It is estimated that three quarters of displaced people in conflict situations are women. After a natural disaster, at least half of the displaced people are likely to be women. Thus, the issue of refugees and internally displaced peoples are also important gender issues. The United Nations “Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement” include the right of the internally displaced to vote and to have access to the means necessary to exercise this right. Provisions for absentee voting are often central to ensuring that internally displaced people can vote, either for the area where they normally live or where they are currently living. For some large refugee populations, facilitating the provision of out-of-country voting can be a key element of a peace process and a condition of any political resolution.[1]

Example: In Bosnia and Herzegovina, to assist internally displaced peoples in the first post-conflict election, voters were not required to cast their ballot at a particular voting center and a countrywide final voter register was distributed to all voting centers.[2 

Example: In Kosovo, in the first post-conflict election, internally displaced peoples could choose to cast their vote in the municipality where they currently lived or in their original municipality.[3]

Example: In Sierra Leone, a special procedure was established for “transfer voting”, which allowed refugees and internally displaced peoples to register in one location and vote in another to accommodate the timing of the election relative to their movement from camps to resettlement.[4]