Idasa's Executive Director, Paul Graham participated in the UN Informal Ministerial Meeting in New York on 24 September, representing the Steering Committee of the Community of Democracies. He congratulated the Community of Democracies for its work so far, and encouraged more active involvement in the future. See his full statement below.

COMMUNITY OF DEMOCRACIES
Informal Ministerial Meeting, New York
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Statement on behalf of the ISC by Paul Graham

Madame President, Mr. Vygaudas Ušackas, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Ministers present, Executive Director of the Community of Democracies Permanent Secretariat, colleagues.

The Lisbon Ministerial meeting successfully concluded the fifth cycle of the Community of Democracies. We would like to congratulate Portugal on its leadership during this cycle and in particular their persistence in developing the leadership and governance structures of the Community.

We are now entering a new cycle. We expect the Community to take advantage of the foundations which have been laid and the new presence of the Permanent Secretariat. During this cycle, the tenth anniversary of the Warsaw Declaration will be held in Krakow.

We look forward to this meeting being held at the highest level, reaffirming the Declaration which remains a fundamental statement on the meaning of democracy and the values held by the members of this Community. We anticipate that it will explore its implications for a world which is very different and in which democrats and democracies face complex challenges unanticipated a decade ago.

We believe that the Community could and should have engaged with Honduras during the challenges to democracy which led to the recent unconstitutional change of government. There are many places in the world where democracies struggle to maintain their commitment to the values and principles we hold dear. In Warsaw the Community agreed that “Our goal is to support adherence to common democratic values and standards, ... To that end, our governments hereby agree to abide by these principles in practice, and to support one another in meeting these objectives which we set for ourselves today”.  A fully functioning Community may have been able to act earlier. 

It is never too late.  The Lithuanian presidency is promoting an effort, building on the resolution taken in Lisbon, to assist Honduras to restore democratic government. Despite international reservations, the elections in November represent the path to the future. This process, begun two years ago organised by an independent Electoral Tribunal with candidates nominated by their own parties needs immediate support, including financial and technical assistance, and the provision of observers to assist Hondurans conduct a free, fair, transparent and credible election.

The Permanent Secretariat has demonstrated another form of action by convening a successful launch event, again based on a resolution passed in Lisbon, this time by the NGO process. The Women’s Solidarity for Democracy conference, co-hosted by the City of Warsaw, provided a public platform for Iranian women to talk with those from other parts of the world about their plight and their courageous assertion of their democratic rights. The conference demonstrated the importance of women’s rights as a basis for democracy and the courage and ingenuity of women in claiming civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, even in countries where patriarchies and oligarchies resist the aspirations of their people for full participation and freedom.

Stolen elections are but one of the ways in which the will of people is thwarted. The African Union member states are presently engaged in a process of ratification of a Charter which defines both the “illegal means of accessing or maintaining power” and the processes for dealing with unconstitutional changes of government, including the intention to disallow perpetrators from participating in elections “to restore the democratic order” or to hold positions of responsibility thereafter. We would encourage African members of the Community to take the lead in ratifying this Charter and publicizing it with their colleagues in other regions of the world.

We would like to thank the international community for their very rapid and concerted reaction to the recent trial of Aung San Suu Kyi. She was restricted from attending the Warsaw Ministerial despite winning an election in Burma, and it appears that the regime holding power intends to ensure that she will remain a silent reproach to their rule rather than the necessary solution to the isolation of the country.

Countries in which illegitimate rulers maintain their power by force cause suffering within their borders, destabilise their regions and create festering sores within the international architecture which have consequences for peace and security. Burma shows that a common international voice can be constructed and the Community has the opportunity to find its voice if it institutes the reforms in governance already on the table and those which it might develop if the proposal of Lithuania for a working group on reform is accepted.

We continue to believe that the working group model developed at Santiago is critical if the Community is to make a difference. Already progress has been made on the Diplomat’s Handbook and Democracy Education. We support the proposal for streamlining the existing working groups, adding some new ones and soliciting country leadership in the groups and on flagship projects. Members of the ISC and the institutions they represent look forward to working with the countries, both in the convening group and beyond it, which step forward to take leadership in these groups.

Substantial work has been done by a number of sub-regions, countries and institutions in demonstrating that democracies can deal with poverty, inequality, and unfair or uneven development. We must increase our efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, and to sustain these achievements.

It is in the working groups, operating continually between Ministerial gatherings, in which progress can be made.

At Lisbon the civil society representatives present issued a complementary statement in which they raised the following points: the importance of funding the Permanent Secretariat, establishing a means for the Community to speak on urgent matters and to assist states that face threats to democracy, and to clarify and institutionalize its invitation process. In particular we are concerned about growing restrictions on the non-governmental organisations which operate both at country level and engage with international institutions. It is time for a contemporary set of norms from the Community to protect the rights of expression and association of citizens, wherever they choose to organise.

In Lisbon, regional bodies were present. The Community will have to establish modalities for engaging these regional bodies which are critical to the development of democracy just as it must create a modality for including those state and non-state donors which play such an important role in supporting democratic governance. In this regard, the UN Democracy Fund has concluded its latest round of grants and has become both a resource for the aims of the Community and a custodian of many lessons learned on ways to strengthen and deepen democracy.

With the Community now set for the leadership of a troika of Portugal, Lithuania and Mongolia, with very active support from Poland and the Permanent Secretariat, the universality of the aspiration to democracy and the necessity for lessons to be shared between democracies of a variety of histories, cultures and constitutional manifestations is being realised. Nevertheless, without the full participation of older democracies and key countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the new leadership of the Community will find it hard to sustain their momentum.

We have the opportunity in the next two years to make the Community a vibrant contributor to the welfare and rights of people, and in particular poor people, throughout the world. It can do this through active engagement with its members and especially with those whose commitment to democracy is at a crossroads, through gatherings of people committed to and struggling for democracy, and through the working groups. The ISC will be holding regional consultations in preparation for Vilnius.

 But this will not be enough. The most significant contribution which members of the Community can make will be to ensure the insights gained within the community are not divorced from the actions that are taken in other international arenas. Starting with the Human Rights Council, but extending to the G20, to forums and treaty bodies dealing with a wide range of issues which can no longer be the province of individual countries – development effectiveness, climate, gender, peace and security, poverty initiatives – members of the Community have the opportunity to consult together in the spirit of the Warsaw declaration.

The Community of Democracies must rediscover the determination that flowered a decade ago if we are to deal with the challenges facing us.

See more about the Community of Democracies.