The National Democratic Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government.

As ethnic divisions ease in the Balkans, political parties across the spectrum are finding the need for new approaches that focus on thoughtful policy debate rather than personality and ethnicity. Young leaders in particular will play an important role in these changes.

In partnership with the VMRO-Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), NDI co-hosted a meeting Feb. 5-7 of 35 young leaders from center-right Balkan political parties. At the meeting in Skopje, Macedonia, participants focused on how to attract youth to conservative values in the 21st century as well as how to tackle a wide range of issues, including those not traditionally seen as conservative.

At a unique gathering in Paris last week, key international parliamentary associations gathered to assess progress on reaching consensus on minimum benchmarks for democratic parliaments – one of the key pillars of representative democracy.  While there is broad international agreement, for example, on minimum characteristics of democratic elections, international benchmarks on other democratic processes and institutions are still emerging. 

In anticipation of national elections on March 7, Iraqi civil society activists held 16 candidate forums throughout the country to engage voters in the political process, improve the dialogue with candidates and focus attention on priority issues for voters, such as water, electricity and education.

The forums, organized with support from NDI, were held Feb. 22 — March 1 in 16 of Iraq's 18 provinces. Candidates from the major political coalitions and parties in each province were invited to participate. A total of 71 parliamentary candidates, including 14 women, presented their platforms and responded to questions, described their proposals and conveyed broader messages to an audience of potential supporters.

A broad coalition of civil society organizations in Burkina Faso recently developed a report detailing discrimination against women in the West African country for presentation to a U.N. committee considering implementation of the international Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

In Bangladesh, traditional gender roles keep most women from gaining political power. A recent forum, "Celebrating Women's Leadership in Bangladesh," brought together female MPs and other Bangladeshi women with political aspirations to inspire and encourage them to run for office and to work together across party lines to increase women's political participation in the country.

The Bangladesh Alliance for Women Leadership (BDAWL), an organization of prominent women leaders, hosted the November meeting, which was prompted by a visit to Bangladesh from Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues. Forty-five women MPs, civil society leaders, media representatives, and officials from the U.S. embassy, NDI and BDAWL attended the forum.

Opora and ENEMO, two independent election monitoring organizations, found no systemic violations in the conduct of Ukraine's Feb. 7 presidential runoff election, which was a significant improvement over the 2004 presidential election. The groups fielded a total of 1,453 observers for the poll in which opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych faced off against Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko.

Opora, a nonpartisan network of Ukrainian election monitors, said the election was conducted "in a peaceful manner" and that government officials at all levels "demonstrated responsible attitudes towards arranging and conducting the runoff." ENEMO, the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations, said the election environment "remained generally free of pressure, intimidation or harassment."