With those general remarks, let me now turn to the topic of this session which has direct relevance to our ongoing work in the areas of electoral systems and processes, parliamentary development, political parties, and increasing women's political participation. Given the time constraints, I would very briefly describe UNDP's work on elections and share some of our key lessons with this august body: Supporting elections is an important element of UNDP's work and that the organization has made the shift to providing electoral assistance around the electoral cycle concept, which incorporates the election event as one of many elements that go to the quality and magnitude of citizens' participation including, in electoral system design, electoral law reform, voter registration methodologies, civic and voter education, building the capacity of electoral management bodies, working with political parties and the media around election-related issues, etc.2 This is a trend that manifests examples in all regions. Some lessons: 1. The type of electoral system (e.g., majority-plurality, proportional representation, mixed, etc,) used in elections has long-term implications for accountability; inclusiveness and representation. 2. While proportional representation systems give a premium to inclusion over exclusion and to broad versus narrow representation (and are known to be more favourable to women's and minority representation), majoritarian systems can encourage national cohesiveness and direct accountability links between representatives and their constituents. 3, Any electoral system proposed should take into account whether the country is deeply divided along political, geographical, religious or ethnic lines. It should also ensure that minorities are fairly represented system:- 4, Discussions relating to electoral system reform should involve consultations with all political groups, to the. extent feasible, as well as civil society and electoral management body representatives. 5. Ensure that gender equality is considered in debates regarding electoral reform. For example, power, dynamics, class, gender-based discrimination, poverty, ethnicity and the elite's capture of resources, all have gender dimensions that should not be overlooked. 6, In the end, however, there is no single best electoral system to fit all contexts, and the choice of electoral system is never a purely technical one, UNDP-produced knowledge products on the subject matter, including on issues such as elections and conflict prevention, working with political parties etc. can be accessed from our website: 2