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The Ulaanbaatar Roundtable Background | Agenda | Participants |
Background
The nongovernmental International Steering Committee of the Community of Democracies (ISC/CD), in addition to enabling a broader civil society participation in Community of Democracies (CD) activities, has a responsibility to help set the Community of Democracies agenda and especially to articulate concrete, substantive proposals for the governments to address. In particular, the ISC/CD is the primary channel for feedback from civil society organizations working on the ground in both CD member countries as well as non-democratic countries.
The CD Sixth Ministerial Meeting will be held in 2011 in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Lithuanian chair has indicated that the meeting will be organized around the themes of the Working Groups established by the CD, whose initial recommendations were compiled into a “Global Democracy Work Plan” adopted at the High-level Meeting in Krakow, Poland in July 2010 (see annex for the complete text).
Objectives
Therefore, the Asian network for the Non-governmental Process has decided to hold a regional roundtable to enable us to provide concrete and timely recommendations to the Working groups and to the Lithuanian chair. Topics to be addressed include five of the six Working Groups:
- Enabling and Protecting Civil Society
- Promoting Democracy and Responding to National and Transnational Threats to Democracy
- Gender Equality and Women’s Rights
- Poverty, Development, and Democracy
- Regional Cooperation
A sixth topic, democracy education, or creating a culture of democracy, will also be explored.
The workshop will bring together a carefully chosen group of experts and civil society leaders in these areas from around the region. It will build on the discussions and recommendations made during the previous CD regional workshops held in Taipei in 2004, Taipei and New Delhi in 2007, and Jakarta in 2009, and it will also draw on the experiences of other regional discussions, notably the African Regional Workshop held in Pretoria in February 2010. It will be co-organized by the Center for Citizens’ Alliance, National Network of Mongolian NGOs (MONFEMNET) the World Forum for Democratization in Asia, and the Council for a Community of Democracies, in consultation with the ISC/CD with support from the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF) and with the kind cooperation from the Foreign Ministry of Mongolia.
Finally, holding the Roundtable in Ulaanbaatar will enable an early engagement with the Government of Mongolia, which will succeed Lithuania as the chair of the CD and host the Seventh Ministerial in 2013. In this regard, we express our appreciation to the Foreign Ministry for its generous assistance in hosting this Roundtable. We believe this bodes very well for constructive interaction during the Mongolian chairmanship.
Expected Outcomes
The conference will generate recommendations which will be circulated among the global Non-governmental Process and submitted to the CD governments for consideration in the respective Working Groups and subsequently at the Vilnius Ministerial. The recommendations will specifically focus on Asian perspectives on the issues addressed by each Working Group and Asian expectations for concrete actions by CD governments in each of these areas.It will also lead to further strengthening of Asian regional networking regarding CD and international democracy promotion efforts.
