Talk:Community of Democracies

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The fundamental idea of the Community of Democracies (CD) was to establish a mechanism by which the governments of democratic countries could meet together and, having agreed on their fundamental principles, develop methodologies to work together to promote the spread of democratic principles in other countries and in the United Nations. The idea of a UN Democracy Caucus arose from that concept. As the CD progressed from the initial Warsaw Ministerial (2000) through the ones in Seoul (2002) and Santiago (2005), it became clearly apparent that governments needed to work with their allies from civil society, so a parallel movement was born and nurtured among non-governmental organizations. Following the Santiago Ministerial, an International Steering Committee was established, with representation from NGOs in all regions of the world, to coordinate that relationship. At the Ministerial Meeting in Bamako, Mali (November, 2007) the ISC produced a set of some 80 recommendations from civil society, many of which were endorsed in the final Consensus Declaration by the Government representatives. (The Washington-based NGO "Council for a Community of Democracies" serves as the Secretariat for the ISC. Full disclosure: I work there.) The Bamako Ministerial also approved a proposal by the Government of Poland to host a Permanent Secretariat for the CD itself; that office is being established in the first semester of 2008. Stevenwag (talk) 19:57, 5 April 2008 (UTC)