World Movement for Democracy is an international network of individuals and organizations who share the common goal of promoting democracy. The World Movement was launched in February 1999 when the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and two nongovernmental organizations in India brought together a cross-section of democracy activists, practitioners, and scholars from over 80 countries in New Delhi for discussions of ways to advance democracy. The participants adopted a Founding Statement launching the World Movement "to strengthen democracy where it is weak, to reform and invigorate democracy even where it is longstanding, and to bolster pro-democracy groups in countries that have not yet entered into a process of democratic transition." It is intended to unite the global community of democracy advocates and practitioners; to facilitate exchanges of information, knowledge, and experiences; and to build cross-border solidarity. The World Movement is led by an international Steering Committee and NED currently serves as its Secretariat.
A “network of networks ,” the World Movement has led to the establishment of regional networks, including the African Democracy Forum (ADF), the Latin America and Caribbean Network for Democracy (LAC Network), and the World Forum for Democratization in Asia (WFDA), as well as functional global networks, including the Global Network on Local Governance (GNLG), the International Women’s Democracy Network (IWDN), the Network of Democracy Research Institutes (NDRI), and the World Youth Movement for Democracy (WYMD).
The World Movement has held five global assemblies since its founding in New Delhi in 1999: São Paulo, Brazil (2000); Durban, South Africa (2004); Istanbul, Turkey (2006); Kyiv, Ukraine (2008); and Jakarta, Indonesia (2010). It has also initiated two major projects as a result of assembly discussions: The Defending Civil Society project was launched in 2006 in collaboration with the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) to respond to efforts among an increasing number of governments to close down civil society space, particularly for democracy and human rights groups, through new “NGO laws” and restrictions on international funding.
Read more about World Movement For Democracy: Steering Committee
Famous quotes containing the words world, movement and/or democracy:
“The most conservative man in the world is the British Trade Unionist when you want to change him.”
—Ernest Bevin (1881–1951)
“You watched and you saw what happened and in the accumulation of episodes you saw the pattern: Daddy ruled the roost, called the shots, made the money, made the decisions, so you signed up on his side, and fifteen years later when the women’s movement came along with its incendiary manifestos telling you to avoid marriage and motherhood, it was as if somebody put a match to a pile of dry kindling.”
—Anne Taylor Fleming (20th century)
“A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)