"No country moves from developing to developed without its youth” – girls in school in South Sudan. Oxfam East Africa. CC-BY-2.0.On 12 and 13 September 2017, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy hosted a conference to mark their 25th year. The organisation, which aims to “strengthen democracy across a growing global network”, took the opportunity to lay out their 2017-2022 strategy. This approach was set out against a backdrop of conversations regarding the value of democratic systems, the changing and increasingly uncertain political landscape in the UK and in other places, and discussions about why and how the UK should involve itself in assisting global democracy.
The new strategic framework – according to WFD Chief Executive Anthony Smith – puts at its centre notions of human rights, partnership, and sensitivity to context. Much of the discussion was driven by the need to promote the inclusion of minorities and the underserved – whether on grounds of religious, ethnic, gender, sexuality. In contrast to earlier years, the strategy outlined plans to expand programming work within civil society focussing on electoral issues, including multi-party work, tailored to local contexts.
Drawing together these strands necessarily means that democracy assistance looks different depending on the needs of each country. I talked to two speakers from beneficiary states at the conference to try to grapple with the unique challenges faced in their specific countries, the particular opportunities democracy, and what this means for democracy assistance.
