Confronting the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

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What Can be Done to Assist Democrats in Closed Societies?

• Pressure governments to make business and financial agreements conditional on improvements in human rights and ratification of UN conventions, and monitor implementation.
• Pressure governments to avoid legitimization of the governments of closed societies by visits and exchanges that glamorize authoritarian regimes.
• Maintain close communication with democrats and activists inside closed societies, both to help strengthen their efforts and to accumulate information.
• Organize conferences and seminars as a means of educating international public opinion and showcasing oppressive measures.
• Break down boundaries between democrats by strengthening trans-regional and regional solidarity networks to expand contact that allows democrats to support one another and to provide protection for those working within closed societies.
• Keep the memory of dictatorships alive in newly liberated countries, both to safeguard those new democracies and to bolster the struggle to liberate closed societies.
• Encourage democracy foundations and other donor agencies to help build capacity for democracy NGOs, including access to information and communication technologies.
• Support workers' rights, especially rights of association, through international trade and financial institutions such as WTO and the World Bank.
• Coordinate advocacy activities at UN bodies to ensure a stronger presence on behalf of democratic forces in closed societies.

• The World Movement should take up campaigns on behalf of key democracy struggles around the world, intervening in the name of the World Movement.
• The World Movement should circulate or post information, perhaps on its Web site, that can be used to assist democrats. Such information would include:
  
  
  • information about solidarity campaigns
  • a list of techniques for promoting democracy in closed societies
  • a list of links to training opportunities for activists
  • full-text library materials or links to documents on democratic values and on the experiences of countries that have completed successful democratic transitions
  • a kind of "yellow pages" or directory of activists working on democracy.
  
  
• The World Movement should facilitate a kind of match-making function to enable activists working on closed societies to find partners in open societies who can lobby their own governments and who can provide concrete assistance, such as traveling inside the country to meet isolated dissidents.
  
  The World Movement Web site will soon feature a searchable, online Database of World Movement Participants to help facilitate collaborative activities.