Imran Hussain – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Imran Hussain on 2015-11-16.

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, with reference to the contribution of the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the hon. Member for East Devon, of 22 October 2015, Official Report, column 1264, what training was provided to the election observers supported by Government funding referred to in that contribution.

Mr Hugo Swire

The United Kingdom funded the National Democratic Institute (NDI) in training and deploying some 5000 Burmese civil society observers throughout the country. These national observers were trained to evaluate the quality of the electoral process at polling stations and to rapidly report incidents on the day. The presence of national and international observers was a key part of the United Kingdom’s strategy for deterring fraud in Burma’s elections on 8 November.