For more than two decades, women in Bahrain have struggled to raise awareness of domestic violence.  The Kingdom has no laws or government policies to address violence against women and a draft law that would establish penalties has been languishing in the parliament for years. To push the issue, the Bahrain Women’s Union (BWU), an association of 12 women's organizations, launched an advocacy campaign on Dec. 11 for  a domestic violence law, which has been a priority for the union since its founding in 2001.

Strengthening the building blocks of democratic legislatures – transparency, accountability, oversight, responsiveness and effective legislation – is among the goals of the House Democracy Partnership (HDP), an organization created by the U.S. House of Representatives to promote and support emerging democratic governments around the world.  HDP currently has 14 partner countries on five continents.

With the goal of sustaining peace and encouraging cooperation to overcome the region’s past conflicts, more than 300 young political leaders from the Western Balkans and elsewhere, meeting in Serbia, issued “The Belgrade Declaration,” pledging to strengthen ties with their governments, promote new values and use new technologies to improve communication and understanding.

Hagamos Democracia, an NDI-partner organization based in Honduras, released a series of reports during the presidential, congressional and municipal elections on Nov. 29 in Honduras. The nonpartisan organization dispatched more than 1,000 election observers to all 18 departments and 283 of the 298 municipal districts.

Hagamos Democracia (HD) monitored the quality of the general election process and also conducted a parallel vote tabulation (PVT or "quick count") using a statistically random sample of polling station results with technical support from NDI.