“For me, the basis of fair and free elections is genuine political competition and access to the truth for voters”, — Aivazovska

OPORA is happy to present the outcomes of the pilot for the upgraded methodology of security audit we ran in four Hromadas. The Hromadas have a different scale, security context, and the recovery levels but each of them was assessed under the unified method based on our tool. In addition, to make the data and results comparable, Civil Network OPORA created a dashboard. 

Security in Hromadas is a basic precondition to launch the electoral process. It goes beyond the physical safety. Security indicators shall be established in the law to make sure the decision to (non)conduct elections is as objective as possible. A decision-maker shall be named, too. These topics were discussed on May 21 at the meeting “Security as a Precondition for Post-War Elections: What Shall be a Mechanism for Responsible Decision-Making”.

Civil Network OPORA initiated a joint statement on the impossibility of holding democratic elections without the sustainable peace. In less than a day, more than 250 non-governmental organizations of the national and local levels signed this document. The signees include the specialized associations working on socio-political issues; human rights movements; communities of internally displaced persons, people with disabilities, and other vulnerable groups; regional organizations, and ambassadors of the Ukrainian position internationally.

Any peace process should take into account Ukraine's voice and a logical sequence of actions to restore electoral cycles: 1) a sustainable ceasefire under the security guarantees of the guarantor countries; 2) preparation for elections and restoration of the relevant infrastructure; 3) holding elections after sustainable peace is achieved, martial law is lifted, and the war is settled internationally. 

Russian Federation’s aggression against Ukraine, ongoing since 2014, has resulted in a significant displacement of people seeking safety within Ukraine. According to the Law of Ukraine “On Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Internally Displaced Persons”, adopted in 2014, an internally displaced person (hereinafter referred to as IDP) is a citizen of Ukraine, a foreigner or a stateless person who is legally present on the territory of Ukraine and has the right to permanent residence in Ukraine and who has been forced to leave or abandon their place of residence as a result of or in order to avoid the negative consequences of armed conflict, temporary occupation, widespread violence, human rights violations, and natural or man-made emergencies. 

This document is intended to draw the attention of our partners and stakeholders to the primary tasks and priority steps for the preparation of postwar elections. Civil Network OPORA has prepared its own expert vision of electoral process, which takes into account the results of previous professional discussions with official parties (Verkhovna Rada, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Central Election Commission). OPORA calls on the Parliament to hold substantive discussions in order to find systemic solutions, given the need to lay a critical amount of groundwork for the organization of postwar elections before the repeal of martial law. The success of preparation of legislative framework, prevention of Russian interference in the postwar elections, and integration into the European Union directly depend on a depoliticized high-quality discussion.

Russia is interfering with elections in democracies all over the world, resorting to any means, from cyberattacks to direct voter bribery, from sharing disinformation and disrupting society to discrediting candidates who are “unacceptable” for the Russian government. Contrariwise, they support politicians or parties ready to cooperate with the Putin's regime.

Ukraine is updating the electoral law in line with European standards and to account for new challenges. According to Olha Kotsiuruba, a senior legal advisor at the Civil Network OPORA, Ukrainian law needs improvement to align with the EU standards, specifically on campaigning out of the country and on the Internet, and also considering the spread of artificial intelligence and new EU regulations. She shared this during the round table “Campaigning Online and Out-of-Country” on November 26 in Kyiv.

Russian military aggression against Ukraine, which has been ongoing since 2014, has led to an increase in the number of people with disabilities among both civilians and the military. According to the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, the number of persons with disabilities increased by 300,000 over the two years of full-scale war and amounted to more than 3 million in June 2024. It should be understood that this number will only grow over time. As a result, Ukraine faces new challenges that have emerged in the area of political participation of the disabled. To identify these problems and find ways of solving them, Civil Network OPORA conducted more than 20 in-depth interviews with leading experts in the field of elections and inclusiveness, and commissioned a sociological survey which was carried out by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.