Sure. Thank you for that introduction.
We appreciate your support and the support of the Canadian government. As you may know, the Carter Center has been the recipient of support from CIDA. CIDA has been a key donor for some of our election standards projects and election observation projects over the last several years, and I'd like to start out by thanking you for the support you have afforded our mission in Sudan and for the projects of the Carter Center.
You've asked us to present a bit on our observation of the referendum, but first I'd like to start by giving you a little bit more detail about the Carter Center's presence here in Sudan.
The democracy program has had an office here since 2008, when we opened offices in both Juba and Khartoum, in order to serve the elections that were held last April. We have further been invited by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission to observe the referendum that is scheduled for January, and we have signed a memorandum of understanding with both the commission and the ministry of foreign affairs here in Khartoum.
We have a fairly large presence on the ground at the moment. We ramped up our observation activities in the fall and the deployment of several core field staff and long-term observers in September. We have 16 long-term observers deployed out to the field, with four teams in the south, one team in Abyei, and three teams deployed in the north.
We currently have additional observers on the ground for the voter registration that has started, with an additional 30 observers, for a total of 46 observers on the ground right now during the voter registration period and the complaints process following that.
We are also supporting observation activities in the eight out-of-country registration locations, including Canada, in Calgary and Toronto, with an additional 26 observers across the eight countries.
Over the referendum we intend to deploy 50 observers, plus our long-term observers and core staff. This will take place in early January, most likely from about January 2 through January 20 or January 21.
Thanks to the Canadian government, we are able deploy the observers. Your support is helping us to deploy the short-term mission and support the core field out on the ground. So I'd like to thank you for your support.
I'll pass you over to Sanne van den Bergh to give you more details about what we're seeing on the ground at the current moment, with the preparations for the referendum as well as the voter registration.