All activities of this project feed into a comprehensive integrity strategy based on the analysis of integrity vulnerabilities from previous electoral processes. The Project will focus on building multiple integrity strategies that are Afghan-led and Afghan-owned to ensure the sustainability of the Project outcomes as well as maximization of multiplying effects. While the tangible impact of many integrity actions will take time, the strategy intends to lay the foundations, through multiple actions and milestones, to produce changes in the mid-term and long-term by identifying agents for change and meaningful actions. Costly technical anti-fraud measures had very limited impact in the past, thus the need to bring about innovative, targeted political strategies involving as much as stakeholders as possible, although focusing on the groups that are not yet receiving substantial support, such as political parties (and their polling station agents), domestic observers and civil society at large, media and women’s organisations or other non-state actors working to promote gender parity. The overarching implementation strategy will be in line with the values of the European Response to Electoral Cycle Support (EURECS) crafted by ECES. The EURECS is a strategy that prescribes value for money, transparency, inclusivity of all electoral stakeholders and local ownership in all electoral assistance projects.

Furthermore, the project’s methodology includes the Electoral Political Economy Analysis, which provides an analytical framework to identify underlying factors, frameworks (both formal and informal) and dynamics that shape stakeholders’ perceptions, motivations, values and ideas about electoral processes. The objective of EPEA is to suggest the most influential constraints and opportunities facing a defined question of concern to promote stability and last democratic development.

With regards to capacity building activities, the Project has built-in mechanisms to ensure strong ownership and designed to strengthen already existing skill-sets while building new capacities where gaps are emerging.

A multidimensional gender strategy that engenders men and women as more multi-faceted than being one homogenous group will be adopted.