FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 23, 2018
Contact:  Jane Riley Jacobsen, jane@ned.org +1 (202) 378-9604

Defending Democracy: Ninth Global Assembly Addresses Growing Threats to Democracy in Dakar, Senegal in May

WASHINGTON, DC – Building Strategic Partnerships for Democratic Renewal is the theme of the Ninth Global Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy, which will take place May 6 to 9, 2018 at the King Fahd Palace Hotel in Dakar, Senegal. The Honorable Minister Isatou Touray, the Minister of Trade, Industry, Regional Integration and Employment in The Gambia, will deliver the opening address on May 6 and Dr. Rachid Ghannouchi, the co-founder of Tunisia’s Ennahdha Party, will speak at the closing session on May 9.

“Today, civil society needs to develop multidimensional responses to push back on resurgent authoritarianism,” said Ryota Jonen, Director, World Movement for Democracy Secretariat. “The Assembly will not only offer a timely opportunity for us to self-assess, but also give us a space to build stronger relationships with new partners to advocate for democracy around the world.” Some 350 democracy activists, practitioners, scholars and donors from more than 100 countries will convene for a wide range of workshops and panel discussions. In addition to the overarching theme, the Assembly will focus on:

• Defending the digital information space from illiberal encroachments,
• Promoting democratic norms alongside traditional values, and
• Building cross-sector and cross-generational partnerships to affirm the universality of core democratic values, strengthening pro-democratic regional and international networks.

The Assembly also seeks to confront and counter several pernicious trends that plague democracies around the world, including:

• The global rise of kleptocracy and grand corruption,
• The spread of disinformation, and
• The threat of extremist violence.

A full-list of Assembly workshops, plenary sessions, and featured speakers is available on the World Movement for Democracy website here. For more information regarding previous Assemblies, please click here.

To organize the Assembly, the World Movement has partnered with Article 19-Senegal, Enda Tiers Monde, Forum Civil, the Gorée Institute, Partners West Africa, the African Assembly for the Defense of Human Rights (RADDHO), and Senegal’s National Union of Merchants (UNACOIS).

The World Movement was founded in 1999 to “strengthen democracy where it is weak, to reform and invigorate democracy even where it is longstanding, and to bolster pro-democracy groups in countries that have not yet entered into a process of democratic transition.” As a global network, the World Movement meets periodically to exchange ideas and experiences and to foster collaboration among democratic forces around the world.  The World Movement is led by a distinguished international Steering Committee; the Washington, DC-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) serves as its Secretariat.