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.

Political dissidents from China, Syria, Iran, Ethiopia, Cuba and Burma joined NDI Chairman Madeleine K. Albright and others to pay tribute to the life and work of Václav Havel at the National Endowment for Democracy. Havel, a playwright and political activist who went on to become the president of Czechoslovakia and later the Czech Republic, died last month at the age of 75.

The tributes emphasized Havel's empathy with those living under authoritarianism, his warm humor, his great intellect, and his constant striving to "live in truth," a major theme of his seminal work The Power of the Powerless.

Voter enthusiasm was again a dominant feature of this third round of voting in the Egyptian People’s Assembly elections. Three credible rounds of polling now raise the likely prospect that Egypt’s next parliament will reflect the will of the people, NDI said in a statement released in Cairo.

NDI deployed 32 accredited “witnesses” from 16 countries in Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America to observe this third and final round of elections. Voters in the governorates of Dakahliya, Gharbiya, Matrouh, Minya, New Valley, North Sinai, Qalubiya, Qena and South Sinai went to the polls on Jan. 3 and 4. The delegation visited nearly 200 polling stations in seven of the nine governorates. The mission’s objective was to witness impartially the pre-election environment and election-day proceedings and to demonstrate the interest of the international community in the development of democratic political processes in Egypt.

Two years after the devastating January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the country is attempting to rebuild with the help of development proposals prepared by citizens. These efforts, known as roadmaps, or “cahiers de charges,” have been endorsed by elected officials across the country as a way to demonstrate that they are listening to citizens and have set specific goals for reconstruction and development efforts.

Forbes magazine has recognized NDI Program Officer Kathryn Peters as one of the “30 under 30” making their mark in the field of law and policy.

Peters was recognized for founding TurboVote, a web service that makes voting by mail as simple as renting a DVD from Netflix. TurboVote provides free email and text message reminders for all elections and sends users completed voter registration forms and absentee ballot request forms by mail, along with pre-addressed, pre-stamped envelopes.

In Mali, a new series of citizen forums aims to solve community problems and incorporate women as full partners in the process.

Mali transitioned to democracy 20 years ago, but citizens are becoming increasingly disenchanted with their government. Voter turnout was about 30 percent when local elections were last held in 2009, and many people feel that elected officials don’t represent them. Some 45 percent of Malians say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy works in their country, in part because the nation remains very poor and they don’t believe their elected representatives are working to create jobs or spur development.

NDI mourns the passing of former Czech President Václav Havel. The Institute recognized Havel in 1991 with its W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award, honoring him for his years as a dissident, political essayist and leading figure in the Velvet Revolution of 1989 — the bloodless end to communism in Czechoslovakia.