CAIRO: The High Committee for Elections refused to give the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights (a member of the Egyptian Coalition for Monitoring the Legislative Elections of 2010) permission to monitor the parliamentary elections. It gave permission to only 16 monitors out of the 90 who requested it. ECWR was supposed to obtain official permission to monitor the elections from a gender perspective in all constituencies for women all over Egypt, but the High Committee denied the request. The Committee gave permission to 16 observers to monitor elections in the governorates of Cairo and 6th of October and to the operations room of ECWR. The refusal to the remainder of the 90 requests is a violation of the Committee's guarantee to permit NGOs to monitor elections and a violation of practicing the political rights law and administrative judgment rulings, which confirms that NGOs have rights to monitor the elections. It is also an obstacle to the Center's efforts to monitor the electoral process from a gender perspective in quota constituencies. There are 32 quota constituencies in all the Egyptian governorates, as the number of female candidates in these constituencies reached 397, while the number of female candidates in other constituencies reached 72. ECWR is concerned about the fairness of the elections considering the circumstances, and about the possibility that election monitors may be targeted and exposed to violence. Despite these harsh situations and the possible dangers, ECWR assures that monitoring of civil society organizations is supported by the constitution, law and international conventions. ECWR also affirms that it will follow up and monitor the elections using fact-finding mechanisms that are followed by the Egyptian civil society since the parliamentary elections of 1995. BM
