This special edition of the weekly update spotlights election violence in the Niger Delta with a focus on the application of Early Warning and Early Response (EWER) systems to prevent and mitigate electoral violence in the region. Historically, elections in the Niger Delta are high stake affairs, highly competitive, and oſten characterized by violence. According to data (see map above), over 180 incidents of election violence and more than 100 related fatalities were reported in the region between January 2019 and December 2022. Many of the prevalent and recurrent incidents including election irregularities and clashes between supporters of political parties could be prevented or mitigated through the deployment of community-based, multistakeholder EWER systems. PIND’s integrated, multistakeholder, and data-driven SMS EWER platform, for instance, has proven to be useful in collecting data on potential incidents and indicators of election violence from people on the ground which are then analyzed and transmitted to specialized response actors for targeted interventions to prevent and mitigate violence in the Niger Delta.

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