From 22-24 July the Asia Democracy Network (ADN) delegation will be attending the Eighth Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies. The Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies takes place biannually in the country that holds the Presidency of the Community and is attended by more than 1,000 participants to reaffirm their commitment to the democratic values to the Warsaw Declaration, the founding document of the Community of Democracies. The Eighth Ministerial Conference’s host country is El Salvador.
The Community of Democracies is a global intergovernmental coalition of states, founded in the year of 2000 to bring together government, civil society and the private sector in the pursuit of a common goal: supporting democratic rules and strengthening democratic norms and institutions around the world.
As ADN, as a regional network organization, has been actively involved in creating a networking and solidarity building environment among democracy advocates through different platforms, ADN recently organized the workshop, “Democracy Regression in Asia and the Role of the International Community,” at the 2015 ACSC People’s Forum to see what challenges are experienced by the democracy and human rights activists in Asia and what role the international community like the Community of Democracies can play in supporting the withering civic space in Asia. Through this workshop, ADN recognized the following needs:
– Increase visibility, representations, and mechanisms of CoD in Asia,
– Increase efforts to support regional cooperation and solidarity,
– Provide assistance in developing regional solidarity, democracy and human rights education,
– Include more input from non-western countries to become more effective,
– Increase Asian representation in CoD.
With this, ADN hopes to add the voices heard from our colleagues to reclaim the importance of civil society work in all aspects of governance and democratic development.
For the further info, please visit the official website of the Eighth Ministerial Conference.
ADN will be sharing further information through the website and social media (Twitter and Facebook).