21st annual conference of the ACEEEO

13 – 15 September 2012
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

The 21st annual conference of the Association of European Election Officials will be hosted by the Central Election Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from 13 till 15 September 2011. This will be the first time when Sarajevo will host the international gathering of professional election community.

On this cross-regional discussion that follows the 20th conference dedicated to the Independence of the Electoral Management Bodies, attendees will have the opportunity to absorb in the topic of

Participation of Vulnerable Groups in Election Processes:
Minorities and Persons with Disabilities

The main idea behind this topic is to give the floor to those experiences and questions that can draw the international community's attention toward the importance of the participation of vulnerable groups in election processes.

Regarding the issue of minorities, the Council of Europe started the process of acceptance in 1950 by adopting the Convention on protection of human rights and fundamental freedom, and the process was continued by the adoption of the European Charter on regional or minority languages (1992), and Framework Convention for protection of national minorities (1995). The OSCE's standards of guaranteeing human rights and protection of minorities are set in the Copenhagen Document of 1993. The primary aim is to improve the rights of minorities and attempt of their standardization in the global sense. In December 1992 the United Nations adopted the Declaration on rights of persons belonging to ethnical, religious or linguistic minorities. Besides these documents, different countries signed bilateral agreements, which have an important role in the exercise and protection of minority rights. But how all these look like in practice?

International documents that regulates the participation in election processes of persons with disabilities are: UN Convention on rights of persons with disability, document of the Copenhagen meeting of the Conference on the CSCE, Action plan of the Council of Europe to promote the rights and full participation of persons with disabilities in the society, Code of Good Practice on election of Council of Europe and Council of Europe's Interpretative Declaration of Code of good practice in electoral matters on participation of persons with disabilities at the elections. We keen on to investigate what is behind these documents on the practical levels of our societies.

In keeping with our tradition, in the scope of our annual conference we are offering opportunities for regional and cross-regional consultations, networking as well as for learning on recent developments in election technology. We look forward to seeing you and to making the 2012 Conference a great success!

For more infotmation please contact the Secretariat at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .