🌏 Areg Agasaryan, Head of the Center for International Interaction and Cooperation and Deputy Chairman of the Public Council under Rossotrudnichestvo, took part in the discussion “International Expertise of Electoral Campaigns: From Observation Missions to the Rating of Electoral Systems” at the All-Russian Electoral Expert Forum 2026.
The discussion focused on how international election observation is changing, why traditional approaches are increasingly losing trust, and why the world needs new independent formats of electoral expertise.
A separate focus was placed on the International Association of Political and Electoral Expertise, established in April as a platform for experts from different countries who support equal dialogue, respect for sovereignty, and a rejection of any monopoly on the assessment of elections.
Most existing international organizations in the field of electoral expertise are politically or financially biased and promote an exclusively Western agenda. It was precisely in response to this that the first independent International Association of Political and Electoral Expertise was established. Its key distinction is genuine independence: the organization receives no external funding, and its work is built on grassroots initiative. The Association brings together 80 experts from 52 countries, representing all macro-regions of the world.
🌎 He emphasized that the idea of creating the Association came from the international expert community itself. According to Areg Agasaryan, experts from dozens of countries had been speaking for several years about the need for an alternative to biased Western structures, and Russia supported this request.
The Association already plans to take part in election observation in Peru, Colombia, Ethiopia, Brazil and Russia.
The discussion also featured Alexey Martynov, Associate Professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Lukushin, Research Fellow at the Center for Political Studies of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Petros Woldegiorgis Woldesenbet, Chair of the Federal Committee of the Prosperity Party of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia and Sebastián López Calendino, Director of the Center for Electoral and Political-Institutional Studies at the National University of La Plata.