World Movement for Democracy
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| CDI Director Ben Reilly with Mr Roland Rich, Executive Head of the United Nations Democracy Fund, at the World Movement for Democracy meeting in Kyiv. |
On 6-9 April 2008 CDI Director Ben Reilly attended the 5th Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy (WMD) in Kyiv, Ukraine, where he was a panellist on NDI's workshop on 'Developing norms and standards for political parties'. The WMD is the world's largest gathering of democracy-support organisations, with over 500 organisations attending its triennial meetings. The WMD is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in the United States. Previous meetings were held in in New Delhi, India, in 1999; São Paulo, Brazil in 2000; Durban, South Africa, in 2004; and Istanbul, Turkey, in 2006. The objectives of the Assembly include:
- providing participants with a forum to exchange practical, hands-on knowledge that they can use in the countries and regions in which they work;
- ensuring that the extent of repression exercised by regimes in closed societies will not pass unnoticed in the international community, and to devise new ways to enhance assistance to those inside those countries;
- directing attention to the needs of democrats in transitional and authoritarian countries;
- encouraging other established democracies, both old and new, to support democracy-promotion efforts; and
- exploring ways in which participants can use new information and communication technologies in their work.
CDI is a member of one of the WMD's key functional networks, the the Network of Democracy Research Institutes, and plays an active role in other WMD and NED networks in its capacity as Australia's international democracy promotion organisation.
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