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UNDEF UPDATE

The United Nations Democracy Fund opens applications window for Fifth Round on 15 November

International Day of Democracy 2010 The United Nations Democracy Fund will open its window for new project proposals from civil society on 15 November to 31 December. The call for applications follows the approval by the UNDEF Advisory Board for a Fifth Round of Funding.

Project proposals may be submitted on-line between 15 November 2009 and 31 December 2010 at www.un.org/democracyfund, where applicants can also find guidelines, FAQs and lessons learned from previous rounds at http://www.un.org/democracyfund/Applicants/applicants_index.html.

Those who plan to apply are strongly encouraged to visit this page as soon as possible to familiarize themselves with what is required.

Only on-line applications in either English or French will be accepted.

UNDEF supports projects that strengthen the voice of civil society, promote human rights, and encourage the participation of all groups in democratic processes. The large majority of UNDEF funds go to local civil society organizations -- both in the transition and consolidation phases of democratization. In this way, UNDEF plays a novel and distinct role in complementing the UN's more traditional work -- the work with Governments -- to strengthen democratic governance around the world.

In four Rounds of Funding so far, UNDEF has supported more than 330 projects in 115 countries at a total amount of US$93 million. UNDEF provides grants of up to US$500,000 per project. Applications are subject to a highly rigorous and competitive selection process, with about three per cent of all applications approved for funding. Projects are two years long and fall under one or more of six main areas:

Community development
Rule of law and human rights
Tools for democratization
Women
Youth
Media

President Obama singles out support for UNDEF in speech to UN General Assembly

International Day of Democracy 2010 President Obama made special mention of the UN Democracy Fund in his address to the General Assembly on 23 September, saying "it’s time for every Member State... to increase the UN Democracy Fund". He spoke of democracy as the form of government that delivers most for citizens, and spoke of civil society -- the focus of UNDEF's work -- as the shapers of human progress and the conscience of communities.

"To put it simply: democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens. And that truth will only grow stronger in a world where the borders between nations are blurred," President Obama told the opening of the General Debate, attended by all 192 UN Member States. "America is working to shape a world that fosters this openness, for the rot of a closed or corrupt economy must never eclipse the energy and innovation of human beings." Turning to civil society, he went on: "The arc of human progress has been shaped by individuals with the freedom to assemble; by organizations outside of government that insisted upon democratic change; and by free media that held the powerful accountable. We have seen that from the South Africans who stood up to apartheid, to the Poles of Solidarity, to the mothers of the disappeared who spoke out against the Dirty War, to Americans who marched for the rights of all races, including my own.

"Civil society is the conscience of our communities, and America will always extend our engagement abroad with citizens beyond the halls of government. We will call out those who suppress ideas, and serve as a voice for the voiceless. We will promote new tools of communication, so people are empowered to connect with one another – and, in repressive societies, to do so with security. We will support a free and open Internet, so individuals have the information to make up their own minds. And it’s time to embrace – and effectively monitor – norms that advance the rights of civil society, and guarantee its expansion within and across borders."

"This institution can still play an indispensable role in the advance of human rights, President Obama urged. "It’s time to welcome the efforts of UN Women to protect the rights of women around the globe. It’s time for every member state to open its elections to international monitors, and to increase the UN Democracy Fund. It’s time to reinvigorate UN peacekeeping, so that missions have the resources necessary to succeed, and so atrocities like sexual violence are prevented and justice is enforced – because neither dignity nor democracy can thrive without basic security. And it’s time to make this institution more accountable as well, because the challenges of a new century demand new ways of serving our common interests."

US Under Secretary of State reaffirms support for UNDEF

International Day of Democracy 2010 UNDEF Executive Head Roland Rich met on 21 September with María Otero, United States Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs and Michael Posner, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. In the course of the meeting, Under Secretary Otero expressed the strong and continuing support of the US Administration for the UN Democracy Fund. She noted that the Fund had achieved considerable results in the five short years since it was created. Assistant Secretary Posner noted that the work of the Fund provides strong support for civil society in the current challenging environment.

On International Day of Democracy, Governments reflect on their journeys

Governments spoke candidly at an event on the International Day of Democracy about their individual countries’ journeys towards democratic governance, reflected on the challenges ahead, and reaffirmed their commitment to the the UN Democracy Fund as a unique tool to strengthen democratic processes and values at the grassroots of societies around the world.

UNDEF Head Interviewed for UNTV

roland rich interview untv Roland Rich, Executive Head of UNDEF, was interviewed by Bill Miller for his program Global Connections. The interviewwas taped on 5 August. In the course of the interview Mr Rich discusses UNDEF projects and answers questions relating to democracy and the democratization process. The Interview is being shown on UNTV.

UNDEF Update 7

Welcome to the latest issue of UNDEF Update, the newsletter of the United Nations Democracy Fund.

This electronic quarterly provides a user-friendly snapshot of what we do, how we work and why.To view the latest issue, please click here.

For a text-only version (recommended for dial-up connections), please click here.

Engager la société civile pour la démocratie et la bonne gouvernance en Côte d'Ivoire

En Côte d'Ivoire, le FNUD soutient le projet “la société civile engagée pour la démocratie et la bonne gouvernance”, mis en œuvre par West Africa Network for Peacebuilding in Côte d'Ivoire.

Les élections présidentielles en Cote d’Ivoire initialement prévues en 2005 et repoussées à maintes reprises n’ont pu être organisées à ce jour. Ainsi, le Conseil de sécurité tenu le 27 Mai 2010 à unanimement adopté une résolution appelant les autorités concernées « à s’assurer de la publication de la liste électorale, à annoncer une date finale pour la tenue du premier tour des élections présidentielles et à respecter l’ensemble de leurs engagements. »

La crise politico-militaire survenue le 19 septembre 2002 a entravé le processus de développement en Côte d'Ivoire, où le seuil de pauvreté a atteint près de 50 %,, selon le Programme des Nations Unies pour le Développement.

Par ailleurs, la récente dissolution du gouvernement et de la commission électorale indépendante ont fragilisé davantage le processus électoral. Selon Mr Choi Soon-hong, représentant du Secrétaire Général des Nations Unis en Côte d’Ivoire, “le report des élections et la non matérialisation de la réunification accroissent les tensions et entravent la normalisation constitutionnelle, politique, économique et sociale en Cote d’Ivoire. ”

Le projet soutenu par le FNUD a pour but de permettre la participation effective de la société civile à la démocratisation de la Cote d’Ivoire, d’amener les populations aux capacités renforcées à s’intéresser à la gestion de leur communauté par un contrôle citoyen de la pratique de la démocratie et de la bonne gouvernance. Les comités départementaux conduiront différentes activités visant à assurer un développement participatif à savoir : faire des propositions visant à intégrer la société civile dans les programmes des collectivités locales ; suivre l’exécution des programmes ; assister à différentes sessions ouvertes. Ces activités permettront aux comités départementaux sélectionnés de s’assurer des avancés en matière de démocratie et de bonne gouvernance.

Dialogue among Palestinian Youth in the West Bank and Gaza City

In Palestine, UNDEF funds a project to build leadership capacity among youth and establish forums for them to participate in democratic processes and promote democratic principles in their communities.

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With UNDEF support, the Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies, RCHRS, has developed a programme to improve democratic dialogue among youth in both the West Bank and Gaza City. Implemented in several stages, the programme started by training participants in tolerance and constructive dialogue.

In the most recent stage, participants attended collective training workshops in Ramallah and Gaza City to put these skills into practice. The meetings included leaders, facilitators and youth reperesenting a variety of perspectives, making the workshops a valuable opportunity to network and gain understanding of various cultural, traditional, and religious backgrounds.

UNDEF Update 6

Welcome to the latest issue of UNDEF Update, the newsletter of the United Nations Democracy Fund.

This electronic quarterly provides a user-friendly snapshot of what we do, how we work and why.To view the latest issue, please click here.

For a text-only version (recommended for dial-up connections), please click here.

Increasing women’s participation through multimedia strategy in Kenya

On Kenya’s independence in 1963, when the constitution was negotiated in London, only one woman delegate from Kenya was present. Women’s rights and issues were largely ignored in the document that emerged. Despite numerous constitutional amendments since then, women and minorities in Kenya face considerable challenges in asserting their rights.

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Today, with UNDEF support, the African Woman and Child Feature Service works to ensure the voice of women is heard in the media and governance. It recently launched a multimedia strategy initiative to strengthen the participation of Kenyan women in the political processes. The project uses advocacy, research and technical support to give women greater visibility in the media and to equip them with the skills to take up high positions in the legislative branch of the government, public office and civil society. The project will also train a cadre of journalists in understanding gender issues, and build the capacity of women parliamentarians to advance women’s rights through the media. In addition, it monitors the use of gender language in the media through an electronic publication entitled African Woman.

Professor Appiah sums up democratic philosophy in UNDEF Advisory Board debut

Anthony Kwame Appiah, Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and a member of the UNDEF Advisory Board for 2010-11, spoke at the Board's Spring meeting on 29 March. His remarks were a concise yet profound reflection on the nature and philosophy of democracy:

appiah "The trouble with most accounts of democracy is that they want to insist that it has a simple definition and a few virtues. But democracy, which emerged in the modern world, in response to monarchy and empire, has many elements and many inter-connected virtues, which are mirror images, if you like, of the vices of the Ancien Régime. In democracies, unlike monarchies and aristocracies, elites have to live with the discipline of knowing that they may be replaced; and they have to permit public criticism, from which they can learn about the impacts of their decisions on the life of their citizens, and through which citizens can organize to replace as well as to support them. There is no life-tenure; there is no lèse majesté. And since citizens are engaged in assessing government because they have a role in choosing the governors, they need information and education to do their job well.

In democracies, unlike empires, government reflects the characters of the citizens, is local rather than remote, and treats every subject as an equal person. No more can the fact of ethnicity count as a reason to chose one person’s interest over another’s: and the point is soon generalized, so that it is not just race and ethnicity that are no longer sufficient grounds for discrimination, but nor is social class or caste or, most importantly, gender and religion. Sexual orientation is increasingly on the list of inadmissible grounds for discrimination; so is disability. In democracies, citizens are not subjects: they are free to make their lives according to their own conceptions of what is worth having and doing and being, provided they respect the rights of others to do the same. And, as equals, they are entitled to respect: from the state, from each other. To make all this possible, citizens need rights: of free expression and association, to bodily integrity, to the basic health, shelter and nutritional needs without which a life of human dignity is not possible. And so democracies, committed to the dignity and equality of their citizens, seek to ensure these things.

These many good things that flow from democracy are best understood, I believe, as flowing from the idea that adult citizens are entitled to manage their own lives. This is required by the fundamental image of human dignity that is rightly mentioned in the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In securing that dignity, the state can be an essential aid, both because it helps organize social traffic, keeping citizens out of each other’s way, and because it provides goods that families and smaller groups cannot easily achieve on their own. If people are to manage their own lives -- as individuals, in families and through social associations--the government will work best if it is sensitive to what they need to make their lives and responsive to their objections to the state’s interventions and to their requests for aid. One central ideal in helping to assure this is a principle of subsidiarity, which requires that local decisions be made locally; another is the recognition that government is only needed in some spheres of life, while others will be managed well by independent elements of civil society.

In a world where government is guided by these many aims, NGO’s will have many vital contributions to make. They will act locally to allow free citizens to solve their own problems, through the power of free association; they will articulate local concerns to government when its help is needed; they will provide citizens, both locally and through national media, with the materials to assess the elites who run the state, and to decide whether they want to change them. They can help to create the educated and informed citizenry at the local level that democracies require, and to disseminate the very democratic values--freedom, equality, mutual respect--that guide democracy and make it work. But they can also act at the very highest global levels--across the boundaries of nations--to bring together like-minded people from many societies to assure that every government secures the very goods that government exists to protect: a life in freedom, associating freely in the pursuit of goods that the citizen herself approves. I have the honor to have been elected to the Presidency of the PEN American Center; and one of our jobs as an NGO is to criticize our own government, when it fails to live up to the highest standards of respect for free expression, and to join with the other 145 PEN Centers in 100 countries to put pressure on other governments when they fall victim to the same temptations. I believe our willingness to criticize our own government strengthens our ability to criticize others. So it's a great honor to be involved with UNDEF and I look forward to joining you all in its work."

Dr. Appiah, who grew up in Ghana and the United Kingdom, has taught philosophy and African studies at the University of Ghana, Cambridge, Duke, Cornell, Cornell, Yale and Harvard. He joined the Princeton faculty in 2002 as Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values. He is also associated with Princeton’s Center for African American Studies and Programs in African Studies. Dr. Appiah’s published work includes In My Father’s House, which won the Herskovitz Prize for African Studies, Colour Conscious: The Political Morality of Race (with Amy Gutmann), The Ethics of Identity, and Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. As an intellectual bridging the global South and North, as well as the worlds of philosophy and of African studies, he adds a unique perspective to the work of UNDEF.

Pour une démocratie participative en République démocratique du Congo

Le processus démocratique en République démocratique du Congo a été fragilisé par l'incivisme, la mauvaise gouvernance, l'intolérance, les violations des droits de l'homme, la méfiance entre gouvernants-gouvernés et le déficit de participation citoyenne, constatés après les élections de 2006. Ils affectent également le processus de décentralisation et les élections de 2009-2011. Pour remédier à l’effet de ces fléaux qui impactent négativement le progrès de la société congolaise, la construction et le renforcement d'une démocratie participative est nécessaire.

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Dans ce contexte, l’Organisation Paix, Unité, Réconciliation, Reconstruction (OPURR), avec le soutien du FNUD, met en œuvre un projet qui a pour objectif de promouvoir une démocratie participative par la création, l’installation et l’accompagnement de clubs d'action démocratique. Ces clubs visent à renforcer les capacités des communautés dans l'exercice de leurs droits politiques et socio-économiques. A cet effet, ce projet adopte une approche qui s’appuie sur le rôle du dialogue démocratique dans la modification des rapports gouvernants-gouvernés, afin de favoriser l'appropriation des pratiques et valeurs démocratiques des communautés. Cette dynamique aidera à promouvoir la mobilisation sociale et la participation citoyenne dans le pays, et également à pérenniser son impact.

Dans le cadre de ce projet, l’OPURR a récemment organisé deux ateliers participatifs à l’intention des leaders communautaires de la Ville de Kindu et de la cité minière de Kalima. Ces ateliers visent à intensifier la sensibilisation des citoyens congolais sur des thèmes relatifs à la démocratie citoyenne. Dans le même sens, l’OPURR organisera en Mai 2010 des sessions de «formation de multiplicateurs». L’idée est de former des acteurs de la société civile ainsi que des leaders de communautés sur la démocratie participative, les techniques de mobilisation sociale et de plaidoyer. Les personnes formées serviront à multiplier ces formations en les transitant dans leurs milieux de résidence. Ils opéreront également en tant que mobilisateurs de proximité dans leurs communautés, afin de construire et renforcer la culture démocratique et citoyenne en RDC.

Welcome to the latest issue of UNDEF Update, the newsletter of the United Nations Democracy Fund.

This electronic quarterly provides a user-friendly snapshot of what we do, how we work and why.

To view the newsletter, please click here. For a text-only version (recommended for dial-up connections), please click here.