Topic: Promoting Peaceful Post-Election Transitions
Country: Canada
Delegate Name: Mary Bryan
School: Forest Hills Eastern High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Canada position papers GLIMUN 2008 committees
Canada promotes peaceful post-election transitions. There are many negative aspects to a violent post-election transition. One negative aspect could be that the economy would fail and all citizens of a country would be affected. With violence infiltrating the government, many companies become financially unstable. When violence comes into play, citizens die, and the country mourns there lose. The social climate grows morbid with citizens mourning over their loved one’s life. Canada’s government is parliamentary monarchy therefore does not have the issue of violent post-election transitions but Canada feels that the UN has to play a role in order to have peace in the UN and around the world.
One instance where there were not peaceful post-election transitions was in Kenya. The ballots were not counted fairly and therefore that separated two different ethic groups. This caused a lot of violence and therefore the UN’s involvement is necessarily to stop the violence. A similar situation happened in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party were in control over the country since 1980. When the election was held the polls took many weeks for the results to be displayed, this led to many people feeling that the votes were being counted unfairly. There were also speculations that officials were being beaten and abused.
With all this said, this clearly is evidence of why the UN plays an important role in post election transitions. If each country vows to increased support of post election transitions this will strive to create a more peaceful world.
