"The paper presents an overview of three areas of democracy assistance in Mozambique between 1994 and 2005. Support to elections appears as the most prominent sector of democracy assistance in both financial and political terms. External actors have effectively influenced some technical areas and contributed to institutional development (the Technical Secretariat for Electoral Administration [STAE] and some civil society organisations [CSOs]), but overall electoral support has not resulted in furthering the quality of democratic practice. Human rights assistance covers support to the justice sector, the police and civil society. The fragmented justice sector proved to be a very complex partner and expectations of progress were often frustrated. Major efforts were made during the period under review to (re)train police officers on a massive scale, but the effect of the training has not yet resulted in a marked change of corporate behaviour, also because the training was not complemented in a timely fashion by structural reforms. Media assistance was only modest in scope. The one major initiative that was undertaken resulted in wider coverage of the elections by national radio, the establishment of some community radio stations and technical support given to independent print media. Nevertheless, it is felt that the proliferation and improvement of media initiatives did effectively contribute to furthering democratic values." (Executive summary)