European Centre for Electoral Support (ECES) supported the first annual meeting of the Electoral Conflictivity Roundtable, convened by the Office of the Ombudsperson (Defensoría del Pueblo), to initiate a technical and inter-institutional analysis of the risks of political and electoral conflict associated with Bolivia’s 2026 Subnational Elections in La Paz, February 3, 2026.
The meeting brought together authorities from the Office of the Ombudsperson, representatives of civil society organisations, and actors specialised in electoral observation and conflict prevention, consolidating this forum as a key space for coordination, analysis, and early prevention within the current electoral cycle.
During the meeting, ECES highlighted the importance of capitalising on the lessons learned from the 2025 General Elections, which were recognised by national and international electoral observation missions, and of transferring these standards of integrity, transparency, and acceptance of results to the subnational level. CEAE also underscored the need to adopt a territorial and differentiated approach to electoral conflictivity, taking into account the specificities of departmental, municipal, and Indigenous Native Peasant territories.
Within this framework, Luis Castellar and Rafael Loayza, Project Coordinator and Project Officer, presented ECES’ electoral-cycle analysis approach, emphasising that electoral processes constitute spaces of high political intensity where polarisation, disinformation, and hate speech may converge, particularly during campaign periods. In this regard, the importance of strengthening the credibility of the Plurinational Electoral Body (OEP) was highlighted as a central factor in reducing electoral conflict.
The Roundtable agreed to move forward with joint actions aimed at producing shared analyses of conflict dynamics, developing preventive messages for citizens and electoral authorities, and coordinating with electoral observation missions that will accompany the subnational process. A new session of the Roundtable is also planned for the weeks leading up to election day.
ECES’s participation in this space reaffirms its commitment to institutional strengthening, conflict prevention, and the promotion of inclusive, peaceful, and credible electoral processes in Bolivia.
This work is carried out thanks to the generous contribution of the European Union and the Foreign Policy Instrument (FPI), within the framework of the PRO-Elección Bolivia project.
4 February 2026
