Democracy Forum 2001
News and Views - 29 June 2001

Forum News and Views

International IDEA Democracy Forum: Day Three

Bangladesh: democracy as a consequence

"I am invited to talk about two areas in which I have no expertise - democracy and ICT".

With these words Muhammad Yunus began his speech at the Forum opening ceremony held in the City Hall, Stockholm. Managing Director and founder of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, Yunus is a remarkable man best known for having accomplished - as of January, 2001 - the extension of micro credits to 2,4 million families in 40 000 of Bangladesh's 68 000 villages.

Inevitably, Yunus is one of the most popular guests at this conference, friendly and welcoming to anyone wishing to exchange a few words. He appears to be imbued with a belief that knowledge is built on demand, and that in order to help a person to grow you need to build on their existing level of understanding. Which may, in turn, be the real reason for the success of Yunus and the Grameen Group.

For a quarter of a century Yunus has followed through on a belief in the ability of poor people to help themselves - if only they are given a fair chance. And he follows market principles, too, where it takes money to make money. Micro-loans, available to the poorest women organised in groups and supported by a network of micro-credit bank employees, have proved to be a success in Bangladesh as well as the Philippines, China and a growing list of other countries.

But Yunus hasn't stopped at the Grameen Bank. Today the Grameen Group comprises 22 companies, Grameen Phone, Textile, Funds and Cybernet being some of them. Whenever there is a big enough hurdle in the way of combining market principles with creating job opportunities a new company is started. The latest sibling in the Grameen family is an Information Highway initiative that aims to provide satellite and broadband connectivity to the villages of Bangladesh.

A few years back Yunus initiated Grameen Phone. Today there are 10 000 'mobile phone ladies' in country villages charging their batteries with solar panels in areas where cables are non-existent. This was a first step into the communications area. Today Yunus envisions 40 000 'phone ladies' introducing Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) services to Bangladesh, making it the sixth country in Asia to do so.

For all his protestations of lack of expertise in ICT Yunus has surprisingly many visions in this area. To name a few: a future with broadband rolled out along the railway tracks of Bangladesh; a network of 'computer ladies' renting out computer time to their neighbours; and software programmers creating new voice controlled interfaces that will open up an entirely new group of Internet users.

As new initiatives are rolled out, they are complemented with tools to navigate in the economy. When Grameen Bank started it was with the condition that the borrowers became shareowners of the Bank, learned to write their name and started to save money. When Grameen Phone was launched the telephones it delivered came complete with a phone list of government officials ranging from the President to local authorities, the police service and health sector bosses, along with an encouragement to call them - based, of course, on their mandate to serve all citizens. To date this option has not been utilized to any great extent but, as Yunus notes, step by step the provision of such tools is helping to build self-confidence and reliance among the Bangladeshi people.

"Imagine a NASDAQ company owned by poor Bangladeshi women", Muhammad Yunus says and smiles.

Originally there were plans to launch Grameen Phone on the US stock exchange in 2002, but an expansion program has delayed this by two years. And when it is eventually launched as a listed company Grameen Bank borrowers will be the first to be offered the option of buying stocks via mutual funds. To make this possible the Bangladeshi government first had to be convinced. Only this spring it finally agreed to pass a new law allowing the setting up of mutual funds. So once again, Yunus has created new business spaces and expanded the rights of ordinary Bangladeshis.

"We must design information technology in such a way that a totally unprepared and poor person can immediately get the hang of it without feeling threatened," he says. "Grameen does not believe in pre-packaged information. The choice is yours: ICT will bring all kinds of information to people at their asking. The crucial point is to really see to the information needs of the individual person and let the computer, along with ICT, become their obedient servant."

And Yunus ICT initiatives and ideas keep venturing into more new areas. Next in line is E-healthcare. Grameen has already started collaborating with Hewlett Packard, NEC and Siemens on delivering telemedicine. But Yunus cautions: "This must not be seen as an extension of government-run health services."

Muhammad Yunus' entrepreneurial work shows how availability of ICT impact poverty, on empowering women, on banking, commerce, health, education, communication, job creation etc. With these step stones he lays the ground for true democracy for people to take action, make their own choices and provide for their own living.

By Anna Björklund and Linda Widmark

All about E-government

EU Commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society Erkki Liikanen spoke on e-government at the closing session of the IDEA Forum 2001.

In his speech Liikanen noted that the information revolution provides governments and administrations in both developed and developing countries with better tools for policy making. Liikanen also stressed the importance of ICT as means of enhancing democracy, which in his view is what e-government should be all about. A simple interface, trust and confidence, and accessibility were identified as the prerequisites for successful e-government policy.

E-voting dominated the ensuing discussion. Liikanen expressed some scepticism concerning its use, arguing that while the technological aspects of e-voting are probably very easy to solve much bigger problems still remain. How, for example, do you guarantee that people vote under the same conditions and ensure that pressure is not brought to bear on their voting intentions? Overall Liikanen questioned the need to focus on e-voting when there is still so much to be done in the areas of e-health and e-learning.

The Forum was closed by Secretary-General of International IDEA Bengt Säve-Söderbergh. "When we started planning this Forum 16 months ago we said we wanted to highlight the issues of values, opportunities and threats. I hope you can agree with me that in these terms we have certainly succeeded", he stated.

Stressing that the Forum is not intended to be a one-off meeting, Säve-Söderbergh outlined some ways of carrying forward the debates and discussions generated at the event itself.

In the coming weeks International IDEA will put together a comprehensive summary of the various workshops, which will in turn serve as the basis for a set of concrete policy recommendations. These recommendations will be shared with both Forum participants and international organizations including the UN, European Union and the forthcoming G-8 Genoa Summit.

Säve-Söderbergh also noted the importance of continuing to network with all Forum participants, for example via the International IDEA website, and suggested that if similar meetings were planned in future the Institute would be very open to suggestions for partnership in this area.

Säve-Söderbergh closed the session by announcing that International IDEA will establish a small task force to formulate research proposals and bring forward some of the key issues raised during the Forum. He also put forward the idea of an annual award for the website that best serves democracy - an Oscar for web-democracy.

By Eva Stenstam

Helping to improve people's lives

Steven Clift, chairman of the Minnesota E-democracy Board, urged his fellow IDEA Forum participants to ask themselves an important question: "Why are we here? Why do we want to use the Internet?"

Before giving his own, personal answer: "As for me, I want to help improve people's lives", stated Clift. "I believe the Internet can be a way of doing that."

The Minnesota E-democracy Board was set up in 1994 in order to give the voters access to campaign information from different angles. The site soon turned into a forum for online discussions and debates. After the election, as interest continued to grow, the founders decided to keep the site up and running for a while "as an experiment". Seven years on, Steven Clift travels the world to tell others just how powerful e-democracy can be.

"The most useful aspect about this whole thing is the opportunity for people to take part in group discussions, to air their views and have their say in what goes on locally. We have become a host of discussions", says Clift.

The e-democracy site has inspired small towns across America to follow in its footsteps and start discussion forums dealing mainly with local issues. A couple of years ago, the small Minnesota town of Winona set up an online conference with virtual guests.

Steven Clift says he believes in "setting low expectations and declaring victory". But in reality, the site on which he spends 10-15 hours a week as a volunteer, gives a shining example of the Internet being used to enhance democracy.

"Democracy is a fragile thing", Clift comments. "The Internet is a tool to make it the democracy we want."

By Åsa Brolin

'Young people are the most important target group'

When young people living in such diverse countries as Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal and Malaysia were asked to write stories about their lives as part of a project, poverty and disrupted education came up as important subjects.

"We want to help young people voice their opinions", explains Gowrie Ponniah, Assistant General Secretary of Worldview International Foundation. "By asking young people in ten different countries to tell us about themselves, we wanted to introduce them to the Internet and get their attention. It is difficult to get people to use new technology and this is one way of doing it."

"Young people are currently dropping out of the democratic process in many places around the world", states Ponniah. "They don't take part as much as they once did, which is a very serious issue to address. Therefore they are our most important target group."

The Worldview International Foundation works with representatives in ten countries. One of the foundation's great challenges is to teach people how to use the Internet for accessing information, and not just, as Gowrie Ponniah puts it, to surf the web, send emails to friends and download music. To get her point across, Ponniah referred to the cover photo used by IDEA for its Democracy Forum 2001, showing a child with its back to a computer keyboard.

"It is a sad image", says Ponniah. "In the near future I'd like to see many images of people actually using their computers as a means to take part in the democratic process."

By Åsa Brolin

Getting young people involved

Due to the complexities - and time restraints - on attempting a summary of the deliberations, Director of International IDEA Capacity-Building Division and moderator of the concluding Forum session Patrick Molutsi chose to highlight some of the key points to have emerged, and then leave critical discussion open to the audience.

Many of the debates focused on how young people can be drawn into the discussion of 'democracy through technology'. Experience suggests that the older generation tends to focus on democracy issues, the young on technology. There is thus a need to get them together to promote 'technology for democracy'.

Molutsi identified some of the key words in this context as participation, transparency, accountability and equity. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 'The Information Revolution and World Politics' Project Director William Drake stressed the benefits and importance of discussions from a range of viewpoints taking place under the same roof. He pointed out the need both for a cohesive strategy and to work on multiple levels at the same time.

"It is not enough to throw infrastructure into the problem. We need to consider social, cultural, economic and political dimensions at the same time", stated Drake, and characterized the IDEA Democracy Forum as a 'first step' in an important dialogue that needs to continue.

A background paper with a summary of the discussion will be soon placed on the IDEA website, and will be open for comments and dialogue before finalization.

Some additional comments from the floor:

"There has been little discussion of the production aspect of ICT, which is a very important issue to address. What can we do to make sure that the developing world also benefits from the employment generation potential of ICT, in order to decrease significant existing gaps?"

"More than half of the world's population, women, are also the most disadvantaged. There is a need to focus on young women and the use of ICT for democracy."

"Discussion of the importance of investing in capacity building by governments, and specially local governments, was missing in Forum debates. We need help governments not only to build platforms to promote citizen participation, but also to empower them with tools for their own work."

"I missed one seminar, the most important of all, and that is the one about global democracy. I think the Internet is the proper place for 6 billion people to meet and create global democracy."

"The structure of the World Bank programme is promoting new levels of exclusion, through making it financially difficult to invest in the ICT sector. This issue needs to be addressed in our future discussions."

By Stina Balkfors

Milosevic and The Hague: a Stockholm story

"At around 6 o'clock last night I was standing at the reception enjoying the view over Stockholm from International IDEA when my mobile started buzzing", says Srdjan Boguslavljevic, Director of the Strategic Marketing & Research Institute, Belgrade and a speaker at the Democracy Forum workshop on 'Opening Up Authoritarian States'. "Within 10 minutes I received a dozen calls from Belgrade saying that yes, Milosevic is finally on his way to The Hague - though in fact he didn't leave Belgrade airport until about an hour later."

"My first reaction was simply that I wanted to share the news with everyone else at the meeting", continues Srdjan. Which as I can confirm he certainly did - including to a journalist standing nearby who immediately called a colleague at the Wall Street Journal, thereby breaking the story to that particular newspaper.

"The news was expected: for some time public opinion polls have been showing that the idea of Milosevic going to the Hague is broadly accepted by the Serbian public. What's more the Serbian government had to do this, as they are very committed to the Donor's Conference that starts today [Friday 29 June] in Brussels. In fact I thought they would extradite him this morning. But all in all it's good to know that it's finally happened, even if it isn't surprising."

"People are still calling today from all over the place, including many foreign journalists. They all want comments from the perspective of what public opinion polls are saying", notes Srdjan. "It seems that things are calming down a bit in Belgrade today. There was a demonstration last night organized by the Socialist Party (SPS), and a number of journalists were beaten up. Tonight Seselj's Radical Party will hold a rally, and they are actually much more angry about the extradition than Milosevic's own party (SPS), because many of them were directly involved in the war atrocities which Milosevic is accused of masterminding".

By Mark Salter

My idea of IDEA

We asked some participants about their experience of the IDEA Democracy Forum 2001. Here are their answers - and some food for thought.

Dr. Amos Anyimadu, University of Ghana:

"The best thing about the Forum is the junction between policy and analysis. I was once sceptical about the effects of IT on democracy, but after being involved for over ten years I feel we are moving in the right direction. One important aspect about the IDEA Forum is the face-to-face networking potential, the meetings between people from different countries."

"In my own country, Ghana, there are many possibilities for Internet connections these days. Although most people don't have a connection at home, cyber cafes and phone shops are becoming more frequent in the cities. What matters most to me at this point is to see some progress on local levels around the country."

István Zsuffa, Association of Central and Eastern European Election Officials (ACEEEO):

"The ACEEEO has had a connection with IDEA for ten years. We promote democracy through elections, so it has been very interesting to participate in this Forum. To attend forums such as this is a way for us to establish a platform within Europe and find our place in the discussions. My main challenge now is to develop IT applications that will improve the electoral process in the countries that are part of the ACEEEO."

"However, I do find that the Central European countries are often overlooked. We are neither donators nor receivers of support from the Northern countries. There is a lack of focus on our part of the world, and I hope that the next IDEA Forum will focus more on Central and Eastern Europe."

Nalan Yuksel, Canadian International Development Agency, Global Knowledge Partnership:

"This Forum has given me more conviction that CIDA is moving in the right direction. The richest part for me personally was the interjections by Southern delegates during discussions, as I wanted to learn more about their perspective on ICT. This has been a session for gathering information more than anything, a way to collect different views."

"Sometimes I think we focus too much on defining terms such as ICT and the so-called digital divide. The bottom line is, CIDA is an agency for poverty reduction. That's what we want to use new technology for. What you choose to call it doesn't really matter as long as it works."

By Åsa Brolin

Reporters from Kommunikation utan Gränser:

Anna Björklund
Eva Stenstam
Kajsa Balkfors
Kjell Åkerlund
Linda Kruusmägi
Linda Widmark
Roland Stanbridge
Stina Balkfors
Teresa Lindstedt

News Editor:

Kjell Åkerlund

Editors:

Roland Stanbridge
Monika Ericson, International IDEA
Bela Selendy, International IDEA
Mark Salter, International IDEA

Production:

Bela Selendy

© International IDEA 2001