Latin America & the Caribbean: Civic Network
Background
Civic groups that once played key roles in peaceful democratic transitions in the hemisphere are now working to consolidate democratic institutions by serving as a link between citizens and institutions, including legislatures, political parties and local governments. To help prepare civic groups for this new role, NDI hosted a summit meeting in Paraguay in 1995 with leading Latin American election monitoring groups.
During this summit, participants from more than ten nations shared lessons learned regarding election monitoring and discussed the challenges of conducting democracy consolidation activities between elections, including civic education and anti corruption initiatives. At the conclusion of the event, the participants recommended establishing a permanent mechanism to facilitate the exchange of expertise and information between the organizations. NDI responded by establishing the Civic Network in 1996 to provide civic groups with access to hands-on democracy development materials and to facilitate an exchange of ideas, activities and experiences.
Current Activities
Since the program's inception in 1996, the Network has worked with more than 45 organizations in 17 countries. The Network initially focused on the task of creating a library of materials and a computerized database to manage this information. Civic Network staff responded to requests for materials, conducted periodic mailings of training materials to network participants, translated relevant training documents, and implemented an e-mail system to provide updates and information to Network participants.
In September 2000, the Peruvian civic group Transparencia hosted a meeting of election observation groups in Lima, which included many of the civic network participants. The conference concluded with the signing of the Lima Agreement, which established an informal regional network that would monitor elections and exchange information on new areas of democratic development, including: campaign finance reform and strengthening political parties. The network temporarily adopted the name Acuerdo de Lima, in reference to the agreement signed during the first meeting. Additional meetings have since taken place in Nicaragua, Chile, Mexico and Peru. Network members have also provided organizational development, strategic planning, media and campaign finance monitoring assistance to national election monitoring efforts in Nicaragua (2000 municipal elections), Peru (2001 presidential elections), Ecuador (2002 presidential elections), Guatemala (2003 presidential elections) and the Dominican Republic (2004 presidential elections).
NDI is building on the accomplishments of the Civic Network and its relationship with the participating members of the Acuerdo de Lima by co-sponsoring the Acuerdo de Lima website (http://www.acuerdodelima.org/), and continuing to support regional training exchange trips between members.
Contact Information
For more information on the Civic Network, please contact:
Héctor Salazar-Salame, Program Assistant hsalazar@ndi.org
Updated April 2005
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