Association of World Election Bodies


The Association of World Election Bodies, commonly referred to as ‘A-WEB,’ was established on October 14, 2013 in Song-do, South Korea. A-WEB is the first global organization of election management bodies, and the membership currently consists of 115EMBs as members and 20 Regional associations as associate members. Under the slogan of ‘Democracy to Grow for All Worldwide,’ the A-WEB Secretariat provides training programs for election officials of member nations and undertakes country programs at the request of member organization, providing support during the election cycle to boost election management capacity. The current chairman is Sunil Arora from Republic of India.

Creation and inauguration

The National Election Commission of the Republic of Korea first proposed the creation of a global election management body institution to the Association of Asian Election Authorities in 2010. After a series of Working Group meetings, a Charter was drawn up and the name A-WEB was chosen upon the suggestion of the Election Commission of India.
A-WEB was inaugurated on October 14, 2013. Over 400 participants from 140 election management bodies, international organizations and non-governmental organizations attended the ceremony in Song-do, South Korea, where the Secretariat was established. 97 organizations gained membership into A-WEB.

Structure

A-WEB has three main bodies. The Executive Board serves the executive function and meets yearly to make decisions on A-WEB's general direction. It consists of up to ten member organizations and the Board must maintain a continental balance. The more members there are from a particular continent, the more members of the Executive Board should be from that continent. The Executive Board is headed by a Chairperson who leads the meetings of the board.
The remaining members make up the second body, the General Assembly. The General Assembly convenes once every two years and votes on important issues related to A-WEB and decisions made by the Executive Board. The General Assembly also elects the members of the Executive Board and confirms the induction of new member organizations.
Finally, the secretariat carries out the general administrative work of A-WEB and is based in the country where the Secretary General resides. Currently the secretariat is based in Song-do, South Korea. Other member countries send secondee staff to operate the office.

Training and country programs

A-WEB currently undertakes most of its training programs in the secretariat main office. These training programs are broken into two broad categories; A-WEB's own training projects and those in collaboration with other organizations such as the Korea International Cooperation Agency and the Korea Civic Education Institute. In total, A-WEB has trained 622 election officials from 72 countries.
A-WEB also undertakes large-scale country projects at the request of member organizations. The first is in Kyrgyzstan alongside the country's Central Election Commission. The program aims to introduce the Precinct Count Optical Scan election system into Kyrgyzstan elections scheduled on October 4, 2015. The other country program currently underway is in Kenya alongside the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, where A-WEB is working to develop election ICT and the capacity of the organization ahead of general elections in 2017.

Current members