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New or
Restored Democracies |
| Backgrounder | Executive Summary | Focus | Basic facts | Press release | |
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| Backgrounder Building on the growing international momentum towards greater democracy, Benin will host a conference this December to promote greater understanding and know-how regarding democratic institutions and practices. The conference, the Fourth International Conference of the New and Restored Democracies, will be held in Cotonou, Benin, from 4-6 December 2000. Pursuant to a General Assembly mandate, the United Nations -- through the Secretariat, the United Nations Development Programme, UNESCO, and other agencies -- is providing technical assistance to Benin to host the conference. What are the goals of the Conference? International support for the process of democratization has steadily gained over the last decade. Attendance has grown from only 13 participating countries at the first conference held in Manila in 1988 to about 80 at the last, held in Bucharest in 1997. In addition, other countries and non-governmental organizations have started their own initiatives, which resulted in the Warsaw "Community of Democracy" conference, held in June, 2000. For the upcoming Cotonou conference, Benin will invite the participation of all United Nations member states, regardless of their political systems. The hope is that the Benin conference will be a valuable forum to exchange lessons learned and best practices. It is expected that the conference will focus on the operational aspects of functioning democracies, which covers issues on how to hold free and fair elections, and the institution of other mechanisms to ensure good governance and the rule of law. Democracy on the Rise: A world-wide phenomenon Civil wars and disputes still dominate the headlines but more countries are adopting democratic forms of government, and more people are living in democracies than ever before in history. The number of countries with democratic governments has soared over the last decade. Although a definition of democracy is often a highly political process, there is still an unquestionable and dramatic trend to political systems that are more inclusive and representative, and that are based on open and competitive processes. Countries such as Benin, Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Mozambique and South Africa have continued to make great strides toward firmly establishing democratic values. Yet many new democracies are fragile, and many have called for the assistance of the United Nations and the international community to provide the necessary expertise and technology to hold free and fair elections and to build democratic institutions. Global Democracy and Autocracy, 1946-1998, is based on a scoring system of institutional authority for democracy and autocracy for each independent state for each year. Each country is scored (10-point scales) based on each type of authority characteristic. Although the two types of authority are opposing, many countries exhibit mixed authority traits (i.e., they have middling values on each scale). The graph shows global changes in total "units of democracy" in contrast to total "units of autocracy" in the global system. United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in an address to parliamentarians just before the Millennium Summit, voiced concern, saying "I believe we are meeting at a critical moment in the development and spread of democracy after the end of the cold war. Even as democratic legitimacy has been established or restored in many countries over the last two decades, it is threatened today by a new danger, which I call 'fig-leaf democracy'". He added: "We have, in a number of recent instances, witnessed attempts to cloak the outright subversion of democracy in the mantle of defending it. We have heard governments claim to be acting in the best interests of the people, even when showing contempt for their choices. We must see through these claims. And we must be no less vigilant in condemning those who would overturn democracy in more subtle, yet equally destructive ways". For more information, please contact: Dan Shepard at the Development and Human Rights Section |
Published by the United Nations Department of Public Information - September 2000