The European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES), member of EPD’s Community of Practice, has been officially awarded by the Delegation of the European Union (EU) to Jordan the contract, worth 12.700.000 EUR, for the implementation of the project “Enhanced Support to Democratic Governance in Jordan“ for the next 4 years.
The consortium of European not-for-profit organisations is composed of EPD members that includes ECES (lead organisation), the French Media Cooperation Agency (CFI); Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) and Westminster Foundation for Democracy .
ECES is the leader of the consortium of European not for profit organisations that will implement this project for the next 4 years. The other organisations members of the consortium are: the European Partnership for Democracy -EPD (www.epd.eu),
The project aims at supporting Jordan’s reform process, consolidating deep democracy and promoting inclusiveness of national policy and decision-making processes, including bolstering women and youth, leading to a stronger democratic and tolerant political culture. To deliver the objectives, the project will support important national stakeholders in the reform process including the House of Representatives; Independent Electoral Commission and Judiciary; Political Parties; Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs; Women and youth; Media/and Journalists.
In order to weld together a coordinated and coherent response to support Jordan’s democratic process, the project rests on three core pillars:
1) Parliamentary support;
2) Electoral assistance,
3) Support to political party system.
All project actions, which embodies EU principles and values as well as the new approach called “A European Response to Electoral Cycle support (EURECS)”, developed by ECES and EPD members, will feed into an overall result chain meant to achieve:
- Increased political awareness amongst the electorate reflected in an increase of political participation;
- Intensified efforts amongst elected institutions in public outreach for more inclusive decision making processes;
- Increasingly informed service delivery by public demands and subsequently more geared to cater the needs/will of the people.
Among others, the main activities of the project will be:
- Delivery of inclusive and customized trainings and capacity building schemes along with face-to-face coaching and mentoring activities;
- High-level conferences and seminars on specific thematic areas pertaining to democracy enhancement and peer exchanges and best practice sharing activities;
- On-demand development of thematic researches and analysis;
- Beneficiary-driven political dialogue support and inter-party dialogue;
- Efficient procurement of ICT/Voting material following EU procedures;
- Design and implementation of user-friendly ICTs solutions for digital library development, archiving system and information management;
- Flexible and needs-oriented advisory support at the institutional level to all project’s beneficiaries;
- ISO training and certification process for electoral processes (ISO norm 17-582);
- Media monitoring and institutional communication for public outreach;
- Awareness raising campaigns to boolster public involvement in democratic and electoral processes;
- Targeted results-oriented support to bolster women and youth’s involvement in democratic processes (etc.).
