Democracy Partnership Challenge Methodology Seminar takes place in Warsaw

March 26, 2013

On March 19-20, the Permanent Secretariat of the Community of Democracies hosted a Methodology Seminar, summarizing one and a half year of work of the Democracy Partnership Challenge Task Forces for Moldova and Tunisia.

The Democracy Partnernship Challenge is one of the CD's leading initiatives. It consists of a group of CD Participating States, who form together "Task Forces" to support emerging democracies in their transition period, in full cooperation with the respective governments. Together, they promote projects and support governmental initiatives for good practices of democratic governance, share experiences and exchange expertise. So far, two pilor projects have been launched- in Moldova and in Tunisia.

The Seminar in Warsaw was facilitated by the DPC Senior Advisor, Ms. Constance Phlipot, and held with the participation of government representatives from the respective countries. Also present were representatives of the PSCD and of the co-chairing countries of the Task Forces: Poland and the U.S.A. for Moldova, and Slovakia and the Netherlands for Tunisia. The main goal was to asses and extract methodology from the Task Forces' work so far, and draw recommendation for their future functioning.

Representatives from both participating and co-chairing countries showed a high level of engagement in the topic, and expressed their will to prolong the project beyond the current mandate, thus eager to contribute their experience to a constant improvement of the Task Forces' mechanism. Interesting discussions were held regarding the fields on which the Task Forces' projects should concentrate, the level of independence and initiative that the participating countries should show within the framework of the Task Forces, and the expected relations between participating countries, co-chairs, and potential donors. See the pictures from the seminar's discussions on our Facebook page.

The seminar is just one among several stages of evaluation of the DPC initiative towards an accurate elaboration of its working methods, that will allow its continuation in the current participating countries, as well as its expansion to new countries.