Letter from Director of ODIHR about sexual harassment in election observation

The Director of the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir,replies to a request from seven election observers to increase efforts to end sexual harassment in election observation. A group of observers already wrote to ODIHR about the same problem in 2015, and with a concrete proposal to create dedicated positions that would investigate, train and monitor issues and cases of sexual harassment in each election observation mission. The proposal had been welcomed by the head of the OSCE-ODIHR parliamentary election observation in Ukraine in Sept-Dec 2015. However there was no response to the 2015 proposal, neither from ODIHR nor the Nordic countries and recruitment agencies that received copies of the proposal.