Confronting the Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century

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Cross-Border Democracy Assistance: What Is the Role of New Democracies and NGOs in their Regions?

• Ivlian Haindrava, Malgorzata Naimska, and Alexander Podrabinek pointed to the dynamic interaction among NGOs from different countries as a means of promoting democracy, disseminating information, defending human rights, broadening understanding of democratic values, and building civic society and democratic institutions. Each noted especially the benefits of cross-border assistance among the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which have seen greater democratic development than those of the former Soviet Union, where democracy has taken a much weaker hold.
  
• Heba El-Shazli presented the great benefits of trans-regional cooperation in programs she has organized in the Middle East and North Africa using Eastern European colleagues as trainers. She noted that following one workshop with Solidarity representatives, the participants created a completely new women's trade union program in Algeria that immediately improved women's trade union organization in the country.
• Participants from Somalia, Romania, Iraq, Burma, South Korea, Egypt, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Cuba, and Belarus, among others, pointed to the importance of building or expanding regional and trans-regional assistance programs.

• Look for commonality among countries in transition to democracy that are trying to overcome similar systems of dictatorship, and among countries that have reached stages of transition and those still struggling against similar systems of dictatorship. For example, it is important to note the often forgotten commonalities among post-communist countries in Eastern Europe and those in the Horn of Africa, as well as among other countries formerly dominated by the Soviet Union or that had adopted a system of communist dictatorship.
• In transitional regimes, civil society and democratic activists should insist on investigations into human rights violations and the establishment of accountability for crimes committed under dictatorship. That information should then be shared across borders among democrats in countries in similar situations. This insistence on accountability and the sharing of information will allow for a smoother transition to democracy by establishing human rights as its first principle.
• Strengthen democratic civic education programs among the Kurdish people, who live in a variety of countries, including Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, most of which are non-democracies. This will help take advantage of the great potential of the Kurdish people to serve as a bridge for, and a carrier of, democratic values in the region.
• Organize international campaigns against "emergency laws and regulations" of dictatorial regimes, since they pose extreme burdens on democracy activists.
• Pressure governments not to put obstacles in the way of democrats who seek to assist their colleagues in dictatorships (for example, by preventing meetings outside the borders of a dictatorship, as Chinese and South Korean authorities have done concerning attempted meetings with North Korean refugees in China).
• Exempt democracy-promotion programs from the vicissitudes of political, diplomatic, or other pressures and ensure that a buffer exists between governments and publicly funded agencies promoting democracy.
• Support cross-border and trans-regional training of democratic activists in dictatorships, including through third-country workshops, internships, exchanges, study tours, and other means. Organize teams of cross-border and trans-regional election observers of elections held in dictatorships and emerging democracies, as well as teams of trainers for use in general democracy and civil society promotion.
• Establish a directory of resources on democracy promotion for new democratic organizations.
• Given the often greater effectiveness of new and emerging democracies in assisting democracy movements in dictatorships, donors from the established, wealthy democracies should cooperate with and support NGOs in new democracies that organize cross-border assistance to those movements.
• Under no circumstances should donors impose their programs on democracy movements; rather, they should respond to the needs of democracy activists - as the activists themselves express those needs - in challenging repressive regimes. Donors should also listen to the advice of democracy activists in new democracies who have had recent experience in removing dictatorships.

• Build an effective and immediate international solidarity network among members of the World Movement to alert people to cases requiring urgent action. For example, Marcos Lorrenzo Torres, a Cuban democracy activist, was imprisoned a few days prior to the Second Assembly in part for being invited to participate in it; such a network might be effective in pressuring the Cuban authorities to release him.
• The World Movement should consider establishing a press agency reporting on human rights abuses under dictatorships and on democratic developments in countries in transition from dictatorship.