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SEOUL
NON-GOVERNMENTAL FORUM ROUNDTABLES TO LAUNCH ON-GOING PROJECTS
For Immediate Release:
April 16, 2002
Contact:
Robert R. LaGamma, 202.789.9771
WASHINGTON
- - The November 2002 Seoul Community of Democracies Conference
is a follow-up to the Warsaw Conference of June 2000, at which
106 nations pledged themselves to work together to strengthen
worldwide democracy.
Like its Warsaw predecessor, the Seoul conference will
be accompanied by a non-official gathering of civic, religious,
labor, business, political and NGO leaders called the Community
of Democracies Non-Governmental Forum (NGF.)
The
goal of the Seoul NGF is to establish meaningful action items
that can be carried out in the period between the Seoul conference
and third Community of Democracies conference scheduled for
Chile in 2004. This
will be done through fifteen roundtables – eight dedicated
to particular subject matter and seven concerning regional
affairs.
The
eight subject matter roundtables will be: Markets and Democratic
Governance; Political Party Systems; Corruption and Democracy;
Civic Education; Democracy, Freedom of Association and the
Protection of NGOs; Local Government and Democracy; Creating
Civil Society in Closed Societies; Media and Democracy. The
regional roundtables will be: Sub-Saharan Africa; the Americas;
East Asia; Central Asia/Caucasus; Europe/Russia; Middle East;
South Asia.
A
consortium of non-governmental organizations from the ten
convening nations of the Seoul Conference -- Chile, the Czech
Republic, India, Korea, Mali, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, South
Africa and the United States – is now identifying and recruiting
chairs and panel members for the various panels.
The
U.S. Coordinating Committee for the Seoul Conference is chaired
by the Council for a Community of Democracies and is composed
of the National Endowment for Democracy, the International
Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, the
Center for International Private Enterprise, the American
Center for International Labor Solidarity, Freedom House,
the Open Society Institute and the CCD.
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The
Council for a Community of Democracies is a Washington based
advocacy group chaired by ex-U.S. Ambassador to NATO Robert
Hunter. The Council President is former NSC official
Walter Raymond, Jr.
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