“Democracy faces critical challenges around the world, ” International IDEA Secretary General Kevin Casas-Zamora

“Democracy faces critical challenges around the world. In 2023, we continued to expand our work, helping people, communities, and organizations that are striving to make their countries more democratic places to live.” – Kevin Casas-Zamora. Check out the International IDEA Annual Review 2023 to learn more:

https://www.idea.int/annual-review-2023

Message from the Secretary-General

Democracy faces critical challenges around the world, from polarization and authoritarianism to disinformation and climate change. What’s more, these issues are not unique to developing countries or to nascent democracies. They are problems common to all democracies, and they require collective solutions. In such a context, the unique mandate of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) to support sustainable democracy globally has become more important than ever.

In 2023 we successfully delivered on this mandate, while continuing our growth trajectory in terms of programmes, membership and policy influence. The Institute became more relevant and more impactful, in line with the four pillars of work in our institutional strategy.

We improved the quality and impact of our knowledge production, including via a reconceptualized Global State of Democracy report that now integrates qualitative data from our Democracy Tracker.

We grew our capacity development programming, launching our single largest programme anywhere, a European Union–funded initiative to support rule-of-law and anti-corruption efforts in Nigeria, as well as major new initiatives in Peru, Ukraine and the Western Balkans, to name but a few.

We enhanced our global influence and convening power by welcoming France as our 35th Member State and by reinforcing partnerships with other intergovernmental organizations, including around the Summit for Democracy.

And we stepped up our advocacy efforts—for instance, by supporting Sweden’s presidency of the Council of European Union with recommendations to enhance the EU’s global support for democracy, and by using our United Nations Permanent Observer status to make more statements at the UN General Assembly on key issues connected with democracy.

Even in these challenging times, we continue to expand our work, helping people, communities and organizations that are striving to make their countries more democratic places to live. I am very proud of our ever-growing contributions as a convenor, programme implementer and policy research institute, all supported by an organizational commitment to learn from our activities and enhance our results. When you read the stories of action and impact in the following pages, I hope you will agree that this work is relevant, valuable and worthy of support.