A/HRC/18/53 To illustrate commitment to global standards, these are the essentials of what the project of law included. A unique election law: As it is the case in other countries, the project of law includes all substantive provisions to regulate the process of electing members of the Parliament and members of Local Administrations Councils in one Law. Goals: To organize substantive provisions aimed to regulate the process of elections, and to provide a safe electoral process, and to ensure candidates’ right to monitor elections. The bill also included terms related to punishment of abusers, and vote manipulators, in addition to securing all essential social segments’ representations. To create an independent electoral management, with integrity, in compliance with international standards: Securing integrity of elections is achieved through the process of implementing regulations on the ground; this requires the presence of an impartial third party in charge of ensuring the legal application of regulations, thus, in no way a party should be competitor and arbitrator. Likewise, those who organize and manage elections should hold no special interests related to the outcome of elections. This led the bill to appoint the judiciary to supervise elections’ management, a Supreme Commission for Elections will be charged with this task, and provinces sub-committees will be formed by the juridical. The Executive authorities were left with fewer administrative tasks. Independent Electoral Commissions: According to international standards which require an independent electoral management with integrity, the project of law singled out the texts referring to the composition of independent, impartial Electoral Commissions, responsible for organizing and managing the electoral process in all its stages, on all levels. In this regard, competencies and responsibilities that reflect the higher levels of credibility and integrity in the electoral process were identified. Electoral Districts: Thinking the concepts of the philosophy of representation in both assemblies from a political and constitutional view points, whether in Parliament or in Local Councils, we were careful to describe larger constituencies for parliamentary elections, for the members of Parliament usually don’t represent specific geographic areas, they are representatives of all the people. As for Local Administrations elections, smaller constituencies were described in order to fit with local representations concept. Nomination conditions: Nominated candidates need to have obtained Syrian citizenship for a minimum of 10 years (previously 5 years) except those who were included in the decree number 49 of the year 2011 (related to the year 1962 problematic population census) as they can be immediately nominated regardless of the 10 years citizenship condition. Election campaigns: In the project of law, election campaigns are regulated in a way allowing candidates to access various media in order to have a reasonable possibility for communicating their individual programs to the public. Monitoring electoral process : Throughout all phases of the electoral process, starting from committees’ work, to election, vote counting and all the details related to the electoral process, and ending with 89