Funded by the Government of Canada, the Protecting Elections project aims to refine and implement an integrated framework for protecting elections, focusing on risk management, resilience building, and crisis management practices. The project’s overarching goal is to strengthen the capacity of electoral stakeholders to safeguard the integrity of elections in their specific contexts.
Panama has a consolidating democracy with a complex and tense recent electoral process. The Electoral Tribunal of Panama, the institution responsible for overseeing the country’s electoral processes, plays a key role in ensuring that elections are free, fair, and transparent. With growing global challenges to electoral integrity, the Tribunal has committed to improve its ability to handle election-related risks. Partnering with International IDEA under the Protecting Elections project is a crucial part of this effort to strengthen dialogue with civil society, assess national challenges and reinforce its reputation as an innovative regional EMB.
The Protecting Elections Workshop was the first event of its kind in Panama, building on similar workshops held in Finland and Mauritius last year. Combining expert presentations with interactive group work, the workshop focused on identifying and assessing key risks to electoral integrity in Panama. It provided a unique platform for Panama’s electoral stakeholders to come together, exchange experiences, and strengthen their collective efforts to safeguard election integrity in an increasingly complex and evolving landscape.
Over two days, participants from Panama’s Electoral Tribunal, government officials, academics, electoral experts and civil society organizations were introduced to the project’s methodology through expert presentations and hands-on group activities. These discussions fostered a shared understanding of potential risks and explored concrete actions to prevent, mitigate, and respond to challenges such corruption, political campaign finance, online violence, gender representation, among others. To further support this process, participants worked with risk heat maps, assessing the likelihood and impact of identified risks and discussing appropriate response strategies.
Looking ahead, International IDEA and the Electoral Tribunal will organize a capacity-building workshop to ensure that stakeholders build their practical knowledge and skills concerning key concepts of risk management, resilience-building and crisis management in elections. In parallel to supporting the Panamanian stakeholders and processes, this collaborative effort will contribute to the refinement of the Protecting Elections Framework.
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