WEBVTT

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The great philosopher Aristotle said

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if something doesn't exist,
there's no word for it,

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and if there's no word for something,

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that something doesn't exist.

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So when we talk about elections,

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we in established democracies,
we know what we're talking about.

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We've got the words.
We have the vocabulary.

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We know what a polling station is.

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We know what a ballot paper is.

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But what about countries
where democracy doesn't exist,

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countries where there are
no words to describe the concepts

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that underpin a democratic society?

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I work in the field
of electoral assistance,

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so that's to say we assist

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emerging democracies to organize

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what is often their first elections.

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When people ask me what I do,

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quite often I get this answer.

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"Oh, so you're one of these people
who goes around the world

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imposing Western democracy
on countries that can't handle it."

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Well, the United Nations
does not impose anything on anybody.

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It really doesn't,

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and also, what we do

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is firmly anchored in the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights,

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Article 21, that says

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that everybody should have the right
to choose who governs them.

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So that's the basis of the work.

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I specialize in public outreach.

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What does that mean? Another jargon.

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It actually means
designing information campaigns

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so that candidates and voters

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who have never had the opportunity
to participate or to vote

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understand where, when, how to register;

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where, when, how to vote;

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why, why it is important to take part.

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So I'll probably devise a specific
campaign to reach out to women

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to make sure that they can take part,

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that they can be part of the process.

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Young people as well.

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All sorts of people.

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Handicapped people.

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We try to reach everybody.

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And it's not always easy,
because very often in this work,

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I've noticed now over the years
that I've been doing it

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that words are lacking,

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and so what do you do?

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Afghanistan.

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It's a country with
high levels of illiteracy,

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and the thing about that was,
it was in 2005,

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and we organized two elections
on the same day.

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The reason was because the logistics
are so incredibly difficult,

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it seemed to be more efficient to do that.

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It was,

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but on the other hand,
explaining two elections instead of one

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was even more complicated.

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So we used a lot of images,

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and when it came to the actual ballot,

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we had problems, because
so many people wanted to take part,

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we had 300 candidates for 52 seats

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in the Wolesi Jirga,
which is the parliamentary elections.

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And for the Provincial Council,
we had even more candidates.

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We had 330 for 54 seats.

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So talking about ballot design,

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this is what the ballot looked like.

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It's the size of a newspaper.

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This was the Wolesi Jirga ballot --

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(Laughter)

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Yeah, and --

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this was the Provincial Council ballot.

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Even more.

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So you see, we did use
a lot of symbols and things like that.

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And we had other problems
in Southern Sudan.

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Southern Sudan was a very different story.

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We had so many people
who had never, of course, voted,

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but we had extremely, extremely
high levels of illiteracy,

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very, very poor infrastructure.

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For example -- I mean, it's a country
the size of Texas, more or less.

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We had seven kilometers of paved roads,

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seven kilometers in the whole country,

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and that includes the tarmac
where we landed the planes

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in Juba Airport.

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So transporting electoral materials, etc.,

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is exceedingly difficult.

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People had no idea
about what a box looked like.

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It was very complicated,

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so using verbal communication
was obviously the way to go,

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but there were 132 languages.

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So that was extremely challenging.

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Then I arrived in Tunisia in 2011.

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It was the Arab Spring.

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A huge amount of hope was generated
by that enormous movement

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that was going on in the region.

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There was Libya,
there was Egypt, there was Yemen.

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It was an enormous, enormous
historical moment.

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And I was sitting
with the election commission,

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and we were talking
about various aspects of the election,

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and I was hearing them using words
that I hadn't actually heard before,

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and I'd worked with Iraqis,
I'd worked with Jordanians, Egyptians,

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and suddenly they were using these words,

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and I just thought, "This is strange."

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And what really gave rise to it
was this word "observer."

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We were discussing election observers,

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and the election commissioner
was talking about "mulahiz" in Arabic.

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This means "to notice"
in a passive sort of sense,

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as in, "I noticed
he was wearing a light blue shirt."

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Did I go and check whether
the shirt was light blue or not?

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That is the role of an election observer.

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It's very active, it's governed
by all kinds of treaties,

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and it has got
that control function in it.

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And then I got wind
of the fact that in Egypt,

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they were using this term "mutabi’,"
which means "to follow."

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So we were now having
followers of an election.

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So that's not quite right either,

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because there is a term
that's already accepted and in use,

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which was the word "muraqib"
which means "a controller."

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It's got that notion of control.

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So I thought, three words
for one concept. This is not good.

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And with our colleagues,
we thought perhaps it's our role

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to actually help make sure
that the words are understood

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and actually create a work of reference

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that could be used across the Arab region.

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And that's what we did.

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So together with these colleagues,

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we launched the "Arabic Lexicon
of Electoral Terminology,"

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and we worked
in eight different countries.

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It meant actually defining 481 terms

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which formed the basis
of everything you need to know

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if you're going to organize
a democratic election.

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And we defined these terms,

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and we worked with the Arab colleagues

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and came to an agreement
about what would be the appropriate word

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to use in Arabic.

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Because the Arabic language is very rich,
and that's part of the problem.

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But there are 22 countries
that speak Arabic,

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and they use modern standard Arabic,

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which is the Arabic
that is used across the whole region

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in newspapers and broadcasts,

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but of course, then from one country
to the next in day to day language and use

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it varies -- dialect, colloquialisms, etc.

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So that was another
added layer of complication.

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So in one sense you had the problem

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that language wasn't
fully ripe, if you like,

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neologisms were coming up,
new expressions.

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And so we defined all these terms,

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and then we had
eight correspondents in the region.

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We submitted the draft to them,

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they responded back to us.

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"Yes, we understand the definition.

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We agree with it,

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but this is what we say in our country."

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Because we were not going
to harmonize or force harmonization.

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We were trying to facilitate
understanding among people.

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So in yellow, you see
the different expressions in use

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in the various countries.

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So this, I'm happy to say,
it took three years to produce this

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because we also finalized the draft
and took it actually into the field,

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sat with the election commissions
in all these different countries,

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debated and defined and refined the draft,

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and finally published it
in November 2014 in Cairo.

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And it's gone a long way.
We published 10,000 copies.

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To date, there's about 3,000 downloads
off the internet in PDF form.

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I heard just recently from a colleague
that they've taken it up in Somalia.

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They're going to produce
a version of this in Somalia,

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because there's nothing in Somalia at all.

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So that's very good to know.

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And this newly formed Arab Organization
for Electoral Management Bodies,

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which is trying to professionalize

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how elections are run in the region,

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they're using it as well.

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And the Arab League have now
built up a pan-Arab observation unit,

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and they're using it.

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So that's all really good.

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However, this work of reference
is quite high-pitched.

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It's complex, and a lot of the terms
are quite technical,

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so the average person probably doesn't
need to know at least a third of it.

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But the people of the Middle East

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have been deprived of any form
of what we know as civic education.

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It's part of our curriculum at school.

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It doesn't really exist
in that part of the world,

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and I feel it's really
the right of everybody

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to know how these things work.

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And it's a good thing to think about
producing a work of reference

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for the average person,

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and bearing in mind that now

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we have a basis to work with,

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but also we have technology,

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so we can reach out using telephone apps,

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video, animation.

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There's all sorts of tools
that can be used now

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to communicate these ideas to people

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for the first time in their own language.

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We hear a lot of misery
about the Middle East.

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We hear the chaos of war.
We hear terrorism.

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We hear about sectarianism
and all this horrible negative news

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that comes to us all the time.

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What we're not hearing is what are
the people, the everyday people, thinking?

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What are they aspiring to?

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Let's give them the means,
let's give them the words.

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The silent majority is silent

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because they don't have the words.

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The silent majority needs to know.

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It is time to provide people
with the knowledge tools

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that they can inform themselves with.

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The silent majority
does not need to be silent.

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Let's help them have a voice.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)