Reaffirming the values of the Community of Democracies

Leaders and activists meet in Kraków

On the weekend of 2-4 July, world leaders, including the U.S. Secretary of State, celebrated the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the Community of Democracies at a High Level Meeting in Kraków hosted by the Polish government.

The Community of Democracies (CD) is a global intergovernmental coalition of democratic countries whose goal is to promote democratic rules and strengthen democratic norms and institutions around the world.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech accentuating the importance of international democracy support and the role of civil society:

"Civil society has played an essential role in identifying and eradicating the injustices that have, throughout our history, separated our nation from the principles on which it was founded. It was civil society, after all, that gave us the abolitionists who fought the evils of slavery, the suffragettes who campaigned for women's rights, the freedom marchers who demanded racial equality, the unions that championed the rights of labor, the conservationists who worked to protect our planet and climate."

She also announced a new initiative, including funding of USD 2 million, to defend democracy activists arrested by their authoritarian governments. You can read a summary of the Secretary's remarks on the State Department's blog; the full text of the speech is available here.

At the same time, President Obama released a statement congratulating the CD on its tenth anniversary, the first public recognition of the CD by a U.S. President:

“I welcome this celebration of the Community’s first ten years and believe that its role in fostering strong and effective cooperation among the world’s democracies is essential for confronting the challenges ahead. Working together in partnership, we can advance the dignity of all human beings and the rights that are universal.”

Read the full text of President Obama's statement on the White House website.

Among the other speakers at the meeting was Paul Graham, the Executive Director of IDASA, who called for a stimulus package to rescue democracy from recession:

A stimulus package requires us to ensure that our own practice of democracy and the quality of our citizens speak for themselves. All of us have domestic failings – what efforts are we marshalling to deepen and broaden democracy at home? Perhaps in doing this we will also learn the lessons for our larger common task, the stimulation of demand for democracy world wide.

Twenty-two of the twenty-five members of the International Steering Committee attended the Krakow meeting, with representatives from New Zealand, Chile, Indonesia, North America, Kenya and Europe in attendance, along with two hundred civil society activists from Myanmar, Zimbabwe, China, Russia and Cuba.

According to Robert LaGamma, of the CD’s International Steering Committee, the Kraków High Level Meeting achieved the goal of allowing participating governments to reaffirm their commitment to the Warsaw Declaration and to consider ways to strengthen the organization both in terms of its structure and in the generation of concrete results to advance democracy in the world.

One of the CD's most interesting projects is The Diplomat's Handbook for Democracy Development Support, which as the name suggests contains a wealth of information on democracy support including case studies, a resource list of donor and democracy support organisations around the world as well as a compendium outlining which international covenants support the core freedoms of expression, association and assembly for civil society.

You can download a free PDF copy of the second edition of The Diplomat's Handbook  here.