Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening

BACKGROUND

In 2018 and 2019, Jordan witnessed a series of large-scale peaceful protests in which demonstrators expressed their dissatisfaction with government performance, proposed tax legislation, and increased income inequality. While the Government of Jordan has launched efforts to address citizen demands for change, it must carefully balance achieving reform, citizen-state trust, and maintaining stability. To this end, USAID’s Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening supports the Jordanian government’s continued efforts toward establishing equitable, accountable, and inclusive political processes that will ensure the long-term stability of Jordan.

PROJECT OVERVIEWS

Building on USAID support to the Consortium since 2010, this project seeks to increase confidence and trust in political and electoral institutions through inclusive citizen participation in policy and decision-making processes. The project enhances citizen engagement in elections, supports dialogue and research to promote a competitive and representative multiparty political system, and increases effective political and civic participation of youth, women, and people living with disabilities.

EXPECTED RESULTS

• Utilizing training from Ana Usharek, the project’s long-standing youth civic engagement program, around 80,000 youth from schools and universities across Jordan have graduated with increased political awareness, civic education, and experience in local civic engagement.  
• The USAID Local Community Civic Education program provided candidates skills training in southern Jordan, and ten of the participants (eight women and two men) won in the 2022 local elections.  
• USAID promoted greater citizen participation in elections by reaching more than 2,000,000 people through debates on social media and supporting the Independent Election Commission’s voter education campaigns that mobilized over 12,000 youth to act in local elections as volunteers and election observers during the 2022 and 2020 elections.  
• To elevate marginalized voices in local decision-making, since 2017, USAID has helped 526 disability rights activists politically engage with their communities through disability rights legislation training and community advocacy. In advance of the 2020 parliamentary elections, USAID provided 25 persons with disabilities and 455 women campaign-skills education, empowering a historic number of women and persons with disabilities to run for office. In addition, USAID continued this support ahead of the 2022 local elections by providing 100 persons with disabilities and 3,398 women training on elections and the importance of political participation.  
• Since 2018, the project has developed a network of 40 mayors across Jordan to facilitate knowledge sharing and the discussion of innovative solutions to common problems faced at the local level. This network was heavily utilized by mayors during the COVID-19 pandemic as local governments faced increased challenges in service delivery and managing budgets.  
• USAID helped launch Al Hayat Center-RASED, a Jordanian civil society watchdog organization, which now independently runs a parliament monitoring initiative using international best practices. Their “scorecards,” developed with USAID support, are one of the few ways for citizens to monitor the effectiveness of elected officials and track their attendance and voting records.  
• USAID supported Al Hayat Center-RASED to observe the local elections of 2022 and the parliamentary elections of 2020. Through this observation mission, the organization was able to document how the elections went and provide reporting that enables the Independent Election Commission to continuously improve the election process.  
• In Spring 2020, the project engaged hundreds of youth in virtual discussions with elected officials to provide avenues for dialogue, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. This effort ensured youth were engaged in the political decision-making processes. Additionally, Citizen Committees with over 300 youth in 35 communities assisted municipalities by increasing public awareness of citizen safety guidelines.