NDI mourns the death of Luis Maria Duarte, a member of the Institute’s Afghanistan election observation mission, who was among those killed on Thursday during a terrorist attack on the Serena Hotel in Kabul.

Luis, of Asunción, Paraguay, was one of NDI’s long-term observers for the upcoming presidential and provincial council elections. He had assisted the Institute on several earlier election missions, including in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Pakistan and Peru. He had also observed elections with the Organization of American States in Ecuador and Bolivia.

Somalia’s new federal government, formed in late 2012, faces significant challenges as it seeks to rebuild institutions, revive services for citizens, and deliver on the promise of democracy after two decades of conflict.

In early February in Bamako, Mali, a group of local gender and legal experts, including a member of the Supreme Court and a former member of parliament, came together to draft a law aimed at improving the representation of women in Mali’s government. The proposed statute included a quota requirement that at least 30 percent of each political party’s candidates in national and local elections be women. The 30 percent provision would also apply to nominations for government positions.

Waterborne diseases such as typhoid fever are endemic in Liberia and the country’s infant mortality rate is ranked as one of the highest in the world. A reason is that only 25 percent of Liberia’s four million people have access to safe drinking water, and only 14 percent have human waste collection and disposal services.

Though it has been more than 10 years since the country’s brutal civil war ended, much of the infrastructure that was destroyed has yet to be rebuilt, and citizens have little opportunity to communicate with their elected representatives about these issues.

Haiti’s fragile democracy has struggled with a host of political and economic challenges since the fall of the Duvalier family dictatorship in 1986, and elections have often been flash points for hostilities. In 2010, disputes over preliminary presidential election results caused violence to erupt across the country.

As Côte d'Ivoire struggles to achieve reconciliation and build viable democratic institutions in the wake of election-related violence in 2011, it has recognized the need for credible elections and representative institutions as essential steps for reinvigorating its democratic and economic development, according to the findings of an international assessment delegation fielded by NDI.