Phone:
800.257.7751
TTY:
802.258.3388
Fax:
802.258.3508
Mailing Address:
PO Box 676, 1 Kipling Road
Brattleboro, VT 05302 USA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Laura Ingalls (laura.ingalls@worldlearning.org) in Washington, 1.202.646.6973
Fellows Examine New Era for Global Democracy Promotion
WASHINGTON (November 16, 2009) -- Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall there remains a robust world movement for democracy at the grassroots level in scores of countries that must be supported, according to Carl Gershman, National Endowment for Democracy president.
Gershman was the keynote speaker at World Learning's Democracy Fellows Program Annual Conference November 9-10. The fellowship program is funded by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. See photos from the conference.
"(Democracy) is the most politically legitimate idea in the world today, even with all the problems associated with it," said Gershman, pointing to emerging democratic movements in China, the Middle East and Africa. He added that authoritarians today are more likely to lend legitimacy to their own political systems by likening them to democracy - as in China's "socialist democracy" and Venezuela's "Bolivarian democracy" - rather than present competing ideologies like communism.
Gershman gave conference participants his perspective on the democracy promotion field's development over the last two decades and outlined some of the new challenges. He specifically mentioned the increasingly coordinated effort by authoritarian regimes to prevent "color revolutions" like Ukraine's 2005 Orange Revolution. According to Gershman, the Obama administration is grappling with how to move away from its predecessor's attempts to closely link democracy assistance to short-term foreign policy goals, while retaining freedom as a defining American value.
World Learning's democracy fellows address such challenges in their daily work at USAID, one of the government entities that provide economic development and humanitarian assistance worldwide. The Democracy Fellows Program places experienced democracy and governance professionals within USAID's Washington bureaus and field missions for up to four years.
The program currently supports fellows who work on issues such as program evaluation, strategic planning, rule of law, police force accountability, rural media development, justice sector reform, elections and political processes and governance. Fellows provide policy analysis, expert advice and technical comment on USAID plans and activities.
The conference also included a presentation from Thomas O. Melia, deputy executive director of Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that monitors the state of freedom worldwide. Melia cited a Freedom House study that found nearly half of the U.S. foreign assistance budget for governing justly and democratically goes to just three countries: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He urged policy makers to increase support for democracy and human rights activists worldwide in order to reverse recent declines in freedom.
Learn more about World Learning:
The Experiment in International Living
SIT Study Abroad
SIT Graduate Institute
International Development Programs
World Learning works globally to enhance the capacity and commitment of individuals, institutions, and communities to create a more peaceful and just world through education, training and exchange programs.
###