Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to look at the way the United Nations has taken the role of democracy promotion as one of its main activities. The paper situates early democracy promotion efforts in the UN’s Electoral Assistance Division and covers up to the newly created United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF). The analyses focus on major UN documents such as the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and the Declaration on Granting Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples as treaties who helped set the foundations for democratic promotion by the UN, and also covers the considerable importance given to democracy during the mandate of former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and its relations with development, human rights and UN reform. One of the main contributions of the paper is to illustrate the history of democracy promotion by the UN and how the organization works compared to other international institutions such as regional integration organizations and the Community of Democracies. The research shows how the UN has overcome the main challenge that faces democracy promotion: the lack of an universal acceptable definition of what is and what constitutes democracy, by stressing the importance of democratic practice and the importance of democracy promotion as a bottom up rather than a top down phenomenon, therefore stimulating that local society is involved in democracy promotion. In the end the paper looks at the main challenges and opportunities that the UNDEF may face as argues that the academic community should look more to democracy promotion strategies by international institutions as a complement to studies on democracy promotion strategies by national states.