Democracy Digest: Live from Kyiv

Democracy Foundations – Cooperation,Yes; Coordination, No

Democracy assistance foundations are proliferating even while a backlash against democracy is under way. The UN Democracy Fund’s Roland Rich described this as a “parallel process” which has seen the emergence of foundations like his own, and new European, Arab and Canadian initiatives, at the same time as democracy assistance is under attack. It is being assailed by the usual suspects – authoritarian and dictatorial regimes – of course, but also from with in the democratic world by academics and journalists who claim democracy promotion is merely a cover for the pursuit of national interest.

 

The problem is, he argued, that they are partly right. Most foundations use public funds - taxpayers’ money – and the politicians who make such funds available need to demonstrate that the expenditure is cost effective. They need to demonstrate that such work is ultimately for the benefit of their citizens so this work can never be entirely altruistic or disinterested.

 

A related problem is the fact that growing competition and lobbying for funds has led some politicians and NGOs to claim credit for democratic transitions and other achievements that rightly belongs to local activists. Academic analysts of transitions also tend to overstate the role of external agencies.

 

Democracy assistance foundations could learn from the experience of the development community by emphasizing local ownership (as the World Bank does), by being appropriately modest in their claims, and improve decision-making processes by enhancing transparency and devolving decisions and initiative to grantees and local activists. They should also learn to “cop it sweet”, as they say in his native Australia – i.e., accepting legitimate criticism in good grace.

 

Mohsen Marzouk is a “new kid on the block” as director of the recently formed Arab Democracy Foundation. The Tunisian human rights activist has just been appointed to lead the group, an initiative launched at a meeting of over 500 Arab democracy activists in Doha last May. Although he’s new to the job, his experience as an activist and grantee led him to identify some key challenges for the democracy assistance community. There is wasteful “negative competition” for resources: donors often fund the same groups and don’t even exchange information at the local level. In short, unscrupulous grantees often claim different grants and get paid twice (or more) for the same activity. A lack of information-sharing between grantees means they lack knowledge of funding sources.

 

In the Arab world in particular, too many NGOs are predatory rather than strategic – in other words, they shift their focus from, say, women’s rights to “good governance”, depending on the availability of funds not real needs or public demand. There is a growing contrast between elitist, well-funded urban NGOs that too often have little real impact and more spontaneous but under-funded popular or social movements that have genuine support and reflect real needs.

 

There is a need to “institutionalize good practice”, Marzouk argues, through an “e-network” of democracy foundations. The network could also establish a code of conduct, identifying best practice on relations with grantees, transparency, evaluation methodologies, etc., and foster greater information-exchange and local or regional partnerships.

 

Due to their experience of authoritarian rule, post-communist states are showing greater enthusiasm for democracy assistance than many long-established democracies, said Kristina Prunerova, head of the European Foundation for Democracy Through Partnership. The foundation will be launched in Brussels on April 15 at a meeting hosted by former Czech dissident and President Vaclav Havel and José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission.

 

The foundation is an initiative of 15 European democracy groups which believe the organization will to improve cooperation, allow for the exchange of lessons and best practice, serve as a funding mechanism and provide a common front in lobbying or other relationships with the EU institutions and national governments.

 

Democracy is a “core European value” but the EU and most member states are too hesitant to energetically promote democracy in policy and in practice. A former activist with People in Need, the Czech democracy NGO rightly celebrated for its work in Cuba and Burma, Prunerova hopes the new foundation will provide a more flexible and targeted funding facility than current EU instruments which are exceedingly bureaucratic and do not allow for funding unregistered groups (absurdly, groups that are denied registration by authoritarian rulers are not eligible for funding through EU programs like the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights).

 

Democracy has become a pejorative word in some quarters, says Ken Wollack, head of the National Democratic Institute. Polite society seems to prefer good governance or rule of law as euphemisms for the “D-word.” This is because the mistaken conflation of democracy promotion with the Iraq war and regime change has not only aided the autocrats’ propaganda but led some “realist” analysts in the West - citing the aftermath of recent elections in Egypt, Palestinian territories, Iraq and Lebanon - to suggest it is dangerously idealistic.

 

Wollack suggested that the democracy assistance community needs to “press the reset button” and outline the case for what we do – for which there is a compelling rationale – just as it was made 25 years ago. “Making democracy work” is a key priority: democracies need to be able to deliver, meeting people’s real material needs and, in this respect, improved partnerships with the development community would help.

 

Democracies have also been weakened by the poor performance of those intermediary agencies between state and civil society - the parties, parliaments and politicians that democracy assistance too often overlooks or fails to adequately support. While supportive of improved information-sharing and cooperation amongst democracy assistance foundations, the NDI veteran is dead set against coordination which, he believes, means groups can only move at the pace of the slowest member.

 

In a discussion too rich and nuanced to be adequately summarized here, delegates discussed the shortcomings and merits of evaluation – great in theory, methodologically limited in practice; the issue of “national interest” – problematic for governments, less so for civil society (and smaller, post-authoritarian states); the need for transparency – yes, within limits that don’t endanger vulnerable activists; donor-grantee relations – rather than rely on donors, grantees should form their own consortia for evaluating projects; and information-sharing and communications – absolutely, but use the soon-to-be re-launched Democracy Digest (with a new blog and listserv), don’t reinvent the wheel.

 

The session concluded with some enthusiasm for a proposal that the World Movement research and publish a report addressing some of the substantive challenges facing democracy assistance foundations. At a time when this field is the subject of critique and reassessment, such a report could also survey the field and make the case for democracy assistance with an articulacy and seriousness that would influence key external stakeholders, including policy-makers and opinion-formers. The Czech government assumes the EU Presidency next year and will likely convene a conference to review the field of democracy assistance to which the report could make a valuable contribution.

 

Posted: April 9, 2008

Defending Civil Society Plenary

Their personal experience will have alerted most World Movement assembly delegates to the ongoing backlash against civil society, and democracy activists in particular. But Tuesday’s opening plenary on a new WMD report, Defending Civil Society, was still well-attended as delegates gathered to hear a panel of distinguished activists and analysts outline how our community should respond to the authoritarian offensive.

 

In a witty and entertaining introduction, Doug Rutzen, executive director of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, outlined how autocrats are stealthily reducing political space, imposing legal and administrative constraints, and providing spurious rationales for doing so, justifying barriers to NGO registration and restrictions on foreign funding on the pretext of ensuring NGO “accountability”, anti-terrorism or combating political “extremism.” Even more ominously, he showed how regimes are collaborating, exchanging examples of “worst practice” by copying legislative provisions and utilizing each others’ political technologies.

 

Doug explained how the report, a collaboration between the ICNL and World Movement, was conducted under the auspices of an Eminent Persons Groups, including leading global civil society figures such as former Czech president Vaclav Havel, former Malaysian deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim, former Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso, former Canadian premier Kim Campbell, Egyptian dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The report drew on expert ICNL analysis, and regional consultations with activists in Lima, Johannesburg, Bangkok, Kiev and Casablanca.

 

More positively, he outlined how the principles that legitimize the work of international democracy and human rights are already reflected in international law, including conventions signed by many authoritarian regimes. Assembly delegates will be reassured to know that international law legitimizes NGOs’ rights to communication and cooperation, to seek and secure resources (including cross-border funding) and that states have a positive duty to protect NGOs. He concluded with the inspiring affirmation from Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

 

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the celebrated Egyptian sociologist and dissident, illustrated the various dimensions of the backlash through his personal experience, including that of his own organization, the Ibn Khaldun Center. He had been charged with defaming Egypt, with receiving unauthorized foreign funds, and with being funded as an agent of a foreign power, whikle the Center has been accused of being an umbrella for unpatriotic and subversive activities, and threatened with closure. He has been forced into exile and the Mubarak regime has threatened to strip him of his Egyptian nationality. But, Saad concluded, civil society is itself becoming more innovative in adapting to new restrictions, as evidenced by recent labor movement actions, Bedouin protests and the increasingly assertive judges’ club.

 

The backlash has been prompted by the success of non-violent “people power”, particularly by the powerful example of Ukraine’s own Orange Revolution, said Russian democracy and human rights activist Yuri Dzhibladze. The Kremlin, spooked by what has been called “Russia’s 9/11”, reacted by harassing Russian NGOs through a “choking bureaucracy”, repeated and intrusive tax inspections, and burdensome reporting requirements.

 

Perhaps the most disturbing result of these developments has been the degree of self-censorship that NGOs impose and the fact that, faced with such hostility and obstacles to effective working, many NGOs are losing valuable staff, frustrated with the lack of professional advance and fearful of possible prosecution. On the positive side, the authorities’ hostility has had the effect of increasing the sense of commitment and mission within Russia’s beleaguered civil society, and its sense of identity as perhaps the most valuable of Russia’s last remaining democratic spaces.

 

Singapore is only a pencil dot on the map but it has a powerful global presence and influence, not least on budding authoritarians, as an economically vibrant but politically authoritarian regime. Moreover, democracy activist Chee Siok Chin suggested, it is one which has successfully marketed itself as a benign if quirkily strict state – no chewing gum allowed, and all that. Established in the 1960s under Lee Kuan Yew and continued by his son (albeit with father’s guaranteed place in the Cabinet as “Minister Mentor”), the city-state’s form of authoritarian governance is undermining the pursuit of democracy globally. China’s Deng Zhiao Ping cited the state as an influence, communist Vietnam’s premier cited it as a “good role model” and Beijing’s representatives have sought to “Singaporise” Hong Kong.

 

An activist with the Alliance for Reform and Democracy in Asia, Chee Siok Chin has been arrested, prosecuted, arbitrarily detained and bankrupted by Singapore’s authorities but she counts herself lucky compared to her brother Chee Soon Juan who has been jailed 6 times by the regime.

 

Venezuela ’s would-be caudillo Hugo Chavez has a peculiar notion of democracy. His “Bolivarian revolution” appears to be based on Chavista monopolizing the country’s political institutions, from an absence of parliamentary opposition to a hand-picked judiciary. In these circumstances, Carlos Ponce said, civil society provides the only countervailing power to the Chavista state and to Chavez’s Castroite aspirations.

 

The Supreme Court recently deemed illegal even the tiniest of foreign donations to Venezuelan NGOs, said Ponce, head of the Asociacion Civil Consorcio Justicia. The country’s civil society organizations received only $1.3 million – a stark contrast to the billions of petro-dollars that Chavez uses to subsidize and sustain his movement inside Venezuela and their external cheerleaders. The state has an extensive list of pro-democracy activists and thousands of ordinary citizens known to be critics of the regime which it uses as a de facto “blacklist” to deny jobs and harass critics.

 

State-run TV programs are devoted to attacking – and publicizing the names and addresses – of democracy and human rights activists. Yet civil society has demonstrated its resilience and capacity to mobilize, in association with a revived students’ movement, in defeating Chavez’s proposed constitutional amendments which would, in effect, have given him power for life.

 

The following plenary focused on identifying targets and opportunities for promoting the report’s principles. Delegates stressed the importance of cultivating local ownership of the report, developing networks of activists and analysts that would sustain the momentum and update the report. Strategies for promoting the report’s conclusions, principles and recommendations should be “contextualized” and adapted to national circumstances. However, it was agreed that the universal norms the report identifies should not be compromised.

Posted: April 8, 2008

Opening Session

Ukraine may receive associate member status of the European Union as early as September, President of Victor Yushchenko forecaststold the fifth Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy today. He told delegates that Ukraine will eventually become a full member of the transatlantic democratic community, a move that would cement Ukraine's independence and its democracy.

His confident declaration came a day after his wife, Ukraine's first lady, Kateryna Yushchenko, invoked Martin Luther King, assassinated 40 years ago this week. "The arc of the moral universe is long but bends towards justice," said King, an important reminder, Mrs. Yushchenko said, that democracy is not an event but a long term - often tortuous - process.

The wife of President Victor Yushchenko was addressing the opening session of the World Movement for Democracy assembly in Kyiv on Sunday evening.

The forum’s opening ceremony was held at Ukrainian House. The political irony of a global gathering of democrats convening in the former Lenin Museum was not lost on delegates who had to pass a socialist realist sculpture of Soviet-style muscular proletarians to enter the building.

The opening ceremony was as fluent and entertaining as the Ukraininan folk ensemble whose harmonies bracketed the speeches.

Ukraine is a 16 year-old country with several thousand tears of tradition, Mrs Yuschenko said. Her stress on the fragility of democracy was echoed by former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo. He was at pains to strees that political democracy needs to be complemented by economic and social democracy that "delivers concrete results for the poor and the excluded."

Reflecting on the tragic events that followed Kenya's recent election, Maina Kiai, chair of Kenya's National Commission on Human Rights, maintained the theme. The country had been seen as a stable democracy, a rare oasis of security and peace in a continent scarred by war and dictatorships. But observers failed to distinguish the substance from the form, Kiai argued, mistaking bewigged judges and overpaid parliamentarians for a genuinely independent judiciary and legitimate, representative parliament. He claled for the perpetrators of the post-electioin violence to be held fully accountable, whether they are police or civilian militia.

Civil society needs to maintain its integrity and its distance from political centers of power, even when its former allies assume office, argued Myroslava Gongadze. In a hard-hitting and anguished speech, the widow of independent journalist Gyorgy Gongadze, murdered by Ukraine's former authoritarian regime, expressed her frustration at the delays in bringing her husband's killers to justice. Too often, she complained, civil society helps opposition elites topple authoritarians only to be cast aside. Civil society needs to be both a check and a partner to democrats who assume state power.

Posted: April 7, 2008