World Forum Democracy 2024
Diversity
At our core, humans desire to care for one another. We instinctively reject harm and wish well for our fellow beings. When two individuals engage in conversation, expressing themselves openly and understanding each other, mutual respect blossoms. Conversely, when respect falters, judgment often follows.
Precisely articulating feelings isn’t always straightforward, especially across language barriers and diverse life experiences. Yet, it remains essential.
Populism flourishes by promoting oversimplified lies and destructive remedies, aiming to gain power by sacrificing truth and constructive solutions. Minorities often bear the brunt of these lies. Portraying “others” as “the problem” is a convenient untruth that resists easy rebuttal.
Care, like a delicate plant, requires protection. Legal safeguards must shield it from harm. But why does hate speech transform from forbidden when private, to protected under the guise of freedom of speach?
Our collective wisdom seems to wane. Law and justice needn’t be labyrinthine; they should be clear and rooted in fundamental principles.
To prevent hatred and destruction from gaining sway, justice must wield effective tools. Balancing free speech, truth, and democracy rests squarely on its shoulders. And this vital work must begin early.
2024 q4 Actions and Results
Assess 2024 participation
In overall I failed to create track during my second participation at the World Forum of democracy. I did succeed to address the planery session as a last speaker concluding the event. I did succeed to present myself very directly to the event direction, and I did distribute about 50 leaflets to participants with a mail address to contact me. Although their was a clear increase in the number of active users on this website (increasing from a regular 0 to 1 per week, mounting between 27/10 and 16/11 to a maximum number of 9 active users per week), this dit not generate any mails to my mailbox.
Different participants I have been meeting, and that promissed me to keep in touch did not react to my emails, except for one lady (see 'Diversity' below).
Finally I'm convinced to continue my presence as I can't find anything comming close to this event.
As next steps I think there should be a better plan for Ukraine/Bangladesh/Georigia/DRC. People are interested, but don't see there own project in mine. When they fail to see the name of their country, they don't understand they lose the 'what is in it for me', and stop investigating time in it. I found the Democracy Matrix on-line, which I believe can be a basis
Website /communication
I changed little bit on my website. Mainly when it comes to goals and planning. I also added my intervention to the blog EuropCounsil and on youtube - cutting it out from the video on the Forum main page - . I mainly showed it to good friens and some managers at the bank. Reactions were ranging from positiveness to difficulty to understand.
Diversity
I was studying the proposal Doc. 15832 - Rapport - Document de travail by Pierre- Alain Fridez. And I wrote mail - below text - to present my ideas to him and panel participants of the forum during wich he presented some of the findings. I received reply the text could not be ammend anymore.
" I've been listening back a couple of times to sequence 1:47 (Sabina Cudic - Housing and Education to youth) of Forum Talk 1 - Elections under pressure: what's at stake for Representative Democracy?<https://www.coe.int/en/web/world-forum-democracy/forum-talk-1-elections-under-pressure-what-s-at-stake-for-representative-democracy-> ». This is the session where I was talking about the political driving licence.
When it comes to wealth redistribution (such as housing subsidies) I believe we've passed some limits in Belgium have been passed. People should get a roof over their head. But giving better housing to people who do nothing, than people that work for it bring reverse effect. In overall we need to take care that rules are not to complicated, as this does not lead to sustainable solutions.
Regarding Education I believe gigantic research and progress could be made by bundling on European level.
On the other hand, I remain confident we need some registration system for politicians so its possible to punish them for violent speech, clear lies or just unconstuctive behaviour. But it is not clear to me if this could be an amendment of Rapport | Doc. 15832 | 25 septembre 2023<https://pace.coe.int/fr/files/33029/html> by Pierre-Alain Fridez, or if there is other possibilities to propose. "
Press contacts
Sending different mails to a young journalist in DRC. Got no reply.
2025 q1 Actions and Results
Little impact - Maturity model for democracy
In order to provide concrete help to improving democracy we tried to create :
- a maturity model that helps democracies in taking next steps to strengthen their democracy,
- concrete actions that can be taken by civilians to help them to prevent violence,
- to make leaders understand there is a need to fill the gap left by the United Nations
Doing so, were trying to get attention from the acadmeical world for helping on a maturity model. This failed, and finally we wrote the maturity model ourselves.