Spotlight on democracy building in the UN

Building democracy is intimately related to the three pillars of the United Nations – development, peace and security, and human rights. By 2004 almost a third of the UN’s 192 Member States had requested its assistance in conducting elections. Today the UN continues to meet the challenge of supporting the new wave of democracy throughout the world. Over the years the UN relationship with International IDEA has deepened resulting in 2003 in the UN General Assembly granting the Institute “Observer” status.

In November 2007, the UN Secretary-General’s report to the General Assembly recognized the Institute’s role as a key partner among the intergovernmental democracy movements and organizations in supporting the UN on democracy issues, and made a specific acknowledgement on the strength of the cooperation between the UN, the International Conferences on New or Restored Democracies (ICNRD), and International IDEA.

In November 2009, the UN Secretary-General again highlighted International IDEA’s contributions to the General Assembly, acknowledging the Institute as a key partner in collaborating with the UN in developing knowledge resources on democracy issues, and developing networks of experts and practitioners on electoral processes, political parties, constitution building, democracy assessments and gender. In his report he embodied several specific recommendations made by IDEA, for example, “the implementation of self-assessments of the state of democracy by Member States with the aim of identifying areas for action and entry points for policy reform.” (document A/64/372, paragraph 88).

In fact, back in 2005, Mongolia’s use of IDEA’s citizen-led national assessments of the quality of democracy led to the development of an agenda for change – the National Plan of Action – which in turn, led to the adoption of the country’s national Millennium Development Goal 9 on democracy, human rights and anti-corruption (see page 24). Today, no less that 20 countries worldwide have used the methodology and more are in the pipeline.

Though disseminating the Institute’s comparative knowledge resources to UN Member States is important, the fact that much of the source of information is derived from the global South is of greater appeal as it directly fosters the cross fertilization of ideas on the issues surrounding democracy building. Whether it be comparing the experience of electoral processes among Arab nations, or how a large and diverse society like India conducts elections, or describing the role of political parties in conflict-prone countries, or how traditional justice mechanisms work in postconflict situations in Africa, IDEA is able to draw this local knowledge into the UN family.