08/11/2024 Election observation | Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation | Political Affairs and Democracy
“Democracy is a work in progress. Our populations are facing unprecedented societal challenges bringing about a deep sense of injustice, of insecurity, and of fear. The challenge is to identify how to ensure democratic security so that citizens can feel they can work together to promote access to fundamental human rights,” said George Papandreou (Greece, SOC), General Rapporteur on Democracy, who moderated a Forum Talk organised as part of the World Forum for Democracy in co-operation with PACE, on the theme “Elections under pressure: what’s at stake for representative democracy?”
In this context, Mr Papandreou underlined the importance of protecting the integrity of elections, supporting people in exile “to be the future architects of their societies”, and recalled the fundamental value of public debate and citizenship education.
Sabina Ćudić (Bosnia and Herzegovina, ALDE), a member of PACE's Monitoring Committee, highlighted the importance of PACE's monitoring of electoral processes. “The democratic environment shapes the outcomes of the elections. But democracy does neither start nor end with free and fair elections. It comes from political parties, in the development of political programmes addressing the population’s concerns”, she stressed.
Pierre-Alain Fridez (Switzerland, SOC), PACE rapporteur on “The theme of migration and asylum in election campaigns and its consequences on the reception of migrants and their rights” and member of PACE Network of Election Observers, evoked the growing presence of hate speech in electoral programmes. “Legal time is not the same as electoral time. And even if hate speech can be punished, part of the problem is subtle hate speech that slips under the radar,” he said. ‘Not everything is decided on election day, but most of the time beforehand, hence the importance of the democratic environment,” he added.
The panel of the Forum Talk also included Iris Boyer, Head of the International Observatory on Information and Democracy of the Forum on Information and Democracy, and Tomislav Damjanovic, Founder and CEO of A Media and of Mandat, as well as two discussants, Liana Liu Ioannides, a peace-building advocate from Cyprus, and Tala Odeh, a human rights defender from Jordan.
The discussion with the audience covered a range of topics, including electronic voting, the concepts of representative democracy and participatory democracy, the importance of election observation and the identification of human rights violations, citizens’ trust, foreign interference by minority groups, the influence of wealthy and influential interest groups on elections, and the factors that encourage active citizen participation, such as the redistribution of wealth, access to social and economic rights, and citizenship education.