Discussing democracy and conflict

Sep 23rd, 2009 4:33 PM UTC
By Jessica Gomez-Duran

Today was the last day of the Lib Dem party conference which officially finished with the leader’s speech this afternoon. I thought it was about time I fill you in on some of the really interesting fringe events I’ve attended over the last couple of days.

So, yesterday lunchtime I trekked up the hill to a fringe event entitled ‘Democracy in danger? The future of conflict-affected states’, organised by the Foreign Policy Centre, BBC World Service Trust and International Alert. It was chaired by Baroness Northover who began by introducing the panel of speakers – Edward Davey MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary; Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent; James Deane, BBC World Service Trust; and Dan Smith, International Alert.

Yasmin spoke quite bluntly but did say that despite all the problems and issues she mentioned, she does feel optimistic (which was encouraging to hear!). It was interesting to then learn a bit more about the BBC World Service Trust which is actually the BBC’s international development charity. I found a leaflet for them on my chair which states that the charity ‘uses creative media to reduce poverty and promote human rights, enabling people to build better lives for themselves’. In his talk James Deane paraphrased Larry Diamond who coined the expression that we have entered a “democratic recession”. In Deane’s view, the international community has invested too much in elections as a way to obtain democracy and we need to look at the cultural aspects of democracy such as fundamental freedom of speech and accountability. As President Obama said when he was in Ghana during his Africa trip, ‘we need strong institutions, not strong men’.

Following the brief words by each of the speakers, there were many eager hands that shot up; it was clear that this was a subject people were passionate about. Yet before we knew it, just as the discussion was really warming up, it was time for the session to end. And so it was time for the lady who’d been busy knitting whilst she was listening to the speakers to pack up her wool and for us all to head to the next event.

TAGS: UK party conferences