A/HRC/33/25 8. In addition, Ms. Lee said that while abundant guidance existed on the way in which elections should be conducted, a gap remained regarding issues related to democracy and human rights in the context of elections, and further guidance would be useful in that regard. Stressing that political rights were part and parcel of the human rights framework, she suggested that such guidance would also help human rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs), political actors and electoral authorities to understand their respective roles in complex environments such as that of Cambodia. In that regard, she encouraged the elaboration of an updated, more detailed general comment on article 25 of the Covenant to highlight the rights and responsibilities of various stakeholders in the electoral, legislative and policymaking arenas, and the specific requirements of due process in regard to each of them. 9. The presentation of Chad Vickery, a representative of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, focused on how electoral processes may support the right to participation. He stressed that resilient democracies require not just participation, but meaningful participation. He recalled elements considered to be essential in that regard, such as an active civil society, institutions that effectively and impartially enforce the rule of law, and the absence of intimidation and restrictions on public life. Furthermore, he stressed that electoral processes that supported meaningful citizen participation were linked to respect for accountability and for the integrity of elections. According to Mr. Vickery, the important question was how to assess whether electoral processes ultimately reflected the will of the voters. To answer that question, the electoral community had experimented with numerous methods to evaluate the quality of elections, which had proved to be challenging due to a lack of consensus as to the indicators to be used, how data was collected and shared, and the size of the data required. In that context, Mr. Vickery introduced a global election-quality indicator initiative, which was aimed at identifying and collecting a consistent set of indicators to establish the baseline for measuring electoral quality. Such indicators would produce a nuanced understanding of each country’s unique electoral process over time, including how elections contributed to the right to participate in public life. 10. Mr. Vickery also indicated that election indicators were based on information collected by technical assistance providers, election management bodies and observers. He described the benefits of the initiative’s approach, compared to other methods, but also highlighted some of the challenges that the initiative had had to grapple with. Among the advantages, he mentioned the capacity of indicators to provide a baseline to compare objective data over time, and the possibility of tracking the recommendations of observation missions, the implementation of the recommendations, and their impact. In conclusion, Mr. Vickery stressed that the indicators initiative would give election management bodies and technical assistance providers more comparative data that could be used for project design, adaptive learning, and monitoring and evaluation efforts. The ultimate goal of the indicators was to understand better the extent to which countries were meeting their international law obligations, and whether support from the international community for these electoral processes had aided the development of resilient democracies that encouraged meaningful participation and protected the political rights of individuals. 11. Katerina Hadzi-Miceva Evans, representing the European Centre for Not-for-Profit Law, emphasized that participation was a right and not a matter of political will. She stated that it was imperative to strengthen the existing international framework and guarantees in order to ensure that the right to participate was implemented meaningfully in practice. The experience of the European Centre for Not-for-Profit Law had shown that implementation of the right to participate also depended on the existence of understanding, of know-how and of safeguards to protect the right. She identified areas where the development of international standards would be beneficial, in particular the area of enforcement of the right to participate in public affairs. At the same time, she emphasized that participation 5