CCD is currently involved in a number of democracy-related activities that we feel further the goals and objectives of the Community of Democracies. Pages in this section detail each project: what we're doing, who we're working with, and current progress on each. You can make your way through the individual site for each initiative by clicking on the menus at left, or you can start by clicking on an Initiative below.

A Diplomat's Handbook for Democracy Development Support
In recent years, diplomacy as practiced by many democratic nations has taken on more of a human face. Whereas once the conduct of diplomatic relations was strictly on a state-to-state basis, today, Ambassadors and diplomats are much more likely to engage the publics of the host countries and not exclusively government officials. Embassies and Consulates are ready vehicles and brokers promoting contact and communications between the peoples and nongovernmental organizations and groups of the sending and host countries. Democracy development and human rights are among the most active topics of such communications. READ MORE...

The Global Strategic Plan for Democracy Education
The 106 governments that launched the Community of Democracies in 2000 resolved in the Warsaw Declaration to "promote civic education and literacy, including education for democracy." Representatives of these governments and many non-governmental organizations met in Seoul in November 2002 and affirmed that there is great potential for democratic societies to cooperate to "promote a culture of democracy through education." In 2003, CCD convened a meeting of 34 representatives of governments, NGOs, and international institutions to consider ways in which these educational commitments might be met. The resulting "Global Strategic Plan for Democracy Education" was endorsed in the Bamako Consensus at the 2007 Ministerial Meeting of the Community of Democracies, and CCD is currently working to implement the recommendations in the Global Strategic Plan. READ MORE...

Transitions to Democracy in the Middle East and North Africa
In mid-October 2007, academics, democracy advocates, and civil society activists from three different regions of the world came together in Budapest to examine how they might learn from one another. Entitled Prospects for Democratic Transition in the Middle East and North Africa: Implications of the Central/East European and African Experiences, the three-day conference was jointly sponsored by CCD, the Budapest-based International Centre for Democratic Transition (ICDT), the Kawakibi Democracy Transition Center (KADEM) in Tunis, and the Center for Democracy and Election Management (CDEM) of American University in Washington, DC. READ MORE...

Creating a Network of Civil Society
In 2006 and 2007, CCD organized a series of six regional roundtable meetings to discuss the most pressing challenges facing the development and promotion of democracy around the world, an effort described by former United Nations Deputy Secretary General Mark Malloch Brown as one “to create a civil society structure to parallel that of governments in the CD.”  These roundtables brought together civil society leaders from all regions of the world – Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa – to consider the issues that would form the foundation for a civil society agenda for 2007-09 to be presented at the 2007 Bamako Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies. READ MORE...