EDMONTON, Canada – When the Canadian-led bilateral mission CANADEM announced a call for long-term observers to monitor the presidential election in Ukraine, Natalia Toroshenko didn’t hesitate to apply.
Toroshenko, who lives in the town of Vegreville in Alberta (home, incidentally, to the world’s largest Ukrainian Easter egg), knows the Ukrainian electoral process from inside well enough. She first traveled to Ukraine’s Luhansk Oblast as an observer in 2006 and since then all of her 10 missions have been in Ukraine.
Toroshenko is one of 50 long-term observers who arrived in Ukraine in February as a part of Mission Canada 2019, a neutral and impartial election observation mission run by CANADEM, an international non-profit organization, dedicated to advancing democracy and international peace and security. The first 50 observers will be reinforced with at least another 100 short-term observers expected to arrive in Ukraine one week before the March 31 Election Day.
The mission officials believe the observers are crucial to preserving Ukraine’s ability to conduct a democratic and fair election in the face of Russian efforts to destabilize the country. Since 2004, CANADEM has participated in over 130 missions in more than 40 countries, playing a crucial role in strengthening the democratic process globally. They have mobilized nearly 2,000 election observers to Ukraine for 11 elections since 2004.
Mission Canada’s mandate is to provide an assessment of the electoral process in Ukraine. The mission assesses Ukraine’s compliance with UN and OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections, as well as with national legislation. The mission records and reports on its findings without interfering in any way in the electoral process.
Mission’s duty
In early December, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland and Minister of International Development Marie-Claude Bibeau announced nearly $25 million in support for Ukraine’s democracy ahead of the 2019 election cycle in Ukraine.
A sum of $11 million has been specifically allocated for election observer missions. CANADEM became the implementing partner and immediately started recruiting long-term electoral observers for Ukraine’s presidential and parliamentary elections.
The recruitment process is a key to the mission’s success, Deputy Head of the Mission Olya Odynska-Grod said in a phone interview with the Kyiv Post. CANADEM was particularly looking for candidates who are ideally able to commit to both elections. However, they accept applications for either election individually.
The recruitment process for short-term observers is not difficult, however finding the roster of long-term observers ready to travel so far from their home country for months at a time can be challenging.
“This two-and-a-half months (the duration long-term observers spend in the county) is a lengthy period of time, (and) it’s not always possible for people to get a leave of absence,” the deputy head explains. “But we’ve been very successful and happy for the group that we have. We try very hard to make a gender-balanced group and have people from every province of Canada.”
They also try to ensure the selected candidates represent all age groups and there are young people in particular “because that’s the future and those are the people need to be trained,” Odynska-Grod said.
Upon arriving in Ukraine, the observers undergo mandatory training on various aspects of the electoral process until they are deployed to all oblasts participating in the vote, including Donetsk Oblast’s cities of Kramatorsk and the sea port of Mariupol.
“Our role is to monitor, not to judge,” Odynska-Grod said. “Through all the years, the overall concept of the mission has not changed, but our knowledge has increased with every mission. And we are much more electronic than we used to be.”
Odynska-Gord has been with CANADEM since 2004 and has taken part in every election save for 2014 when the previous Canadian government (under then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper) decided to move the deployment of observers out of the hands of CANADEM.
Being back on the ground is rewarding for all the CANADEM members, even though it requires lots of preparation – logistics and planning, learning about the main trends of the election campaign, meeting with civil society groups and ensuring security for all the observers.
Odynska-Grod arrived in Ukraine at the end of January together with other six core members and seven analysts. The core team usually remains at least 10 days after the election to prepare a preliminary findings statement. Then they work on a final report, which takes around six weeks to write; work on it typically starts in Ukraine and is finished in Canada.
Rewarding job
One of the most satisfying parts of Odynska-Grod’s job is to coordinate her team.
“It’s interesting to see people who have never met each other from all walks of life, from all parts of Canada come together and share ideas and pull this whole concept off,” Odynska-Grod said.
Knowledge of Ukrainian or Russian is not necessary for the resumé of a future observer, as the official language of the mission is English. Also, each team on the ground is assigned a driver and translator. What makes a resumé stand out, the CANADEM official explains, is experience in elections, knowledge of overall electoral process and active involvement in what is happening in the country of deployment.
For Toroshenko, being a part of the observers team is also rewarding in a different sense.
“My father and my maternal grandparents chose to live in Canada because of the freedom and democracy that (it) offered. Returning to Ukraine as an election observer is one way that I can support my ancestral homeland in (its) struggle as an emerging democracy,” Toroshenko told the Kyiv Post.
She said she has witnessed improvements in the democratic process in Ukraine “with each election, whether presidential, parliamentary, or municipal.”
“Recommendations made by international observer missions are one of the most important tools that contribute to the development of more efficient and effective election processes, and to democratic rights,” Toroshenko said. “I’m proud to be part of this contribution.”
