In the past three decades, Côte d’Ivoire has faced a wide variety of identity-based tensions that have led to election-related violence. During the Presidential election period in 2020, over 50 people were killed, and many more were injured and arrested. This cycle of violence around elections has long been an issue in Cote d’Ivoire, and it stands in the way of free and fair polls in the country, as often voters don’t feel safe going to vote, and elections officials are mistreated and killed.

Since the landmark establishment of universal suffrage in 1944, elections have been a pillar of Jamaican democracy. To safeguard this legacy, democracy watchdog groups have remained vigilant, preventing a return to vote rigging, political intimidation and violence that undermined past elections. To ensure that every ballot continues to be counted, the Citizens Action for Free and Fair Elections (CAFFE) deployed citizen volunteers to observe the February 26, 2024, Local Government Elections. 

Jamaica has been a cornerstone of Caribbean democracies since gaining independence in 1962. Civic and political leaders have expressed increasing concern, however, about declining engagement in political life and the impact on the country’s progress and ensuring elected officials are responsive to citizens.

With municipal and regional council elections approaching on September 2, 2023, tensions in a number of Ivoirian cities were escalating. The country had seen a recurrence of election-related violence, including following the 2020 elections in which President Alassane Ouattara stood for and won a controversial third term as president under the Rally of Houphouëtists for Democracy and Peace (Rassemblement des houphouëtistes pour la démocratie et la paix, RHDP) party banner.