Let’s imagine we build a football stadium. We make sure there’s beautiful green grass field, we paint the white borderlines and set up the goals. We train the referees. Everything is ready for the game to begin, but we have forgotten the train the players.
This was a metaphor for political parties’ role in democracy building in Copenhagen, when Nordic parties’ democracy support organizations met each other for the first time. Aid allocated to parties gets only a small amount of all those resources which internationally are targeted to support democracy, good governance and human rights.
The main goal of the meeting was to share knowledge and experiences on Nordic parties’ work on democracy support and reinforce co-operation among this peer group of actors. Also in the future there are plans to develop collaboration in working routines, like for example in follow-up of the results.
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Tiina Kukkamaa-Bah is the acting executive director of Demo Finland.