NIGD has been involved in various mechanisms related to the New or Restored Democracy process.  Most recently, NIGD formed part of the follow-up mechanism of the International Civil Society Forum of the New or Restored Democracies-process preparing for the civil society forum of the Sixth Conference in Doha, Qatar, on 29 October - 1 November 2006.

What Process on New or Restored Democracies?

The New or Restored Democracies-process took off in Asia in the late 1980’s on the initiative of the Philippines. The constitutive idea of the process is that democratization of states can be supported through international co-operation. These states gathering and working together assumed that, with mutual support, internal and external tendencies and forces endangering the processes of democratization could be overcome.

The process continued with a Second International Conference on New or Restored Democracies in 1994 in Latin America, in Managua, Nicaragua, and from there the baton was passed on to Europe and Romaina, where the Third Conference was held in Bucharest in August 1997. The Fourth Conference was held on 3-6 December 2000 in Africa, with Cotonou in Benin as host. The Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar served as host for the Fifth Conference in September 2003 and the Sixth Conference was held in Qatar in October 2006.

For more information on the New or Restored Democracies process, see for instance Building Democracy from Manila to Doha - Toward the Sixth Conference on New or Restored Democracies, edited by Tapio Kanninen and Katarina Sehm Patomäki (2005), Helsinki Process Series, Discussion Paper 5, Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Helsinki.