Topic: Promoting Peaceful Post-Election Transitions
Country: Egypt
Delegate Name: Seium Teshome
School: Forest Hills Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Egypt position papers GLIMUN 2008 committees
Post election peace is something that everyone strives for, but it is hard to attain. In even the soundest democratic systems of government, such as the United States government, there can be not so desirable aftermath of elections. In Kenya there has been extreme violence regarding the recent elections. About a year ago, President Mwai Kibaki was reelected and many Kenyans were outraged. They claimed that there was electoral manipulation and it was widely confirmed by international observers. The violence started with just a dispute in the vote count. Soon there was rally after rally and violence followed not far behind. Buildings were set to fire and hundreds were killed. The total death toll came out to be about 800 people and there were up to 600,000 people displaced. These are the sort of problems we need to stop and fix.
Egypt would like to find a way to peacefully control post election transitions. We believe that the United Nations should become more involved in the situations. The UN should identify all the countries with the biggest problems and send in some sort of system to promote or enforce peaceful transitions after elections. Egypt has no specific plan of how this should be done but would like to see it happen.
Most countries do not oppose the promotion of peaceful post-election transitions but some might not want to have United Nation help in their country. These countries want to have peaceful post election times, just not with outside help. All other countries would like to help because all countries want to avoid violence and keep peace during and after elections.
