History and Precedents
The primary historical precedent of this community may be GUAM, which brought together the governments of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova (and for some time Uzbekistan as well) and was likewise largely thought to have the function of counterbalancing Russian influence in the area. The effectiveness and strength of that organization is, however, disputed.
The creation of the Community itself was foreshadowed by the Borjomi Declaration of August 2005, a joint statement signed by the Presidents of Georgia and Ukraine, Mikheil Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko, which envisioned the Community as a "powerful instrument for removing the remaining divisions in the Baltic-Black Sea region, human rights violations, and any type of confrontation, or frozen conflict.”
The Community of Democratic Choice was then created in Kiev during a two-day forum aimed at promoting democracy and human rights in the wider region of the Baltic-Black-Caspian Seas. Besides the presidents of the nine founding states, there were delegations from Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland and also observers from the United States, the European Union and the OSCE.
Read more about this topic: Community Of Democratic Choice
Famous quotes containing the words history and, history and/or precedents:
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)