The ESTA copyright is a projects' stakeholders' mapping activity to prevent electoral conflicts.
ECES has developed the Electoral Security Threat Assessment (ESTA), a specific methodology which is an integral part of the EURECS strategy, together with the already copyrighted methodologies the Electoral Political Economy Analysis (EPEA), the Leadership and Conflict Management Skills for Electoral Stakeholders (LEAD) and the Prevention of Electoral Violence (PEV) approach.
The ESTA is a project’s stakeholder mapping activity with the potential to monitor lurking localised conflicts or external threats from border areas and more around the electoral and political scenario of a given country. The ESTA is a constant security mapping that seeks to engage on non-committal terms with the “supply side” of the security sector, including various institutional actors.
In the framework of the ESTA, monthly reports will be produced and shared with project beneficiaries, using the heat map as well as interrelationship diagram to add details of behind threats identified with a frequent monitoring of shifts in positions etc. The ESTA is conducted on a monthly basis and reports are made available to the project beneficiaries, other relevant electoral stakeholders as well as other implementing organisations and the contracting authority.
The ESTA is used to inform targeted activities implemented by the project and generates a hot-spot map allowing also the mapping of conflicts that are not bound to a geographical area and monitor triggers in the electoral- political process mindful of escalation points.
ESTA is advisable to be presented in the form of a report, with a main graphic component through mapping and charting visuals complemented with written assessments. It shouldn’t be an extensive document but short and clear, with few pages easily to be read and interpreted by any reader.
Several security threats, with potential impact on the electoral processes, are identified-analysed-evaluated and presented in the report. In addition to the identified threats, a number of main risks associated to the electoral processes are also identified-analysed-evaluated and reported, as these main risks could have some form of impact in the safe and secure environment towards elections.
