Belarus Votes 2015 Election Blog LogoOn October 11th, 2015 the autocratic president of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko wants to be confirmed in office – probably at all costs. In face of the severe violations of human and civic rights during the past elections we decided to document the election campaign as well as the voting process. The website belarus-votes.lphr.org provides a daily news summary and up-to-date information as well as background reports and expert interviews in four languages (English, German, Russian, Polish).

GroupThe Elections Blog´s team consists of 15 young members from Belarus, Germany and Poland with backgrounds in journalism, academia, NGO work and election observation. With observers both in Minsk and in the regions we strive for a comprehensive first hand coverage. Our main aim is to monitor violations of human and civil rights, and the election´s compliance with Belarusian legislation and minimum democratic standards. By offering information in four languages we aim to target a broad public, including journalists, scholars, and policy makers.

Belarus Votes: 2015 Election Blog” is a joint project of “Libereco – Partnership for Human Rights”, the Polish “Common Europe Foundation” (“Fundacja Wspólna Europe”), “StudAlliance” – a student´s organization of Belarusian exile university EHU in Vilnius and the initiative “Election Observation: Theory & Practice”. The project is supported by several media partners including the “Network for Reporting on Eastern Europe” (n-ost), the information portal for Eastern Partnership – countries “Eastbook.eu” the “Solidarity with Belarus Information Office” and the journal “New Eastern Europe”.

The project is funded by the “Foundation for Polish-German Cooperation”, “The German Marshall Fund of the United States”, “MitOst” and the “International Visegrad Fund”.