International Events

The DDP has over the years been invited to be an active participant in a number of international events and conferences in the field of democracy and governance. Some of these include the World Economic Forum, the Pan African Civic Educators Network, CIVICUS, LOGOLINK , the World Movement For Democracy and more recently the India-Brazil-South Africa local Governance Forum. The DDP has a number of ongoing engagements with several international partners both on the continent and in other parts of the world.

World Movement for Democracy - Fifth Assembly –Kiev, Ukraine

The World Assembly meets once every three years and brings together struggle activists, civil society institutions, researchers and grant makers to talk about the state of democracies in the world. The theme of this Assembly focused on MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK - FROM THEORY TO PERFORMANCE. The Assembly was held from 06 -09 April and was attended by 500 delegates from 110 countries.

 The Assembly was addressed by the President of the Ukraine, Victor Yushchenko as well as the former President of Peru Alajandro Toledo.

The DDP hosted a workshop entitled “Bridging the gap between constituencies and leaders” in collaboration with PARTICIPA, an organization with similar objectives based in Chile. Over 50 participants from more than 20 countries signed up for this workshop (a copy of this paper is available on this website in the research unit)

The format of the workshops and topical discussions emphasized the sharing of experiences in the different countries. This provided a rich interaction amongst participants that contributed significantly to a common understanding of many of the problems facing countries in democratic transition.

For more information on the Assembly and the workshop sessions please log onto the World Assembly website http://www.wmd.org/fifth/index.html
      
ISS Report:

Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi

Trip to India to visit local village councils and to gauge the extent of public participation at local government level. The visit coincided with the launch of the India-Brazil-South Africa Local Governance Forum (IBSALGF).
      

Colloquium

DDP, in partnership with CORUS (a French research co-ordination body), hosted a three day international colloquium in October 2007 to discuss the issue of territorial and regional re-structuring. Twenty four delegates, including experts from France, Morocco, Germany and South Africa - were present. Research papers presented various aspects of regional restructuring. The colloquium elicited a lot of questions around the demarcation process in South Africa as well as the issues of the regional autonomy and the role of provinces in this matter.
      
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