 Hi everyone. I suggest we give it one more minute because we see that participants are still coming home. We will start in a minute. I think we can start if colleagues agree. So welcome everyone. Good afternoon, good morning depending on where you are in the world. My name is Marilyn Neven. I'm program manager at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance or International Idea. We are an intergovernmental organisation with 34 member states and have the sole mission to support democracy across the globe. It is really a great pleasure to welcome you all to this online event on behalf of my colleagues at International Idea and the European Commission. We have high ambitions for today. We are going to review the impact of two summits for democracy today and discuss the attention points we see for building a successful third summit and follow-up process. The moment is indeed right for such an exercise. About three months ago, the second summit for democracy took place and was successfully organised by the US government. South Korea is now taking over the helm and plans to organise the third summit in the first half of 2024. Today, International Idea launched the impact report, Democratic Engagement After Two Summits for Democracy. I hope you will all read it and my colleague will also post the link in the chat function so you can immediately take a look. It was drafted with the support from the European Union. It provides an in-depth analysis of information on the two past summits for democracy that was made available either publicly or through the cohorts. And we thank everyone who has contributed to information sharing. A white paper is now being prepared by the US for South Korea and we hope, of course, that our report can be part of or informed the handover package. And we are really, really thrilled about your massive interest for this event and the evaluation of the summit process. This pre-launch was initially conceived as an informal online gathering among the project partners and summit experts. But we realised on the way how many of you have been involved in the global democracy coalition, the democracy cohorts, the official summit structures and our summit activities since 2021. And we also saw that there is a great appetite for helping to shape the future of the summit together. So that's how we ended up with such a big audience today, so welcome to you all. To manage this discussion, this conversation for the next one hour and a half, we lined up some exciting speakers for you and also made the chat function available to answer some of your questions during the sessions, don't hesitate to make use of that. My colleague Julia Koetken will present a report and the discussions will each comment on a specific chapter highlighting either the specific country engagement or works for specific democracy cohort. Julia and the team will also take over the mastering during the session to conduct a poll so we count on your active participation on this. So let's start. I may now introduce someone who probably needs a little introduction for most of you. My colleague Julia Koetken is Program Manager at International Idea and she is leading the EU funded supporting Team Europe Democracy programme. Julia will tell you more about the report about the most interesting country commitments and the key recommendations moving forward. She will highlight how the research was done, provide some facts and figures from the summit and indeed zoom in on the implementation of commitments. Julia, you and colleagues looked at the goods and the bands of the process and managed to draw some constructive proposals for further streamlining of the process so we are very much keen to hear more on this. The screen is yours Julia. Hi, thank you very much. Very nice to see you all. I'm very happy that so many of you are gathered here today. So, as Marilin already introduced, we have been working very hard for the past couple of months since March actually to really drill all this, all that happened during the summit for democracy and the year of action and go deeper in the analysis. So, I just want to briefly just explain how we've come to that report just so that we're kind of clear on the methodology that we used. We reviewed actually the older data that was available that we could find the ones, especially around the verbal statements that were made by countries. And the 13 self reports that we had available at our disposal and online sources that we could find like the US website for example. And then what we did is we basically try did a transcript of all the verbal commitments so that's about five and a half hours of recording of all the heads of state and governments that made statements around the implementation of commitments. We checked online to verify because some of the verbal statements were quite unclear on what it is exactly which plans for example they were talking about and so we clarified that in the analysis we've done. And then we did several interviews with stakeholders both civil society organizations and different cohorts we also did a survey and distributed that to all the cohorts. What I just want to say is that the commitment implementation or the analysis that we've done, especially around commitment implementation was really based on these verbal statements. So we are necessarily judging the quality of implementation, or we haven't gone to every country to check exactly where they were or for example we noticed that some countries made commitments during the first summit that then didn't mention anything in terms of implementation during the second summit. So we haven't necessarily we don't necessarily know whether those commitments have been followed up on or not so we're not able to provide any analysis specific analysis on that. I just want to say that today I won't be going into any of the details regarding a description of the second summit. I know it was confusing for some of you but all of that is in the report so you can see in detail what really happened during the few days and during the the actual first summit day. I just want to start off with a little bit of facts and figures as we did previously for the first summit. And we've been hearing that there's been doing the second summit a lot less uptake. We don't necessarily find it in that. We don't necessarily really the case so just want to say that there were about 120 countries invited. So the same 112 as in 2021, but eight additional countries as well and we have all the details of that in the report. Again, Hungary, Turkey, where an invited but there were also countries that weren't invited twice but the client participation. So in the end 90 countries participated. So we take that information from the verbal statements that were made, not from the panels that actually were held during the event on the 29th, of which 80 were active or participated in both summits and and 10 only participated in 2023 but didn't participate in 2021 so basically what we can conclude is that we have 10 few countries that participated in 2023 verse 21 that represents in total about 46% of the population. And when we know that according to Freedom House, I'm talking how now about 2022, we know that 38% of the population live in not free countries and only 20% live in free countries so basically that means that a lot of not free countries or less free countries where represented also during the summit in terms of its population present. So, looking now specifically at commitment implementation as I said we've gone through all the verbal statements. We found that about 69% of all countries mentioned actually concrete implementation and 31 did not. That also means that the countries that didn't participate in 2021 of course did not mention concrete implementation. And we also found of course that it was pro accessibility of data as I said before, and it's recordings basically that we did transcribed into in order to be able to do the analysis, apart from the self reports that we had available, which of course provided a lot of information. So thanks to the verbal statements there were these panels these five panels that were organized that focus on various themes, and we partly looked at that information as well, and to come to to those kind of conclusions just to mention that idea has a dashboard with all the of all participating countries during the first summit. And so all of that information, what the commitments were exactly can be found there, as well as the self reports that we had available you can find that under implement and our implementation in that particular category. So, I'm looking now specifically at the themes that were mentioned again during the verbal statements by heads of state. And we see a couple of trends here first of all, themes such as corruption transparency where important in this first summit, keep being very important in the second summit top category. And then we have themes such as gender and media freedom and elections that also are important in in the top category of themes mentioned surprisingly but inconsistently with the first summit, institutional strengthening themes, such as, for example, parties, local democracy are less present actually are hardly mentioned themes like youth, for example, despite being quite important in the year of action and the second summit with a particular theme around youth was not mentioned very much in the verbal statements by heads of state. What we see also in terms of the themes is that security, fighting extremists fighting authority authoritarianism have become increasingly important and themes that we see coming up much much more in the verbal statements. And of course specifically that, as you know, there was no war in Ukraine in 2021 during the first summit. In the same way, of course there was but the full scale invasion only happened after the second summit after the first summit sorry sorry so this was mentioned actually by 39 countries and mostly European countries in their verbal statements. And we now look at the commitments. What we have done in the report is that we have taken the main themes. So corruption, gender, media freedom and elections. We have taken those four themes and we looked specifically we categorized those. And you will see there is, for example, if you're looking specifically at corruption and you want to know what country implemented in the government around whistleblower protection, for example, you can see that in the report so there's quite a lot of information around these four themes in the report. But I just wanted today to mention just four countries and where we find that the implementation of commitments were actually quite interesting or useful. So those, those are here, the ones you can see and we'll hear more from Valerio later but Moldova adopted a new electoral code that strengthened the capacity of the Central Electoral Commission. Ecuador did something quite specific which is a platform to on public procurement data to make that transparent and have a LGBTI diversity action plan. Zambia conducted a post-2021 general election review, which engaged lots of different stakeholders and reviewed also the transparency of their electoral commission. And the US, as you probably know, established its presidential initiative for democratic renewal with quite a substantive budget. And what I also wanted to mention here is because that is quite important is that, as you know, there was no monitoring mechanism, formal monitoring mechanism around the implementation of commitments. However, two countries, Kosovo and Spain, established or used a national accountability mechanism, then enabled to actually review within their country the implementation of their commitments. What we also have looked at is whether countries with inevitable statements have made new commitments and we found that 30 countries made new commitments. Again, despite the lack of clarity, whether countries should make new commitments or not. So we're still not very clear about that. But despite that, some countries went ahead and already committed something for the future. Of course, this again is much clearer when we have self reports, when those are available, there's a lot more information around those. Again, as what we see for the first summit, these new commitments vary in specificity, but again, because they're drawn from verbal statements made by heads of state, it might also be the reason why they're not that clear in all cases. Again, I won't read them, you can see all of that in the report. Now I want to go back to the second part of this presentation and the report, which is around the cohorts. I assume you all know what the cohorts are, but just to go back to them, there were 16 cohorts there are multi stakeholder initiatives that focus on certain topics and you can see those topics here on the screen. What we, we say in the report is that they were probably the most active part of the whole summit process, because they had very regular meetings and they had some very key outcomes. They're multi stakeholder nature, the fact that there were civil society government private sector driven that really helped also to bring some of the underrepresented voices around the summit for democracy. For example, some of the cohorts included civil society organizations from non participating countries. So that means that countries that weren't invited in the summit had still participation through civil society. And we also find that at least 11 cohorts actually contributed quite substantively to some of the thematic analysis that they've done on some calls to action to the summit process and to really pushing from for some of the issues around the summit. And finally, at least six cohorts actually developed already concrete plans for the future and again in the report you can see that in detail what those plans are. And this again despite the fact that, first of all, they weren't officially part of the summit. And secondly, that there is again no clear plans on whether the cohorts will continue in the future moving forward and towards the third summit in South Korea. Again, here I want to give some examples. Again, I want to highlight that they are only examples there's a lot more that was done. And so we have done a cohort paper. A few years ago where some of this is outlined as well. I think my colleague Nikolai will put it also in the chat so you can, you can see it. But some of the examples here where it was something that was nicely coordinated by some civil society colleagues of freedom house but there was a civil society declaration on democratic principles which was coordinated by the 14 cohorts and then signed by 135 civil society organizations really helping or pushing the government to take action on democracy. We had the financial transparency and integrity cohort that did a beneficial outcome beneficial ownership outcome document for example for governments, the gender cohort that did recommendations around certain themes to again for governments we have the media freedom cohort that did report that highlighted some commitments that different members of the cohort actually took moving forward also into the third summit and beyond the second summit. And finally we have also the youth democracy cohort that developed some model commitments and a handbook on youth political participation. And these are just examples there is a lot more done that was done and you can find that also on the website of the State Department. I want to now go into the future of the cohorts. So this is based on the survey that I mentioned that we've done so we send a survey to all the cohorts just to see where they are. In terms of their thinking again that's that's about a month and a half ago so things might have changed a little bit since, but basically what we saw from that is about 60% of the cohorts said, we will continue we will continue in the current form will maybe change what maybe some of the course I integrated into a coalition for example but we are planning to continue 40% was still a little bit uncertain also probably due to the fact that the process is still a little bit uncertain. But what we notice generally or what we were told is that there needs to be a clear structure for the cohorts that some kind of coordination would be extremely helpful. Many cohorts were were actually saying that some funding would be really helpful to push some of the work forward because a lot of this was done on on everybody's time and and a lot of the outcomes that they would wish to to do when possible of partly lack of funding partly also time related and that in the end broadening the core leadership to to organizations and governments beyond Europe and the US could also be quite quite good moving moving forward. More broadly also what we concluded around the cohorts is that they were very useful in establishing networks in bringing different actors bringing governments and civil society together, and also partly into. Maybe Katrina will talk about it but breathing new life into existing initiatives that that we're kind of stalling. And so we saw that happening quite a bit as well. So now moving into the final part of the report which is around civil society representation. So what we've seen here is that there was a doing from the first to the some second summit and also during the year of action. There was a lot more civil society inclusion and representation. As I mentioned before, also in terms of the breadth of civil society organizations so we saw some civil society organizations for example, representing people with disabilities we saw that in, you know, a lot of them participating to indigenous groups, young people so generally it's something that that we, we, we saw from the first to the second summit as well as more opportunities for engagements before and during the second summit. We also have the global democracy coalition that did partners for democracy day on the 27th of March, mainly, which had, you know, quite a lot of events quite a lot of organizations civil society organizations that got mobilized around that. But at the same time, we think that it's important as I mentioned before to keep broadening the participation of civil society moving forward into the third summit, but also not to leave civil society just there just really try to see how the dialogue between civil society and governments can actually be improved into the third summit, trying to find this platform for dialogues between civil society and governments, beyond also the work of the cohorts. I want to move very briefly into the recommendations. Again, the, what we have done there is we've looked at shorter term recommendations and longer term recommendations. I will just look at the very short term practical ones you can look at the longer term recommendations and our thinking. After this analysis also in the report so again there's a lot more there but for time purposes I just wanted to focus on some of the shorter term considerations. So we've also categorized them depending on who we, we were making those practical considerations or recommendations to in terms of the summit organizers. I think that the commitment actually, despite the fact that they're very uneven in terms of their results. We thought that the commitments were actually a good way to bring civil, to bring governments to continue engaging with this process. It's important to request exactly what those commitments should be and communicate really clearly around expectations on their content and do that well in advance so not one month before the summit but start looking into into that. And then also looking at the work of the cohorts and to have more coordinated approach to them and also invite the cohorts to maybe submit plans or different reports on the progress on on how they're doing, maybe connect some of them together. This is something that we thought could be done pretty, pretty quickly. In terms of the governments again, you know, we are all for making sure that they are written commitments but not just written commitments but some that are measurable with clear outputs timeframes and outcomes and and be transparent and open around this and publish it. Also, to their citizens so we very much see that this link between commitments and citizens is in some cases lacking in others it's been done but again, and not systematically to the democracy cohorts engage really in a structured collaboration also working with other cohorts if possible and fostering some of the lessons learned. The good thing about the cohorts that there's been very little structure given to them, which has enabled the chords to be, you know, to freely go and and do lots of different things and we think that's really amazing and should be kept at the same time. There is a lessons learned between the different cohorts that could really be beneficial for for all of all of the cohorts. And also reach out to include organizations from outside the EU or the US, but also other civil society organizations within a region or country for example. And then finally to civil society organizations engaged with the governments around the development of new commitments. We think that that would be really, really great. And then pursue some kind of involvement with new civil society organizations. And, as I said in countries of region in in a structure manner. So, so that's, that's some of the highlights of the report. I hope you will find interest in in looking through it and and and yeah finding more analysis and that's useful for you and we really look forward to to any feedback on your side so thank you very much. Thank you very much for this presentation Julie I'm sure that participants will check out the details in the report itself and they will see that the recommendations indeed do not only target some it organizes but also the governments civil society and as well as, engaged in the democracy cohorts so you see from all the examples that the summit for democracy indeed provided a forum for very interesting initiatives and from many stakeholders. I also liked and perhaps can add to the presentation is that the report also discusses some broader questions, such as the value of making democracy engagement as inclusive as possible. And we see that there is an increasing need to build a shared narrative on democracy between North and South international idea also just published policy brief that unpacked the building blocks of renewing the narrative on democracy and we focus it on EU work. And we see that the value proposition of what that means for different regions will be key to to get countries on board and to keep them on board and we hope to see that also in the continued summit process. So now, thank you and let's turn to our speaker, all of whom spent lots of their time on the summit process and they can share some valuable experiences and and few points with us. First of all, we can discuss Moldova, who is one of the very good students in the summit process. The government published a self reports ahead of the second summit, and was very responsive to our team and framework of the project. A key focus of the country was elections and anti corruption and we have seen in Julia's presentation that these were very important topics for many countries taking part in in the summit. Valerio Kupcha is very well placed to provide some more details on this as he is the head of the International Cooperation Directorate at the National Anti Corruption Center in Moldova. It is my pleasure to pass on the floor to you Valerio please go ahead. Good afternoon all I guess it might be good morning for some of the participants. I will just briefly refer to the commitments that we we've made within the summit for democracy. So we've made the commitments under three heading so you might call them areas. First of them is the justice sector reform. So the commitment was to continue to tackle the necessary steps to reform the justice sector and to to that it's judges and prosecutors and we are currently in an ongoing process of evaluating the ethical and the financial integrity of judges and prosecutors and their self governing bodies and namely the Superior Council of Magisteria and the Superior Council of Prosecutors. Another area was the one referring to the strengthening of democratic processes by fighting illegal financing of political parties. The commitment was to continue to make efforts to strengthen the democratic processes by enforcing strong mechanism of oversight and sanctions for infringements that might be identified and for the illegal financing of political parties. And it was it was already in the presentation that there were some important amendments which will give more leverage for checking the income of parties and set rules and specific limits for donations. The next and the third area is the one referring to the strengthening of anti-corruption bodies and cleaning up the institutions and the commitment was to continue the fight against corrupt practices and schemes in public institutions to work towards strengthening the existing anti-corruption bodies point transparent and honest public figures and leadership in leadership positions and by discouraging corrupt practices and strengthen of accountability and enforcement mechanisms. Regarding this area we had the honor to co-lead a cohort on anti-corruption with our colleagues from the Basel Institute on Governance and Transparency International. On 8th of November last year we've had the first meeting and we've launched our cohort and this meeting provided the opportunity for government representatives and the civil society to shape the scope and expected results of the cohort by sharing the initial reactions, recommendations and questions regarding the cohorts high level objectives and activities. The participants came up with proposals regarding the organization of cohorts activities and the key areas on which it might focus. Fast the attendees came to the conclusion that the cohort must focus on very specific and practical areas like the international cooperation in the investigation of high level corruption and on asset recovery cases which are crucial to overcome the impunity associated with serious corruption cases. For this purpose the cohort met in two workshops. The objectives of these workshops were to share the knowledge, experience and the best practices with regard to investigating high level corruption cases and illicit asset recovery. The first workshop on the investigation of high level corruption cases took place on the 2nd of February and the second workshop related to the illicit assets recovery was held on February 16th. The workshops gathered around 120 participants and the follow up of these workshops were the recommendations that were put together. They were somehow grouped in four priority areas for action and reforms in relation to international cooperation and investigations and asset recovery. These four priority areas are the strengthening of compliance with international standards, widen the scope of international standards and domestic legislation, strengthen international operational coordination and cooperation and enhance domestic enforcement and asset management capacities and practices. Also within the Summit for Democracy we had some bilateral conferences like the bilateral conferences with our colleagues from France and Romania on exchanging the good practices with regard to asset recovery. These meetings allowed our institutions to meet and to present the best practices we have with regard to asset recovery and address this subject in a transversal manner as a cycle involving different institutions. We also had the honor to host last year of the annual professional conference and the General Assembly of the European Partners Against Corruption and the European Contact Point Network Against Corruption. During this event, the Kishinov Declaration was adopted and six new members and observers were accepted to the network. With regard to our future priorities, we are planning to draft a new anti-corruption policy document and the recommendations that I've mentioned represent the outcome of the workshops that took place will for sure be taken into account when drafting a new anti-corruption policy document. We've also related again to the international cooperation with regard to the investigation of high level corruption cases and asset recovery. We've recently submitted our request to become a member of the global network of the UNODC. It was mentioned in the presentation, the whistleblowers. Two weeks ago, I guess, we've approved a new law on whistleblowers protection. We hope that this new mechanism will work and encourage the reporting of illegal activities. So, this was my brief presentation and if there will be some questions, I'll gladly answer that. Thank you. Thank you very much for that, Valeriu, and please stay with us as there may be questions after the first round of comments and because it's very interesting what you have done and a participant may want to have more details on that. I will now pass on the floor to Julia or Nikolai, my colleagues, because the plan is to conduct a poll with the participants. Julia? Yes, so thanks very much. We want to get a little bit of active participation here. There's lots and lots of questions, so we're going through them and we will address them. So, thanks very much in advance already for all of your comments and questions. So just, we want to put a quick poll. I mean, some of the, as I said, some of the work we've been doing is around looking at recommendations. So, we just wanted to see on this particular part around government participation to the summit, what are some of the recommendations that you think would be just choose one that you think would be the most important according to you. Would it be more important to develop commitments in a consultative process with civil society? Or do you think these commitments are not useful? Provide regular reporting on the implementation of commitments or actively engage with civil society to facilitate monitoring, raising ambition or fuel new commitments. So I will just give you a couple of seconds now to vote and we will see your answers here on the poll. I know that we have government participation. We have also civil society participation. I think civil society is probably a little bit higher, which might explain partly also the results. All right, so we closing the poll and the answer is to have more to actively engage with civil society to facilitate monitoring, raise ambition and fuel new commitments. Thanks very much. Thank you, Julia. Perfect. And we'll see you back later because there are more questions I think to submit. Our next speaker is Katarina Nielsen, who is project associate at the Alliance of Democracies. As you know, the Alliance has been following the summit from the first row. We are keen to hear more about the results of the summit cohort that focused on resisting authoritarian pressure. It has become a shared strategic interest in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and this was proved by the fact that so many leaders at the second summit included references to it in their remarks. So we also commend that cohort for building the bridges with the other cohorts. We really think that that was a good practice to follow. And so therefore, Catherine, good to have you with us and you are welcome to take the floor for your remarks. Thank you, Marilyn. So I'm going to keep it brief, and I'll stick to three main points about the cohorts. And the first would be our cohort activities that is the resisting authoritarian pressure cohort. And then I might go into some report findings based on what you guys have said about the cohorts, and then some takeaways and hopefully some future advice for the next summit in Korea. So our activities. So as part of this year of action, the Alliance of Democracies Foundation in partnership with the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Freedom House created the resisting authoritarian pressure cohort. The purpose of the cohort was to build resilience to authoritarian coercion and offer support to Democrats and human rights defenders working in non democracies. And we officially announced this during the second future of democracy program in bilnius in November of 2022. So as you may know, the cohorts came out with deliverables and these sort of our action points. And I think, and I might buy us to say but our cohort was quite successful. And I know Katie is from Freedom House is on the call and I think she might agree with me that we were quite a small team. So we were quite flexible and quite efficient. And some of these deliverables were that, for example, Lithuania commissioned a mural of Alice Billy out ski a Belarusian human rights activist. He was currently imprisoned by the Lukashenko regime, directly outside the Belarusian Embassy in bilnius, which was a physical statement, we think, Freedom House. As mentioned by you Marilyn also tried to engage all cohorts together, but more than that they also engaged governments. So they prepared this declaration to combat transnational oppression that governments and doors to share their commitment. And this was signed by countries such as Australia, Germany, Sonya Latvia Lithuania, the US, etc. And also, in terms of the alliance of democracies we held an online event on economic coercion with our founder and the Spoe Rasmussen section of NATO former section of NATO, and former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull. We also released an updated memo outlining our economic article five calling on democracies to sort of build a global framework to fight or counter economic coercion, which is actually seen quite a lot recently in the EU in the US and in Japan, for example. And to keep this momentum going, as one of the questions were if we wanted to keep the cohorts going, we actually hosted Freedom House and the government of Lithuania for a panel at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit this year, and to discuss our cohort activities, and sort of give us some stage presence on it, and to continue the talks. And then I'll go back to the report, which we had a great presentation of, especially with regard to the cohort discussion. I, I agree a lot with with the finding of the reports in terms of the cohorts celibate to solidify this. I think our cohort was really effective in raising awareness on resisting authoritarian pressure, as well as committing to the focus of this which was the aim of the cohorts initially. I think a lot of our activities were actually spared on by being part of these cohorts. So I think that was a really good takeaway from that. But while many of us did extensive work. And I know Casey is on here from Freedom House, she was sort of our coordinator and I know she put a lot of time into it. And I do feel like there was this missed opportunity, which is mentioned in the report, because I feel there should have been more engagement in, in the official agenda for cohorts. It was mainly just governments, but the cohorts worked with those governments and therefore I feel there should have been an overlap there. I think it was also mentioned that organization. We really struggled a little bit with organization, we really appreciated the freedom, meaning that we had all our ability to focus on these deliverables. But there was this aspect about organization not knowing when things needed to be submitted, etc. And that was also sort of a lack of communication. And our hope is that now we've built on this year of action and the cohorts is that next year in Korea the cohorts still maintain a role and have more of a sort of linear pathway to being featured during the official summit. So I guess then I can move on to our, my third point which is these takeaways. The first one which I found, and I know that my team found extremely important was to keep the cohort small. And we were also part of the democracy tech cohort, not in the steering committee, but still part of the discussions. And those calls filled with a lot of organizations and partners who wanted to have a say, but became difficult for us to see a way we could produce tangible outputs by keeping it small. So we were in contact with three members. We were in really close contact and we could get things done efficiently and also in an easy way and we agreed on things very, very efficiently. A simple call between the three of us and we were building things, building seven cents really. We also created some solid partnerships between us where we saw Lithuania and Freedom House have both since worked with us on the same topics, be that in Vilnius be that in Copenhagen. And also, I know the Freedom House and Lithuania actually had a side event at the summit for democracy, which sort of tied everything together for us, even though we weren't featured on the official agenda. And I think the idea behind the whole cohort creation makes a lot of sense. It has really spared us on ensuring we actively work towards the goal presented. I think, specifically in, for us at the Alliance of Democracies, we've run with this economic order for five for a few years. So being part of this cohort meant that we needed to rejuvenate that and sort of breathe new life into our ideas. And that meant reading will go back on our project proposal and redoing it bring in new light and working with the cohort on it. And I think, in general, the summit for democracy in Korea, we hope that this focus is on cohorts the same way that did last year in terms of this year of action. But I think civil society and the government relation is quite a smart method of ensuring of creating a safe space for democracy upkeep, because civil society is obviously an essential part of that. And what we can propose for the next summit would be something whereby, firstly, cohorts have cooperation. I don't know, Freedom House led led that. But I think total cooperation and maybe sharing some deliverables or figuring out what deliverables do you do and how do you go about them and sharing these ideas could be very useful. And I would also propose the official method in which cohorts could be included is perhaps using governments using the links between governments and the cohorts, other members. For example, if Lithuania spoke about it they could speak about their cohort membership, and then progressively have round tables etc. For those that are interested in joining this or being part of this or agreeing or committing to some of the ideas. And then ensuring some power discussions perhaps about the topics. So for example if it was a take for democracy then they would have those partners like Estonia up on stage, etc. So that those are my takeaways. I remind that you kept the cohorts small but at the same time you found some very good ways to increase the outreach and the impact of the cohort linking both with governments and other cohorts. So thank you very much for inspiring us on that and perhaps also South Korea and stay tuned over to Julia now for a new poll. Yeah. And maybe also just to say I think that Katharina also already addressed some of the questions there around our did cohorts actually bring some new things or was it some of the old stuff also that came back I think we can say it was really both. But let me go now to the cohorts. So, the second cohort is really around looking at the democracy cohorts more specifically again if you were to choose one of the following recommendations which one would it be to support the establishment of coordination mechanism that facilitates some of the planning the reporting the cooperation something that Katharina mentioned the pledge clear financial resources for activities of cohorts to or to provide a more structured engagement in the summit, including for example, a formal place in the agenda. So I give you just a couple of seconds to respond to this poll. I think we can close the poll. I think it's been quite clearly that it's there's a need for more structured engagement of the cohorts in the summits, including a formal place in the agenda. So this is something that we've heard quite clearly also during the in the survey results that we we did. So thanks, and I hope, hand it over back to you Marilin. Thank you Julia and I guess if there was the option to have all three of them participants would have taken it but it gives a view on that and indeed it is part of the reports conclusions as well. Our third discussant is Willis Oniango, who is the executive director of the Youth Cafe Youth Cafe is a leading part of the summit youth political and civic engagement cohort, driven by the European Commission and the European Partnership for Willis comes from Kenya and participated in the project from the very early stages with participation in dialogues event last year, and also this year in the summit in Costa Rica so you have a great experience there. You have been invaluable to international ideas country work on the summit as well so thank you very much for being here Willis and feel welcome to take the floor. Thank you so much Marilin and good evening to fellow panelists as well. It is great to see colleagues like Julia again, albeit virtually. I will take the opportunity first of all to reflect on the report which Julia has done a good job of in giving us its highlights. But for me I'm keen on, you know, the role of the civil society, you know, coming from Kenya living here and working in the Sub-Saharan region. I think the report does a good job in terms of breaking down the how you know the civil society might play a key and critical role in the summit for democracy processes with respect to the pathway towards a more representative and inclusive voices within the civil society itself, as well as making a case for meaningful, you know, engagement of civil society in the summit. It also, you know, gives the state of play and recommendations as it relates to, you know, the first summit and the second summit. And apart from that, the increasing civil society representativeness, for instance, who is being represented. And when we start with the fourth pillar, which is, you know, an attempt to broaden the space for more access within the civil society to be represented. We saw, of course, compared to comparatively the first and the second summit, more spaces for new entrants, you know, those who typically would not have an opportunity to take part, certainly ourselves, myself, you know, the logistics of travels, the preparations and the ability to influence at high levels. However, more needs to be done in terms of having a real meaningful representation if we look, for instance, our hearts. We saw a lot of representation of youth who we work with from, you know, from cosmetic representation to the highest level which is meaningful representation. We saw, and this also speaks to our experiences in terms of bringing these perspectives and views in different panels and spaces that were provided through the summit for democracy. And what needs to be done in terms of including young people, young people, actors within the civil society that are hardest to reach. We, certainly myself and based in Nairobi, we just did a survey of 197 organizations to look at the ecosystem strengthening among young youth led organizations and we found out that 63% of these organizations are in rural areas, which are much to our dismay. So, how do we, you know, reach those who are in semi-abandoned rural areas with, you know, activities around the summit and even at cohort level. That is a key aspect. Great prospects in terms of the inclusion of organizations working with the people living with disability ourselves, our experiences we work through. We work with a number of young people living with disabilities as well. So in terms of disaggregating who takes part and who is in the room, we can go can do a better job in terms of going further to include marginalized groups, women led organizations. Huge, huge, huge gap survey also I just told that only 18% of entire youth led organizations are led by women of out of the 197 organizations. So we do have recommendations and food for thought in terms of the meaningful engagement and, and, and, and particularly the creation of, of networking opportunities to influence the summit and it is great that we are not only talking of documenting the government but also commitments made by civil society organizations themselves, which is, which I think holds, you know, everyone to account in terms of what, what, what, what they can do. I find it an innovation in terms of also documenting the work of the private sector and the commitment made by the private sectors, because oftentimes private sector also work in countries where we're working. And they can be allies, in terms of pushing for joint message messaging. So just as Julia mentioned in her remarks that we need more collaboration between the civil society and, you know, the government. But now how do we even forge further collaboration between civil society and the private sector and go beyond the usual, you know, actors that civil society are used to, you know, collaborating with. So I think when we will talk of representativeness and inclusion I know the binary in the report we see more binary depiction of the wild into north and south so global north and global south. But that is great for high level, you know, reporting and my recommendation is to go further and see, you know, in the global so how, how are we getting in terms of specific countries or regions. For instance, to give you an example, we when I say when when I took part in the Costa Rica, you know, the summit in Costa Rica, a number of countries in Latin America were, you know, very, very adequately represented through the different civil society organization, but would you say the same. In Zambia, where we also had a summit how many, you know, civil society organizations from Africa, took advantage of the Zambia summit to push the issue so we see these disparities that we can go further into different region in terms of depicting them and finding pathways forward. So I would say that the success of our work, of course, we witness certainly myself I have taken part very actively through our organization, taking part in panels, you know, bringing youth youth views based on our own experiences and work and ongoing research. Taking part in pre preparatory activities, I think that was really, really great because you know there's the process is complex and sometimes could have, you know, shifting goal post and dynamic, you know, activities in between. So I found the preparatory activities, for instance, the global coalition, democratic coalition event in Brussels that prepared, laid the ground for preparing the civil society in terms of messaging for the onward summit to be extremely important as it served to, you know, also on board almost an onboarding, you know, process for new actors who are finding the process at that particular. particular time. Great. In terms of pushing for youth representation in different panels, we took part in high level panels and were able to bring out, you know, our positions. You know, most, you know, position papers and, you know, provided reviews and feedback, which I think can only be, can only be built for, built up upon one recommendation as we think of the next, you know, summit is to work towards localizing some of these elements. I know sometimes that the timelines might be short, but it can, it can add immense value and insights and reach the process, you know, if this preparatory processes are, you know, at in country level, at regional level so that we have, you know, issues that are unique to to region and to communities feed, feed into the project. And this is, this also interfaces with some of the exciting things we are, we are beginning to work on in collaboration with the utility democracy cohorts through, you know, some of the resources and opportunities through the sub grants that have been provided. And we are very excited to have a project that will, you know, work with the with the with the young people in selected communities and nations to, you know, bring their voices in more structured way throughout the process over the next over the next several months. These are some of the higher and I hope it can build upon a robust youth input, certainly from from region, the region we're working in which is primarily sub-Saharan Africa into the process in a manner that was not a business to before so that when we eventually compare the second and the third summit, we can, we can conclude and that there were more, you know, participation from young people from civil society in Africa in the in the in the processes. Otherwise, thank you so much. And congratulations again on the good report. Thank you Willis noted and thank you for being very concrete on what you found were good practices for youth engagements both in the summit at and at country level but also pointing at some challenges you may see and you we may want to work with for the next process. I believe that Julia has a third poll question for us. Yes, so third and final poll again. Alex sorry I know that probably all three are relevant but this is just for you to try to see which one you believe is would be the most relevant so looking now specifically at civil society participation if we were to look at or to choose one one recommendation which one would you choose to pursue a more diverse participation through the work of the democracy cohort to pursue a more diverse participation through the work of international initiatives such as for example the global coalition or to pursue a more diverse participation by broadening the countries invited to the summit. So I will let you give you just a couple of more seconds to look at this. It's shifting a little bit, but no it's remaining points to you which is to pursue more diverse participation to the work of international initiatives such as the global democracy coalition I think my colleague Alison and lots of you in the global coalition are present here so I guess that's a message for you guys as well. And so we're going to stop sharing this now. There we go. Yes, and I believe I'm looking at you Julia I believe we have a bit of time to take a few questions for further discussion it's really a pleasure to see that in the chat. Many are actively participating in already providing answers to the question so I'm not sure we need to cover all of them. Julia please. You may come in and prioritize here I see that among the question was also what the consequences can be of the current wave of democratic backsliding it was is that to asking that question. And she's also asking what the expected impact is on of global advocacy for democracy for autocrat leaders and it is definitely interesting questions for myself I also thought it would be useful to ask our panelists. If there is one key recommendation they would like to transmit to South Korea for the next summit, what that would be, but over to you Julia as you may want to discuss other questions. Yes, so thanks very much Marilin I'm just going through some of these questions thanks so much for all of this very important contributions that you guys made that's great. I think Courtney your point is well taken that some countries didn't necessarily decline to participate, but some just simply didn't respond so that indeed is a very important distinction that we should make it that we've actually made in the report. I think, Devin your point around commitments that were made as a result of the S4D. We haven't gone in that granular analysis of exactly as I said the implementation of commitments what we did notice is for example that a couple of countries mentioned the transposition of a directive of a EU directive around whistleblower protection. So in this case of course those were commitments that were made at the summit maybe in some of the cases but weren't necessarily as a result of the summit that would they would have done it probably, or they would have done it in any case. What we can't judge too much is whether they would have done it in any case, but maybe accelerated some of that, given that there was one year specifically to report on some of the implementation of that's why, you know, our recommendation would still be to continue, sort of doing that there was a lot of discussion around this international commitments in particular. And this much less clear in the verbal statements around the second summit. So this distinction that was in some instances quite clear on the commitments that were made during the first summit, especially when they were written, and this distinction between at home, domestic and I think this was came out much less clear in the verbal statements, as I said except for things like the the invasion of Ukraine that was much much clear of course that it was not of their own country that they were talking about. And just very briefly also on my side around OGP there's been quite a few comments around OGP and that linkage between commitments made at the summit and, and at OGP, of course, I think that's something that OGP has been working on, as well as is seeing that some of the commitments made at the summit and the implementation were actually also OGP commitments, but also some of the commitments were part of other larger initiatives, for example, so we've we've noticed that as well. So this advice is an example of that. What else that I just want to quickly look or pick out from from this side here. The same thing with cohorts, whether initiatives under the cohorts where things that had already taken place or not. As as this was illustrated by Katharina to some extent for sure but not necessarily always the case we hear about the media freedom cohort that it took some things also from the media. The works of the media coalition and gave it a new new meaning or new breath a breath of fresh air basically so we've seen that coming up in a in a couple of cohorts so not necessarily new but of course some of it, most of it was new but also an opportunity to give new new air to or new new ideas to initiatives and and bring a new activist for example. Some of you have expressed frustrations, I think this goes from a commitment implementation to cohorts to the summit I think this is something that we try to also recognize in in the, in the, the report as well as as I said all the good work that was done. Some of the data around the reports, a lot of the data is already in there. If you have any particular questions around some of the data also feel free to to reach out Katie from Freedom House sharing the declaration of principles to combat transnational repression and a great work generally also that that cohort and so many others have done in this process and as as I said we tried to recognize it as much as as possible. I think the question of is that to I think there were a couple of questions there and some of the responses of of you guys around, you know the the this process really brings in terms of commitment of countries to democracies as as a larger broader question. I think what we recognize in the report is that the summit for democracy is definitely has a lot of flaws as I think we all recognize that it is an important political space, because it gets together many heads of state and governments. And we believe that it is a space worth salvaging because it allows countries at the highest level to discuss the importance of democracy in their country. I don't have the comments from my side, but maybe I'll hand it over to Valerio. Yes, please Valerio or any of the speakers who would like to come in with some final remarks. Great if you could keep it limited to one two minutes maximum. So we have time also for the concluding remarks. I can make some remarks as we as we as we wind up. I think going to the next next iteration of the summit for democracy. I want to play a part and see more youth coordination and youth presence in body and spirit in the process influencing the various activities happening in the summit. I think South Korea as the host. You know, there has to be more demand for commitments related to youth because as we had from the report, we are seeing less commitments on youth. So, you know, the host country should lead by example, by, you know, making commitments on new pronouncements in the lead up to the summit, and then encourage other member states participating states to to have to consider having commitments that are related to youth and, for example, the youth democracy cohort which we are a member already has a menu of possible commitments that, you know, any government agency and department can really adopt and and and and we're using their commitment and recommendations. I would want to see more, we realize that the cohorts even though they are connected at cohort level but there's a lot of scope for organizations within the cohort to network and collaborate. And we've seen that the potential of creating networking opportunities for organizations within cohorts and as part of, you know, cohorts work or activity through to regular connections with a quarterly or something like that, that can create space to forge, you know, more concrete sharing of expanded but also partnerships that kind of match from the from the from the from the cohorts. Thank you very much. It is for that end note. Any other speaker would like to come in. Please do. Katarina Valerio, any last remarks from you. I can come in with, I can say, in terms of the new deliverables that was mentioned. I think most of us in the cohorts actually had new deliverables in some way that was never a reusing of old work. There was, as was mentioned something that was new about it new actors, new takes on it, etc. Thank you very much, Valerio. Last opportunity. Otherwise, yes, please go ahead. Well, I agree. I guess Julia mentioned that and it was the question whether these activities to place due to the summit for democracy or they would have taken place anyways. I guess the summit for democracy for sure contributed, even if the activities were already planned, some of them, some for democracy for sure contributed to speeding up some processes and delivering some results faster than they would have been delivered. Maybe it wasn't the summit for democracy. We intend to implement the recommendations that I've mentioned and I encourage you to read them because we are thinking that there are some good recommendations which could be further promoted and why not implemented by all the states. Thank you. Thank you for that, Valerio. And I hope everyone follows your recommendation. Thanks for that. It is now with huge pleasure that I may introduce you Blair Glencors, who will enlighten us with some concluding remarks. Blair is co CEO of Accountability Lab. Accountability Lab, many of you know that has done an immense job on the summit for democracy and that's since 2021. And we as an organization and partner, we were blessed with your collaborative spirit, Blair, and the enriching summit activities that you have conducted such as your summit portal, your contributions to our summit resources portal, and also the activities both online and in countries that we could have pulled off. We also used some Accountability Lab graphics in the impact report so I invite you all to check that out. Blair, I pass on the floor with a big thank you for your engagement and your key expertise. We are keen to hear from you now, which are the takeaways that sound the best for you and that you recall from this event. Thank you. Thank you, Marilyn. Julia, it's a special idea. Thanks for hosting this event. Thanks to everyone for being here. And great to hear Valerio from you on some of the important efforts that you made around this Katrina to on on the, on the cohort that you were part of and the value of that. Thank you so much for the summit for democracy and G Willis, in particular on on the inclusion and youth piece of things which I agree is is really really critical. And thanks everyone in the chat, you said to at the end Katie Devin Alex and others for some of these ideas I wasn't able to jump in and respond, but was following along carefully and I want to sum up a little bit I thought I could touch on a few of what I see as the successes of of the summer for democracy based on what we've discussed here in the report and then perhaps touch on some of the challenges or dichotomies that the government of career could bear in mind as they begin to plan the third summit. And actually before I start to say that everyone involved deserves credit for this the price of the summit the year of action were huge lifts. All of the governments that we've worked with and all of the civil society organizations that have been part of this have a lot of other competing priorities I know resources are always scarce. And, and there was some truly incredible efforts to get this going and to, to create some of the successes that there were and I think the fact that it brought so many different kinds of people together was one really big success we saw the graphics from Julia around the different kinds of topics that were part of this different kinds of communities that came together and that is a really important piece of this we don't always talk to each other a lot of these conversations are stovepipes, and it provided a mechanism for us to to talk to each other which is really valuable. So many different kinds of conversations together. The year of action I think was an important reflection of this is a learning process it wasn't just a couple of events there was a willingness from the US government and many other partners to learn about how to improve this process over time. I don't know if it's on this directly but the regional summits as part of the second summer for Roxy where I think a key innovation it really allowed us to localize these conversations a little to your points willis and and bring in slightly different kinds of people which was really important somewhere, perhaps more effective than others but I think that's an innovation that that should continue. So I think as we've discussed and heard a lot about where were the key mechanism here to drive some of these conversations forwards, and to push for some of the outcomes that we were looking for. And there was some key visibility to the summer for democracy on all sorts of issues and for certain countries that that that we want to begin to lead on these issues globally and it kept democracy in the limelight one way or another, we can discuss around the narratives on this but but it has kept this front and centre to to certain kinds of conversations that we need if we care about democracy which I think we all we all do, including in countries that weren't participating in the summer for democracy, we did some sentiment analysis of online as people that were engaging throughout the summit and there were a lot of people in places like Uganda and Hong Kong and other countries that weren't necessarily invited to the summit but where we want to continue to encourage democratic thinking and activism. So, there were, there were knock on effects here beyond just participating countries and beyond those of us that were engaged formally or around the sides of the formal process. But I think there are some, some dichotomies or challenges that we, that we need to think about going forwards. One is, is what I would frame as control versus autonomy. I think there was a challenge that we we touched on a little bit in the conversation around the control of the process by the US government and the autonomy that other countries or civil society had to shape it. I'm not sure we ever quite out of balance. And so I think that's something for the government of Korea to think about going, going forwards. It's, it's inevitable and I don't think it's specific to the summit for democracy but that challenge was, was there. I think there was a challenge between process and outcomes. Sometimes the process felt a bit like it was the goal, rather than agreed outcomes being the goal and then the process being the path to get to that goal and I think the the government of Korea would do well to really think hard about what it wants from the third summit and then work backwards to today to see how we get there effectively. There's could be policy changes it could be commitments from regional organizations it could be all sorts of things but I think we need to get a little bit more concrete now about the outcomes to make sure that the process fits if it's to continue. There was a little bit of a balance that again was was not always struck between governments and civil society as part of this process. The cohorts were of course one piece of it that allowed for some collaboration but generally it felt a little bit like we were on parallel tracks talking about the same issues, which was reflected in the, in the structure of the summit itself and and I think through how we can, as we've discussed bring bring those two pieces of things together, and then bring in other key actors in a, in a more substantive way the private sector was mentioned. And I think private sector engagement with the second summit was certainly better than the first but, but there's more to do here and again that's something I think that our Korean colleagues need to think about. There were changes in terms of participation versus accountability we've heard a lot about about commitments and whether those were measurable and could be fulfilled or not. Participation was, was good but wasn't always as inclusive as it is it could be and it was very difficult to, to hold governments accountable for what it was that they were committing to. So as, as you pointed out Julia in your recommendations I think we need a more structured process for ensuring accountability going forwards and connecting this to critical multilateral and other mechanisms like OGP that can provide the implementation mechanism for for the commitments that are made through the summit for democracy. And then finally, and this is a big one it's, it's a kind of balance between stories and narrative around democracy and I think we were good at telling some stories, but I'm not sure we have yet built the narrative we needs to drive our democratic agenda because democracy delivering doesn't feel like enough it feels a little bit simplistic at this points we need to back to demonstrate the value of democracy and try and build a narrative around it. Through these kinds of engagements and these sorts of events in a slightly more meaningful way. We're running out of time I think the Korean government in the short term needs to, as I said, think about the goals here and really get going on on driving those forwards time is of the, of the essence. There are a number of key international moments coming up, like the AGP summit, which is in September in Estonia. We've had meetings in Atlanta in December where a lot of these topics will be discussed we need to use those moments to connect the dots here and support this global effort that we're pushing around democracy. And really think about how we can drive forward a lot of the tools that have come out of the summit so far. I mentioned a couple of times there's a number of others from other governments. So it's, it's not just about the summit and the and the event itself it's about tools it's about the ideas, and it's about the narrative as I, as I pointed out. So thank you, Julia, Marilyn everyone this was fantastic discussion I look forward to being part of pushing all of this forward and I hope we can continue this conversation with you as we go. So, thank you. And I return that thanks Blair. That was brilliant as a conclusion profound reflections and sound advice coming from you so thank you very much for that. And we took very careful notes of what you said. Well, time is up now. Let me perhaps conclude by saying that it is all about democratic engagements. The engagement of civil society in the summit process. It has been immense. It has been crucial for the success, and it will as many of you voted and find it will be beneficial to make their involvement more structural and official in the continued process. We need to continue the engagement at all levels so the value of the summit for democracy process is that it provides that beginning of building a kind of multilateral exchange and mechanism to defend and promote democracy with opportunities for other countries to contribute to it so we also thank US government and South Korea to step up on that. And to all the participating countries to contribute to this, the political attention to the topic. We are promoting it as a priority, and it also facilitates more coherent action and that is what will be needed to make a real success out of this and to make also the process sustainable. When we look at commitments that have been made specific actions that were generated in those cohorts, all of these initiatives will mark the success on the long term. And I also see a link with other initiatives such as Team Europe Democracy, which is more operational in nature, but equally crucial. And so if we can make those links between the political and the operational levels, we come a long way. Thank you all for being here. I invite you to join me in congratulating the team who drafted the report and and also made this event happen so Julia Koetgen, Nikolaj Paus, Lisa Dalke and Thomas Heinma. Thank you so much for making this happen and wish you every success now with the rolling out and promoting of the report. I also would like to thank all of you to contribute to the summit process and also those who helped us doing and conducting this evaluation. Please stay tuned for our next events after the summer and do get in touch with us if you have any questions around the report or our other work. We plan to host a session during the International Democracy Day Brussels conference which takes place on the 15th of September, and we are hoping to count on participation from the organizers of the summit. So I can now conclude this event thanking also the EU for the continued support to our project and thanking you all for your time and attention. Everyone have a wonderful day or evening wherever you are and we hope to see you soon.