Strong call for UN observers at US elections

Seven grassroots American groups asked the United Nations yesterday to provide international observers for next month’s US presidential election “to expose any violations” during voting.

A petition delivered to the UN Economic and Social Council says only the United Nations can “give us recourse to international bodies beyond those within our own national and state governments” in the event of a repetition of the problems of the 2000 US election.

“Suppose the upcoming election results are as tainted as the last ones?,” said Grace Ross of the Economic Human Rights Project based in Somerville, Massachusetts.

“Many fought for domestic solutions last time. All of those attempts failed - and failed even to improve our voting system this time. Where then can we turn except to ask the international community to work with so many of us who are struggling inside the US?”

Ross said the non-governmental groups decided to seek action from the Economic and Social Council, known as ECOSOC, after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned down a request for international observers from 13 members of the US Congress led by Texas Democrat Eddie Bernice Johnson.

The congressional letter said that foreign observers were needed to “guarantee the American people that our country will not experience another nightmare like the 2000 presidential election.”

But Annan turned down the request, saying the UN needed an invitation from the US government, not Congress.

Ross claimed that while governments need to go through the UN General Assembly, non-governmental organisations could request observers through ECOSOC. If its 54 elected member nations approve, the ECOSOC president could then ask Annan to send observers, she said.

Finland’s UN Ambassador, Marjatta Rasi, the current president of ECOSOC, said she had not yet received the petition and could not immediately comment. The commission co-ordinates the UN’s wide-ranging economic, social, and human rights activities and consults with non-governmental organisations.

The petition cites the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

Ross said the first two “require a fair and genuine election” and the third is relevant “because most of the voters who were disenfranchised in the 2000 election were voters of colour.”

The petition “strongly supports” the presence of observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, a 55-nation security group invited by US President George Bush’s administration to monitor the election where Bush faces Democratic challenger John Kerry.

But the anti-poverty, peace and human rights groups say it is not clear that the European observers “will have the same force of international law behind them given that they are guests of the US government.”

The groups also question whether the Europeans would be able to assist in exposing any “governmental abuse of the right to vote” or postponement due to threats of international terrorism.