WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is opening his 2d Summit for Democracy with a pledge for the U.S. to spend $690 million bolstering democracy programs all over the world.
The Biden management desires to make use of the two-day summit starting Wednesday to 0 in on making “technology work for and not against democracy,” consistent with a senior management reliable. Some 120 international leaders had been invited to take part.
Biden steadily speaks of the U.S. and like-minded allies being at a crucial second during which democracies wish to display they may be able to out-deliver autocracies. The summits, one thing Biden promised as a Democratic 2020 presidential candidate, have transform a very powerful piece of his management’s effort to check out to construct deeper alliances and nudge autocratic-leaning international locations towards no less than modest reforms.
“Strengthening transparent, accountable governance rooted in the consent of the governed is a fundamental imperative of our time,” Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol stated in a joint remark on the opening of the summit.
The new investment will focal point on programs that reinforce loose and impartial media, fight corruption, bolster human rights, advance era that improves democracy, and reinforce loose and honest elections.
The reliable, who previewed the summit at the situation of anonymity, stated the management has additionally come to an settlement with 10 different international locations on guiding ideas for how the governments will have to use surveillance era.
The surveillance tech settlement comes after Biden signed an government order previous this week limiting the U.S. executive’s use of business spyware and adware equipment which have been used to surveil human rights activists, reporters and dissidents world wide.
The international has had a tumultuous 15 months since Biden’s first democracy summit in December 2021. Countries emerged from the coronavirus pandemic, and Russia introduced its battle in Ukraine, the largest-scale battle in Europe since World War II. Biden has additionally tangled with Beijing, talking out again and again about China’s army and financial affect within the Indo-Pacific and past.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte stated the Russian invasion was once a jolting second for the arena’s democracies.
“Since the last summit for democracy two years ago, the world has changed dramatically,” Rutte stated. “For decades, the idea of war in Europe seemed unthinkable. But we were wrong as Russia’s brutalization of Ukraine has shown we cannot assume that democracy, freedom and security are givens, that they are eternal.”
Kenyan President William Ruto said that democracy building was essential to developing nations’ growth. Ruto was the winner last year of the country’s close presidential race in which opposition candidate Raila Odinga had alleged irregularities, but Kenya’s Supreme Court unanimously rejected the challenges.
“This is our path to sustainable development,” Ruto said.
The U.S. hosted the last summit on its own. This time, it recruited four co-hosts — Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia — after ambassadors from China and Russia criticized the first summit and accused Biden of causing a global divide with a Cold War mentality.
Still, some countries would rather not get between Washington and Beijing.
Pakistan announced, as it did in 2021, that it received an invitation but would skip the summit, a move seen in part as an effort by the impoverished Islamic nation to assuage longtime ally China, which was not invited.
The Biden administration has also expanded its invitation list. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Gambia, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Lichtenstein, Mauritania, Mozambique and Tanzania were extended invitations to this year’s summit after being left off the list in 2021.
The first day of the summit was convened in a virtual format and will be followed on Thursday by hybrid gatherings in each of the host countries, with representatives from government, civil society and the private sector participating.
Costa Rica will focus on the role of youth in democratic systems. The Dutch are taking on media freedom. South Korea is looking at corruption. Zambia is centering on free and fair elections
The U.S. is no stranger to the challenges facing democracies, including deep polarization and pervasive misinformation.
Lies spread about the 2020 presidential election by then-President Donald Trump and his supporters have convinced a majority of Republicans that Biden was not legitimately elected, normalized harassment and death threats against election officials, and been used to justify efforts in Republican-controlled legislatures to adopt new voting restrictions.
Later this year, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule in a racial gerrymandering case from Alabama that voting rights advocates fear could virtually dismantle the nearly 60-year-old Voting Rights Act. Congressional efforts to shore up that federal law and increase voting access have failed.
Biden came into office vowing that human rights and democracy would play significant roles in his approach to foreign policy. But he’s faced criticism from some human rights activists for being too soft on Saudi Arabia and Egypt over their human rights records. The administration sees both nations as important partners in bringing stability to the Middle East.
More recently, Biden administration officials have been at odds with close Mideast ally Israel, as conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tries to push forward a far-reaching judicial overhaul that the administration worries will diminish Israel’s democracy.
Netanyahu in remarks at the summit’s opening session said Israel remained a “robust democracy” in the midst of “a very intensive public debate.”
“Democracy means the will of the people as expressed by a majority, and it also means protection of civil rights, individual rights. It’s the balance between the two,” he said.
Marti Flacks, the director of the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said “there’s been a disconnect” between the Biden administration’s messaging and actions on human rights. The administration may get higher marks from allies for how it has approached stresses on democracy at home.
“The fact that the Biden administration has been very open and transparent about the challenges that the U.S. is facing domestically on the democracy front has increased their credibility on these issues externally,” Flacks said. “Because one of the crucial large questions that I feel they confronted coming in is how are you able to start to speak about human rights and democracy in a foreign country if you’ll’t cope with the ones issues right here at house.”
Following his look on the plenary consultation of the summit, Biden will host President Alberto Fernández of Argentina for talks within the Oval Office.
Fernández, who was once additionally participating within the summit, is having a look for backing from Biden as his nation tries to renegotiate the rustic’s $44 billion lending program with the International Monetary Fund.
Argentina is looking the IMF to revise its necessities for unencumber of the newest installment of the deal, arguing that it’s been negatively impacted by way of a drought and by way of upper power costs brought about by way of Russia’s battle in Ukraine. ___
Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad; Tom Verdin in Sacramento, Calif.; Daniel Politi in Buenos Aires; and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this record.
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