Moroni, Tuesday, March 18, 2019: COMESA has deployed a team of election observers to Comoros ahead of the Presidential elections set for March 24, 2019. Led by Madam Hope Kivengere, a member of the COMESA Committee of elders from Uganda, the election observers arrived in Moroni on Monday, March 19, 2019.

This deployment is in line with the Decision of the 16th Meeting of the COMESA Ministers of Foreign Affairs in July 2018 in Lusaka that called on the Secretariat to support Member States planning to hold elections.

Through the Governance Peace and Security Unit (GPS), COMESA has prioritized elections observation mission as a means of promoting and enhancing the consolidation of democracy in the region. In 2018 for instance, the election observer mission was deployed to support the Zimbabwean elections.
As part of its mission to Comoros, mission team members will be deployed in different parts of the Island to monitor how the campaigns and voting process will be conducted.

A pre-election observation mission was also in Comoros from 10 – 16 February 2019 for the prior assessment which has now informed the deployed of the current mission.