Affirming that the conduct of non-partisan election observation and monitoring creates responsibilities to other citizens, including prospective voters, those seeking to be elected and those responsible for administering election processes and those charged with adjudicating electoral disputes, Emphasizing that genuine democratic elections provide the means to resolve peacefully the competition for political power and provide the basis for citizens to express their will as to who shall have the authority to govern, as recognized in article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 25 of the ICCPR, Appreciating that the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) in General Comment 25, paragraphs 5, 8, and 20, has declared to the 165 state parties to the ICCPR that the right to participate in public affairs is a broad concept whereby citizens take part through public debate, dialogue and their capacity to organize themselves, and the Committee has affirmed that: “There should be independent scrutiny of the voting and counting processes … so that electors have confidence….” that their elections are genuine, Affirming that independent scrutiny of election administration, and the other processes surrounding elections, encompasses non-partisan observation and monitoring of elections by citizen organizations, which is distinct from judicial review and scrutiny by political parties, candidates or their agents, Acknowledging that the charters, conventions, declarations and other instruments of regional intergovernmental organizations, as well as documents of nongovernmental organizations, also recognize the right to genuine democratic elections and that a number of instruments explicitly support non-partisan election observation and monitoring by citizen organizations, including, for example, paragraph 8 of the OCSE’s 1990 Copenhagen Document and paragraph 22 of the 2007 African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, and Recognizing that many of the principles of non-partisan election observation and monitoring by citizen organizations are common to those of international election observation set forth in the 2005 Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation, which has been endorsed as of this date by 39 intergovernmental and international nongovernmental organizations and which was recognized with appreciation by the United Nations General Assembly (A/Res/64/155; 8 March 2010), and therefore adopting paragraphs 1 through 3 of that declaration as paragraphs 1 through 3 of this declaration and otherwise noting harmony between the two declarations, The organizations endorsing this Declaration of Global Principles for Non-partisan Election Observation and Monitoring by Citizen Organizations and the accompanying Code of Conduct for Non-partisan Citizen Election Observers and Monitors hereby join to declare: 4