International Electoral Observers
Lecturers and Experts
The Global Campus of Human Rights avails itself of a wide range of experts who have trained more than 550 future international electoral observers in the past nine years. In addition, among the pool of experts, presentations have been included by representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs who have given their patronage to the training course.
Deputy Head of the Election Department, ODIHR
Ulvi Akhundlu
Since January 2020, Ulvi Akhundlu has served as Deputy Head of the Election Department at ODIHR, where he oversees the administration, operational planning, and implementation of election-related support to OSCE participating States.
His work is focused on improving democratic processes through election observation missions and technical assistance. Before this, he was an Election Adviser in the same department in charge of a portfolio of countries. Akhundlu's career in international organizations includes leading the Council of Europe Office in Moldova, where he also managed the largest EU-CoE democracy support programme. He also headed the media monitoring unit and was the press attaché at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. Earlier, Akhundlu worked as a media and political adviser at the OSCE’s Baku Office.
His experience spans human rights, democracy, and political development, having also worked with U.S.-based NGOs and independent media outlets in Azerbaijan. He has studied international relations, human rights, and democracy development across Germany, Italy, and the United States and taught at Syracuse University’s Strasbourg branch from 2008-2010.
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Senior Political/Elections Officer within the Democracy and Electoral Assistance Unit of the African Union Commission
Samuel Atuobi
He works as a Senior Political/Elections Officer within the Democracy and Electoral Assistance Unit of the African Union Commission, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, since November 2011.
Before then he worked as a Senior Research Associate and Head of International Institutions Programme at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Accra Ghana, from 2007 to 2011. Over the years, Samuel has led projects on democratic governance, electoral processes, technical assistance peacebuilding peace and security in Ghana, the West African sub-region and at the continent level with strong ability to leverage comparative knowledge. He is also a proven researcher and policy analyst with over 16 years of experience backed by 25 paper presentations and publications on democratic governance, elections, peace and security.
Samuel has experience in working with institutions with democracy and governance mandate including intergovernmental organizations, election management bodies, political parties and civil society organizations at the national and continental levels. He is also a diplomat and international relation practitioner with experience in working with African and international diplomats/institutions, senior public/government officials/former presidents in defusing political tensions at the continental level through preventive diplomacy.
Again, Samuel is an expert trainer and facilitator with accreditation from the Building Resources in Democracy, Governance and Elections (BRIDGE) and has trained several experts in the areas of governance, peacebuilding, negotiation and mediation, peacekeeping, human right, the rule of law.
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Media and Digital Communications Consultant
Alice Colombi
Alice is a Media and Digital Communications consultant with +15 yrs experience in the field of elections, democracy and governance across EMEA, LATAM and APAC regions.
She joined 25 election observation missions as a core team member with the European Union and the OSCE/ODIHR, as well as EU and UNDP-funded technical assistance projects. She supported UNESCO in the implementation of the ‘Social Media 4 Peace’ project. She has a sound knowledge of the online ecosystem, with a focus on the role of social media in the democratic discourse. For the past 7 years, she has focused intensively in analyzing the role of digital comms in electoral processes and researching how to monitor the impact of social media on political campaigns in the context of international observation of elections.
With a degree in Foreign Languages and Intercultural Mediation, Alice is currently attending a master's degree course in communication and political marketing at the International University of La Rioja. Registered in the Professional Order of Italian Journalists since 2010, she has collaborated with several international academic and private institutions specialized in mass media communications and analysis of international democratization processes worldwide.
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Election Observation Expert
Charlemagne Gomez
Charlemagne Gomez has a degree in European Law and a masters degree in Human Rights and Democratisation from EIUC. She has a second masters degree in Evaluation of public policies and programmes in Madrid with a specialisation in gender responsive evaluations.
She has over 20 years experience of working in democracy and gender mainly in a post-conflict setting. She has participated in over 25 election observation missions both as an observer as well as a core team member for the EU, OSCE, the Carter Center and a Dutch NGO.
She has also provided technical assistance to the Electoral Commissions of Afghanistan, Sierra Leone and South Sudan, the Human Rights Commission in South Sudan and worked as a Gender and Legal Advisor to the National Parliament of Timor-Leste and is currently undertaking a meta evaluation of the United Nations Trust Fund on Violence against women.
Since 2013 she has worked as freelance consultant, conducting trainings on election observation, female political participation and carries out evaluations of democratic governance projects and projects on gender on behalf of the UN, EU and other key international organisations working on these issues.
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Head of EOM Sector at Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI), European Commission
Kairi Kasmann
Kairi Kasmann, an Estonian national, currently leads the Election Observation Sector at the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI), under the Unit on Common Foreign and Security Policy Operations & Election Observation.
She has overseen the successful organisation of approximately 180 EU electoral missions over the past six years, covering Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. She has continuously contributed to improving the modus operandi and observation methodology used by EU missions. Among her most recent election observation missions were the presidential elections in Sri Lanka and Senegal in 2024.
Before joining FPI, she worked in the European Commission on EU development cooperation programmes for Palestine. She also held position of Head of Finance and Contracts Section of the EU Delegation to Syria, also managing EU trust funds. Her career further includes involvement in EU initiatives focused on combatting organised crime and terrorism, as well as work with the European Social Fund, highlighting her broad expertise in both policy development and international cooperation.
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Election expert
Demetrio Lazagna
Extensive experience in international relations particularly focused on Technical Assistance and Electoral Observation worldwide. After his Civil Service as Legal Assistant in an Immigration Center and following his Master Degree in Social Anthropology at the University of Genova, he has coordinated development programmes in Bosnia Herzegovina and emergency relief projects in Albania. He has provided strategic advice and direct technical assistance to National Stakeholders in transitional and sensitive political environments on behalf of EU, OSCE and IFES.
From 2000 he has designed, planned and executed elections observation missions worldwide and contributed to elections operations in the Balkans, West Africa, Middle East and North Arica, Central and South America, Southern Asia, providing managerial support, political analyses and punctual recommendations on reforming to national stakeholders.
He was Head of the OSCE Antifraud Unit during the 2004 General Assembly election. He worked for the foundation (IFES) in South Sudan as referendum adviser (2011) and in Tunis as elections operations adviser to the Libyan EMB (2014-2016) and in Ecuador as Country Director for a TA program focused on cybersecurity.
Most recently, on behalf of EU, he was providing direct Technical Assistance to Electoral Management Bodies, National Civil Registries, Constitutional Assemblies and Civil Society organizations in Tunisia, Libya, Cambodia and Honduras contributing to fostering stakeholders dialogue and promoting institutional reforms based on sustainability and rights.
From 2012 he is the scientific coordinator of training course on International Election Observation at the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice.
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International consultant on elections and technology
Ronan McDermott
Ronan has worked extensively with elections management bodies in developing and post-conflict countries for over twenty years. He has participated in regional and global electoral support initiatives and has contributed to many publications and competence development efforts.
He has developed and delivered voter registration, election results and poll-worker management systems. He has helped elections management bodies and their international partners to specify, develop, procure, deploy, secure and support a variety of technologies, including biometrics, in support of electoral processes, particularly voter registration and results management systems.
He was lead author of a joint EU/UNDP publication on results management systems. He co-authored "Pakistan's Internet Voting Experiment", which was Best Paper – Practitioner Track at the 2019 eVoteID conference, Bregenz, Austria. In 2022, he was a member of a team conducting research for the European Union on the cost of elections procurement. He is lead author on a soon-to-be-published USAID guide on cybersecurity and election results managements systems. Until February 2022, he lived in Kyiv, Ukraine.
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Election Observation Expert
Armin Rabitsch
Armin is the chairperson and co-founder of Election-Watch.EU, a non-partisan CSO, which conducted the first comprehensive election assessment mission to the European Parliament elections, and is advocating for participatory electoral reforms and young voter education in the Europe.
Armin has been working on democratisation and strengthening human rights with a focus on electoral assistance, political assessment, human rights and conflict mitigation. Armin held various fixed-term assignments as IFES Country Director, OSCE/ODIHR Senior Election Adviser and UNDP Governance Analyst. He worked as democracy support & election expert in more than 30 countries (African, American, Arab, Asian, and Pacific) for various international organisations, most recently as Deputy Chief Observer of the EU EOM to Lesotho. Armin has co-authored several election related publications, most recently the UNESCO handbook for electoral practitioners on elections in digital times.
Armin holds a PhD in international relations and an LL.M. in international Human Rights Law. He has lectured on electoral assistance in Europe and abroad, within the Masters Program in Peace Studies at the University of Innsbruck/Austria, at Universities in Baghdad and Erbil/Iraq, as well as at the Global Campus of Human Rights in Venice/Italy.
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