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International Election Observers in Africa: The Case of Ethiopia

The question of inviting international election observers to monitor an election is one of the most controversial issues in Africa. Most of the time, the presence of international election monitors in emerging democracies is important to measure whether or not an election is conducted in a free and fair manner. But, sometimes it is regarded as the violation of a nation's sovereignty. The major aim of this paper is to investigate the role and scope of international election observation. The paper looks at the importance of international election observation through the lens of a specific case study, the Ethiopian parliamentary election of 2005, which was without doubt the most "monitored" election in the history of the nation. It also describes the merits and demerits of involving international election monitors in the election processes in emerging democracies in Africa. In this paper, international election monitors of three major institutions namely, the European Union Election Observation Mission (EU-EOM); the Carter Center, and the African Union (AU) election observers' team are presented as case studies.