Nearly six months after sustained citizen protests demanding increased government accountability for corruption, Guatemalans elected former comedian and actor Jimmy Morales to serve as the country’s next president last month. Campaigning with the slogan “not corrupt, not a thief,” political newcomer Morales defeated Former First Lady Sandra Torres with 67 percent of the votes in the October 25 run-off election.

When former president of Côte d'Ivoire Laurent Gbagbo refused to step down after losing a close election to Alassane Ouattara in 2010, it triggered a conflict that left over 3,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. This year, as Côte d'Ivoire prepares for presidential elections on October 25, NDI has been working with community-based organizations, such as groups of youth, women and interfaith associations, to conduct peace messaging campaigns in at-risk communities.

A coalition of civil society organizations called Pod Lupom (Under the Magnifying Glass) is leading efforts to amend the electoral law in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and address shortcomings that led to fraud and manipulation in past elections. On October 12, 2015, one year after BiH’s general elections, the coalition brought together more than 100 elected officials, political leaders, election administrators and civil society representatives to determine whether the political will exists to tackle the issue of manipulation in future elections.

Four Tunisians -- Yassine Brahim, Rafik Halouani, Wafa Makhlouf and Sayida Ounissi -- will receive the National Democratic Institute’s (NDI) 2015 Democracy Award at a dinner on Tuesday, November 10. These courageous Tunisian leaders represent civic groups and political parties that embody the spirit of the National Dialogue acknowledged today in the award of the Nobel Peace Prize.

In the closing weeks before Haiti’s October 25 elections, six candidates made their case to the country’s 5.8 million voters at an October 6 presidential debate. The two-hour forum, part of the Anvan’n Vote (“Before We  Vote” in Haitian Creole) initiative of the Public Policy Intervention Group (Groupe d’Intervention en Affaires Publiques, GIAP), was the first of a series of six debates to which all 53 of Haiti’s presidential candidates were invited grouped by alphabetical order.  

Violence against women seized the world’s attention last year when nearly 300 schoolgirls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, a terrorist group that has been a constant source of insecurity in Nigeria’s northeast. But violence against women -- in Nigeria and around the world -- takes many forms, and much of it is under-reported.  

Colombia is home to one of the world’s longest ongoing armed conflicts, which has resulted in severe economic and social disparities, and victimized approximately 15 percent of the country’s population. Many analysts agree that, regardless of the ongoing peace negotiations between the government and the country’s largest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), peace must be constructed at the local level.