Role of External Actors in Democratic Transition: SECOND SESSION - WORKING GROUP SUMMARY

“What We Want in the Next Decade: Means of achieving the Goals” - Doha, 28 May 2007

Co-Chair: Riad El Malki / David French
Rapporteur: Amr Hamzawy
 
In the framework of the Second Forum on Democracy and Reform in the Arab World, held in Doha (Qatar) on the 27-29 May 2007, the second session of the Working Group dedicated to discussing the Role of External Actors in democratic transition took place in the afternoon of Monday 28 May.
The chairs opened the discussion by presenting the aims and goal of the working group, recalling the analysis of the current situation on the Middle East and North Africa Region reported in the plenary session during the morning and stressing the need for the debate to provide concrete, effective and specific proposals aimed at offering a variety of steps and actions to be undertaken in order to ensure that the activities carried out within the Region by External Actors could assist home-grown democracy advocates to trigger and reinforce the democratic and non-violent transition toward free and democratic political and social institutions.
1) Participants underlined that a generalised and generic approach towards the MENA Region need to be avoided and that external actors, both governmental and non-governmental, need to acquire knowledge of the specific environment in which they intend to operate. Awareness about the internal political and social realities must lead to a case-by-case selection of the sectors of intervention in each country. This knowledge can only be provided by democratic activists in the Region. Therefore, in order to reach the goal of having a fruitful and productive engagement of external actors within the Region, there is a need for recognition by external actors of the fundamental and primary role that grassroots movements and democratic advocates have in the selection of the sectors of intervention and the means utilised to achieve the transition towards democratic systems.
2) Participants recognised that the situation of the region is still in evolution and that a steady path toward the establishment of democratic institution has not yet been fully achieved. A prospective vision of the possible and future problems that the Region may face represents a fundamental and decisive factor. The possibility to foresee the threats and the challenges will be a decisive factor for a positive, effective and concrete determination of the needed activities aimed at reinforcing the interaction between external and local actors within the Region.
3) In order to assist democratic transition within the Region, external actors need to maintain a steady and serious engagement toward reform and democratic processes in the region. There are various means to achieve this goal, notably:
a) in Government-to-Government relations, Western countries have to be consistent with all their counterparts, requesting the full respect of the democratic clauses present in the cooperative and economic agreements.
b) whenever good governance, democracy, rule of law and human rights clauses are included in cooperative and economic agreements agreements, and there can be no discrimination between governments and non-state actors by external actors. Respect of those clauses needs to be applied effectively and concrete benchmarks and milestones need to be established;
c) when such agreements do not have good governance, democracy, rule of law and human rights clauses they must be included.
4) All these factors led the participants to agree that local democracy advocates need to be supported and involved by external actors in their efforts toward democracy promotion.