Despite their 20 percent share of the population, Mayan women in Guatemala have limited political and economic power. They have the country’s highest rates of poverty and illiteracy, and, according to an NDI-supported study, are far less likely to vote than any other sector of the population.

Many applauded when the legislature in the West African country of Burkina Faso passed a gender quota law last year requiring 30 percent of the candidates on political party lists to be women. It held the promise of new opportunities for Burkinabe women, traditionally marginalized politically, to gain elective office at both the national and local levels.

But while the law was enacted more than a year ago, there has been little progress on implementing it, even though local and legislative elections will be held in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

Located at the center of historical conflicts in the Balkans, modern-day Macedonia has overcome many challenges since Yugoslavia disintegrated and the country of three million peacefully gained independence in 1991. Escalating tension between majority Macedonians and a sizable Albanian community led to open conflict in 2001 that was staunched by a peace agreement, known as the Ohrid Accords, which has provided stronger constitutional and political protections for ethnic Albanians.

The fragility of freedom and how to preserve it was one of the themes explored at the 10th anniversary meeting of the Community of Democracies (CoD), a global coalition of democratic countries, meeting July 2-4 in Krakow, Poland.

In the decade since the founding of the Community of Democracies, which met June 2-4 in Poland, a major change has been the explosion of technology and the tools it has created, both for those supporting the free flow of ideas and other democratic values and for authoritarian states interested in the opposite, curtailing information and suppressing human rights.