Afghanistan: UNAMA Report ‘2018 Elections Violence’ - Taliban campaign to disrupt polling

Afghanistan’s long-awaited parliamentary elections took place on 20, 21 and 27 October 2018. The Government made efforts to secure polling centers enabling more than four million Afghans to safely cast votes. Many citizens, however, exercised their right to votein the face of violence, with the first day of polling seeing the highest number of civilian casualties recorded on any election day since UNAMA began systematic documentation of civilian casualties in 2009. Additionally, those who made efforts to vote did so in defiance of an orchestrated campaign of abductions, threats, intimidation and harassment of voters and election workers carried out by the Taliban in the weeks and months leading up to the elections. [ . . . ]