provisions, the States Parties undertake to adopt, in accordance with their constitutional processes and the provisions of this Convention, such legislative or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to those rights or freedoms.
- 1. Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the present Covenant, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. 2. Where not already provided for by existing legislative or other measures, each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take the necessary steps, in accordance with its constitutional processes and with the provisions of the present Covenant, to adopt such legislative or other measures as may be necessary to give effect to the rights recognized in the present Covenant.
- States must take effective measures to ensure that all persons entitled to vote are able to exercise that right.
- Article 2, paragraph 2, requires that States Parties take the necessary steps to give effect to the Covenant rights in the domestic order. It follows that, unless Covenant rights are already protected by their domestic laws or practices, States Parties are required on ratification to make such changes to domestic laws and practices as are necessary to ensure their conformity with the Covenant. Where there are inconsistencies between domestic law and the Covenant, article 2 requires that the domestic law or practice be changed to meet the standards imposed by the Covenant's substantive guarantees.
- Whatever the form of constitution or government is in force, the Covenant requires States to adopt such legislative and other measures as may be necessary to ensure that citizens have an effective opportunity to enjoy the rights it protects.
- The obligations of the Covenant in general and article 2 in particular and binding on every State Party as a whole. All branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial), and other public or governmental authorities, at whatever level - national, regional or local - are in a position to engage the responsibility of the State Party. The executive branch that usually represents the State Party internationally, including before the Committee, may not point to the fact that an action incompatible with the provisions of the Covenant was carried out by another branch of government as a means of seeking to relieve the State Party from responsibility for the action and consequent incompatibility. This understanding flows directly from the principle contained in article 27 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, according to which a State Party 'may not invoke the provisions of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty....In this respect, the Committee reminds States Parties with a federal structure of the terms of article 50, according to which the Covenant's provisions 'shall extend to all parts of federal states without any limitations or exceptions.
- They reaffirm the particular significance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the international Covenants on Human Rights and other relevant international instruments of their joint and separate efforts to stimulate and develop universal respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; they call on all participating States to act in conformity with those international instruments and on those participating States, which have not yet done so, to consider the possibility of acceding to the covenants.
- Tak[e] all necessary measures to eliminate laws, regulations and practices that discriminate, directly or indirectly, against citizens in their right to participate in public affairs on grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status, or on the basis of disability.
- In the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the participating States will act in conformity with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They will also fulfill their obligations as set forth in the international declarations and agreements in this field, including inter alia the International Covenants on Human Rights, by which they may be bound.
- The participating States will fulfill in good faith their obligations under international law, both those obligations arising from the generally recognized principles and rules of international law and those obligations arising from treaties or other agreements, in conformity with international law, to which they are parties. In exercising their sovereign rights, including the right to determine their laws and regulations, they will conform with their legal obligations under international law.
- In exercising this right, they will ensure that their laws, regulations, practices and policies conform with their obligations under international law and are brought into harmony with the provisions of the Declaration on Principles and other CSCE commitments.
- The participating States...recognize the need to make further peaceful efforts concerning human rights, democracy and the rule of law within the context of security and co-operation in Europe, individually and collectively, to make democratic advances irreversible and prevent any falling below the standards laid down in the principles and provisions of the Final Act, the Vienna Concluding Document, the Document of the Copenhagen Meeting, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe and the present document.
- Considering the important contribution of international instruments in the field of human rights to the rule of law at a national level, the participating States reaffirm that they will consider acceding to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other relevant international instruments, if they have not yet done so.
- Domestic law consistent with the Charter of the United Nations and other international obligations of the State in the field of human rights and fundamental freedoms is the juridical framework within which human rights and fundamental freedoms should be implemented and enjoyed and within which all activities referred to in the present Declaration for the promotion, protection and effective realization of those rights and freedoms should be conducted.
- The national legal framework is expected to provide a basis for the conduct of an electoral process that is in accordance with international standards for genuine and democratic elections and should include guarantees for the exercise of fundamental freedoms and political rights associated with elections.
- The constitutional and legal framework should: guarantee fundamental freedoms and human rights, promote good governance and the values of political stability.
- Electoral systems should promote and protect fundamental human rights as well as the secrecy of the ballot.
- States should take the necessary legislative steps and other measures, in accordance with their constitutional processes, to guarantee the rights and institutional framework for periodic and genuine, free and fair elections, in accordance with their obligations under international law.
- Domestic laws regulating freedom of assembly must be consistent with the international instruments ratified by that state, and the legitimacy of domestic laws will be judged accordingly. Domestic laws must also be interpreted and implemented in conformity with the relevant international and regional jurisprudence.