Paulina Chavez
Press Secretary
[email protected]
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) expresses its profound concern over the rising incidence of acts to intimidate, threaten or constrain citizen election observers, who protect the fundamental right to vote. In particular, NDI condemns the detention of Dr. Sarah Bireete of Uganda, the chairperson of the Global Network of Domestic Election Monitors (GNDEM).
NDI calls for the immediate release of Dr. Bireete, and calls on Ugandan authorities to respect nonpartisan citizen election observers and their work defending the right to vote.
On December 30, Dr. Sarah Bireete, a nonpartisan election observer and respected human rights activist in Uganda, who is the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Governance and the chairperson of GNDEM, was arrested by Ugandan police following a raid on her home. With Uganda’s elections upcoming on January 15th, Dr. Bireete remains in prison with only limited access to her lawyers, family, and medical attention.
Events in Uganda are not isolated. The first-ever “Report on the Global State of Nonpartisan Citizen Election Observers’ Rights” documents how many states around the world use legal measures, accreditation and other procedures, as well as violence, intimidation and harassment to curtail the rights of nonpartisan citizen observers. These attacks on citizen election observers undermine citizen participation in elections and citizens’ faith in the electoral process. The report, released in December 2025, was produced by GNDEM in collaboration with NDI.
“The right to vote is one of the most fundamental elements of any democracy, and citizen observers are defending that right, as well as exercising their own freedom of association,” said NDI President, Tamara Cofman Wittes. “These observers strengthen the integrity and credibility of elections, making democracy more meaningful for all citizens. States must respect the rights of citizens to organize and to monitor their own country’s elections.”
Over the past four decades, NDI has supported hundreds of civic organizations and networks in every region of the world to systematically monitor elections, and facilitated the drafting of the “Declaration of Global Principles for Nonpartisan Election Observation and Monitoring by Citizen Organizations” and the formation of GNDEM. The development of nonpartisan citizen observer organizations is one of the most important democratic advancements of the past four decades.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders explicitly recognizes election observers as human rights defenders and reminds Member States “to protect them from any violence, threats, retaliation, adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of their legitimate exercise of their rights and freedoms.” The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and the European Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) have similarly declared election observers as human rights defenders who “safeguard a broad range of fundamental rights.”
