Apr 24, 2023 | news
On 27 August 2021, top management members of Ethiopian Media Council visited the Coalition of Ethiopian Civil Society Organizations for Election – CECOE Media Monitoring Unit (MMU). The visiting delegation was composed of well-known media executives, inter alia, such as Amare Aregawi, founder and owner of the leading Ethiopian private newspaper ‘The Reporter’; Tamirat Hailu the founder and managing editor of Kumneger Media. The purpose of the visit was to forge a partnership whereby the two organizations share expertise and resources.
CECOE strongly believes that the media is one of the cornerstones of a solid democratic system. Taking this into account, CECOE’s MMU has been monitoring and analyzing election related media coverage of 7 selected media outlets. The selection was made based on their reach, legal status and linguistic diversity.
Public Televisions: ETV + ETV languages (only from 2 to 4 pm), Amhara Media C and OBN TV.
Private Televisions: Fana BC, Walta and OBS
The unit was set up with financial and technical support from European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES), one of CECOE’s key partners. With its 9 seasoned media professionals, the unit has been monitoring election media reports in 5 languages. During the election and post-election periods, the unit monitored hate speech or inflammatory language – either reported on or originating from the media themselves – to assess whether the media acted as agents of pacification or rather contributed to increase any potential tensions related to the elections. In order to understand and interpret the performance of the media, the monitors also observed the use of social media by political actors during the campaign.
During the visit the council’s representatives had a fruitful discussion with CECOE and ECES representatives on ways of capacitating media professionals in the areas of election reporting, good governance and media monitoring. Thus, an agreement was reached to organize a series of training and experience sharing forums.
Apr 24, 2023 | news
On 6 September 2021, Coalition of Ethiopian Civil Society Organizations for Election – CECOE gave training of trainers to its lead trainers who will train election observers. The observers will observe the upcoming elections slated to be held in SNNPR, Somali and Harari regional states on 30 September 2021. The lead trainers have been trained on how to train short term observers to observe and report the election day process.
Checklists and critical incidents form are developed to enable the trainers and observers to capture raw data about the elections process in a systematic manner. On election day, the collected data will be sent to the Addis Ababa data center via text message for further analysis and data cleaning. Once the analysis and data cleaning processes are completed, CECOE will announce its observation findings to key stakeholders: National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE), Media and Partners.
In the coming few weeks, the lead trainers will be travelling to each training location in the Southern Nations Nationalities and People’s Region SNNPR, Harari and Somali regional states to provide trainings to observers.
It is to be recalled that in the first rounds of elections polling did not take place in some constituencies. Elections did not take place in Somali and Harari regions while parts of Oromia, Amhara, and SNNP regions were also left with the same fate. The South West referendum was also postponed.
Background
The Coalition of Ethiopian Civil Society Organizations for Elections(CECOE) is a collaboration of networks of Civil Society Organizations with focus on electoral support in Ethiopia through promoting citizens’ participation and free elections. Driven by its desire to serve in the prevention, mitigation and management of election-related conflicts and potential violence in the run up to, and following the coming elections, CECOE works in all regions and city administrations to enhance the institutional capacity that enables member organizations to engage in voters and civic education and election observations.
Apr 24, 2023 | news
On 7 August 2021, CECOE gave trainings to its Long-Term Observers (LTO) drawn from different Zones and Woredas where the second phase of elections is scheduled to be held in September 2021. The major objective of the training was to familiarize the observers with the CECOE’s election observation and reporting methodologies. Once the LTOs have completed their trainings, they will observe the different phases of the second-round elections: voter registration, voting and post-election.
Long-term observation is the more effective method, as the observation group acquires knowledge of the context within which voting and the counting takes place. Observers can thus provide more informed opinions on the election outcomes and more comprehensive guidance on relevant future improvements.
One of the core values of CECOE is inclusion, which covers the vital role that women play in political and election processes. The coalition strives to attain and sustain gender equality in all its election observation activities. As a result, in many of the trainings provided by CECOE women represent a significant number of trainees.
Apr 24, 2023 | news
On 8 June 2021, Coalition of Ethiopian Civil Societies for Elections (CECOE) in collaboration with European Center for Electoral Support (ECES) convened a consultative forum on the theme: Elections during COVID-19: Learning from Voter Registration, Preparing for Election Day. The participants of the forum were comprised of civil societies, media representatives, government agencies and international organizations.
The event was kicked-off by an opening speech of Abera H/mariam, CECOE’s acting director. In his opening remarks, the acting director highlighted CECOE’s major activities in the areas of election observation and voter education. The coalition has trained and prepared over 3000 observers who will be deployed on the election day. With regards to voters’ education, CECOE has managed to reach close to 50 million Ethiopians through television, radio, newspaper and social media ads, Abera added.
The first presentation at the forum was presented by Biniam Abate, Elections Coordinator at CECOE. The issue of COVID-19 has been given a due emphasis in CECOE’s preliminary report, detailing precautionary measures taken to prevent the spread of the pandemic and gaps that were worth considering during voter registration.
Highlights of the finding
• 28% officials wore masks- SOME OF THE TIME.
• Covid-19 officers weren’t present in 89% of the registration locations
• 63% of registration locations did not have hand washing stations.
• 60% of the observed registration locations lacked hand gloves
• 14% of the registration locations CECOE visited, electoral officials DID NOT WEAR FACEMASKS
The other two presenters from the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE), Dr Iman Abdulkader; Dr. Wondwossen Eshetu, advisor at Ministry of Helath (MoH) elucidated over the government’s strategy to hold the elections with less or no transmission of the virus during the electoral process. The representative from ministry of health, in particular, expressed concerns on the lack of political commitment among government agencies and officials. “Politics and health are two different things. If we don’t take all the necessary precautionary measures at the right time, we will get in a big trouble. India is a good example for this,” said Dr. Wondwossen.
About CECOE
The Coalition of Ethiopian Civil Society Organizations for Elections (CECOE) is a broad-based network embracing more than 175 civil society organizations operating in the ten regional states and the two city administrations, Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. CECOE attained its legal status on February 4, 2020 and obtained its certificate of registration No.4748 from the Agency for Civil Society Organizations (ACSO).
Apr 24, 2023 | news
A two-day training on quantitative and qualitative media reporting techniques was offered to our Media Monitoring Unit (MMU) with the technical assistance of European Center for Electoral Support (ECES).
During election times, Media monitoring can measure the amount of coverage of electoral subjects, the presence or absence of news bias, appropriateness of media access for political competitors and the adequacy of information conveyed to voters through news, direct political messages, public information programming and voter education announcements.
Media monitoring can help demonstrate that political competitors and the public at large should have confidence in the media, electoral authorities and the government that is responsible for providing genuine elections. Shortcomings in media conduct can be identified through monitoring in time for corrective action. Abuse of the mass media’s power to affect voter choices also can be documented, which allows the population and other stakeholders to appropriately characterize the true nature of the electoral process.
As part of its voter education initiative , our MMU has been compiling, analyzing and sharing its press reviews and reports to many key actors involved in the electoral process on a regular basis.
