2024 saw an amplification of the challenging of multilateralism, as Russia continued its war of aggression against Ukraine and Donald Trump was re-elected as the President of the USA, bringing more uncertainty to world politics. At the same time, the human cost of the war in Gaza as well as of other conflicts – including in Demo Finland’s programme countries – is enormous and poses an additional threat to the international rules-based order.
Democracy, human rights and the rule of law remained important values at a rhetorical level, while implementation weakened around the world, as the decline in the state of democracy and the shrinking of civic space continued in 2024. Democracy support is being carried out in increasingly challenging global conditions and geopolitical instability. Nevertheless, Demo Finland’s work resulted in several positive democracy developments, as is shown in this Annual Report.
In 2024, we worked in 8 countries, supported 124 political parties and reached 1942 politicians and civil society actors in our international programmes.
With our support:
- improvements were made in the structures of political parties as well as in legislation to enhance the inclusion of persons with disabilities;
- politicians, political party actors, other leaders and parliamentary staff have strengthened their skills and understanding of democratic governance;
- new multi-party and multi-stakeholder networks and platforms were established and existing platforms continued to bring together different political parties and political actors for constructive collaboration and dialogue;
- political actors had safe spaces for dialogue in politically sensitive and restrictive contexts.
Read our Annual Report 2024 here (opens in a new tab).