Grants and Contributions

The project supports essential activities to ensure post-war elections in Ukraine are credible, inclusive, and well-prepared. These include: (1) strengthening the administrative, technical, and operational capacity of the Central Election Commission (CEC) to effectively administer post-war elections; (2) enhancing the capacity of electoral stakeholders to deliver inclusive, gender-responsive voter education, communication strategies, and counter-disinformation efforts; (3) supporting independent civil society organizations to provide oversight, evidence-based analysis of electoral processes, and informed public dialogue; (4) improving the preparedness of the CEC, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and diplomatic institutions to manage out-of-country voting; (5) reinforcing secure and resilient ICT and cybersecurity systems within the CEC; (6) developing training curricula, learning materials, and targeted technical assistance for election officials to be ready for holding election; and (7) supporting coordination between state institutions and civil society, including the dissemination of educational materials on electoral integrity, political violence prevention, and inclusive participation.

The project will contribute to increased resilience against foreign and national information operations that seek to erode the quality of democracy and the international rules-based order. The project will first conduct an extensive network analysis, qualitative interviews with stakeholders, and desk research to establish a solid empirical foundation about “information operations” (those operations and actors seeking to influence the public discourse and election campaigns) in each country. The project will combine local knowledge on key actors and key narratives being spread online with research techniques seeking to draw a picture of the way the political debate is being shaped by Foreign Influence and Manipulation of Information (FIMI). Subsequently, the project team will conduct an extensive mapping exercise in each pilot country and identify key civil society actors that are working on pro-transparency political reforms, political participation of women and the youth, and other related issues. Finally, the project will create spaces of dialogues to bring together oversight actors (i.e. electoral management bodies, political finance oversight agencies, etc.), legislators and civil society organizations to share experiences and lessons learnt, which will, in turn, build their capacities not only to better understand the problem but also equip them with practical guidelines for developing appropriate policy measures to improve information integrity in online spaces, including designing appropriate interventions to tackle the use of FIMI against women.

In 2022, the Institute will define a new strategy for the 2023-2027 period which will include an institutional initiative on Digitalization and Democracy. The initiative will focus on three themes: “Digitalization and the Global State of Democracy”, “Protecting electoral processes in the context of digitalization”, and “Digitalization and participation”. A special allocation of funds is required to operationalize the Digitalization and Democracy Initiative and to fill a critical knowledge gap within the organization in this highly technical area.