NIHR participates in monitoring State Duma elections

Moscow, Sept. 21 (BNA): The National Institution for Human Rights (NIHR) has participated in monitoring the elections to the Russian State Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia) on September 17-19. The NIHR participation was at an invitation extended by the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation. NIHR Chairman Ali Ahmed Al Durazi, held, along a group of foreign and Arab observers and experts, several meetings with officials supervising the elections. He also visited election committees and polling stations, and he was briefed on the electoral processes and the electronic voting mechanism, used for the first time on a large scale. Al Durazi said that qualified national institutions known for their serious human rights work are selected to carry out the tasks of independent and impartial monitoring of the electoral process. The NIHR boasts a vast experience in monitoring local and regional elections, he added. It monitored the parliamentary and municipal elections in Bahrain in 2014 and 2018, and participated in observing the legislative elections in Jordan and the regional elections in Morocco in 2015 within the Arab Network for National Human Rights Institutions team, he said. Al Durazi said that the observers focused on the voting process, especially with regard to the independence and impartiality of the elections, the assessment of the conditions of the organization and conduct and the extent to which they adhered to the constitutional regulations and legislative and regulatory texts related to elections.