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	Who pays for politicians’ election campaigns in your country? by OHCHR, ODIHR, Transparency International   UN experts call for strengthening democracy and reversing global erosion of human rights. (OHCHR)   UN experts have urged authorities in dozens of countries holding elections this year to uphold and protect the rights to vote and to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association. They said these rights are threatened by democratic regression, the rise of authoritarianism worldwide and shrinking civic spaces. The experts issued the following statement:   “As citizens from 64 countries around the globe are casting their ballots this year, States must ensure free and fair elections, fully respecting and upholding their human rights obligations throughout the electoral process.   Creating a safe and enabling environment for the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association is essential for fostering participation and ensuring inclusive and credible elections with results reflecting the will of the people.   We are deeply troubled by the increasing erosion of these rights across the globe. Elections in many jurisdictions have been marred by violence and arbitrary arrests, targeting opposition candidates and political leaders, as well as human rights defenders, journalists, media workers and election observers.   The adoption and enforcement of restrictive laws in the guise of national security measures, such as foreign agents and foreign influence legislation, further undermine civil society's work in the context of elections and lead to stigmatising those working to promote democracy and human rights.   The proliferation of populism, misinformation, and disinformation poses further threats to the integrity of elections. Hate speech and negative discourse targeting marginalised and discriminated-against groups, migrants and ethnic and religious minorities, have been weaponised for political gain, further polarising societies.   Social media platforms have also been exploited to undermine fair elections and propagate anti-rights narratives, primarily facilitated through the misuse of algorithms and content moderation. Internet shutdowns and network disruptions further impede access to information and the organisation of peaceful protests, hindering the democratic process.   Addressing these challenges and reversing the negative trend of global erosion of human rights requires concerted efforts from everyone.   We urge States to guarantee and facilitate an unobstructed exercise of the rights to participate in public affairs, and to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association before, during and after elections, and ensure the safety of civil society actors, including journalists and election monitors.   Political parties, the private sector, media outlets and social media companies must also participate in fostering a safe and inclusive environment for credible elections and work towards strengthening democracy and human rights in this critical election year.”   http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/04/electoral-year-2024-un-experts-call-strengthening-democracy-and-reversing   In the biggest electoral year in history, 113 countries have never had a woman Head of State, new UN Women data shows   Globally, women’s underrepresentation in decision-making remains as a stark reality, according to UN Women’s global data on Women Political Leaders 2024. UN Women’s new data on gender parity across leadership positions is published as the world commemorates the International Day for Women in Diplomacy on June 24.   Despite progress, women are still largely excluded from positions of power and diplomacy, with the highest levels of influence and decision-making still predominantly occupied by men. A staggering 113 countries worldwide have never had a woman serve as Head of State or Government and only 26 countries are led by a woman as of today. As of 1 January 2024, only 23 per cent of Ministerial positions are held by women and in 141 countries women make up less than a third of Cabinet ministers. Seven countries have no women represented in their Cabinets at all.   Male dominance in diplomacy and foreign affairs extends to the Permanent Missions to the UN, where women remain underrepresented as Permanent Representatives. As of May 2024, women held 25 per cent of Permanent Representative posts in New York, 35 per cent in Geneva, and 33.5 per cent in Vienna.   UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous, said, “Our work is guided by the belief that when women lead, the world is better for all people and the planet. As many countries head to the polls this year, we all must put women first, at the pinnacle of power, where and when it matters the most. Women’s equal participation in governance and leadership is key to improving lives for all.”   Electing and appointing women in leadership positions signals strong political will for gender equality and demonstrates a collective commitment to tackling the challenges the world faces today. As we prepare to mark 30 years since the passage of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the world’s most progressive blueprint for advancing women's rights, UN Women continues to work to ensure women lead and thrive in shaping and driving positive change, including through occupying the most senior positions of power.   http://www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-release/2024/06/in-the-biggest-electoral-year-in-history-113-countries-have-never-had-a-woman-head-of-state-new-un-women-data-shows   2024 will be a momentous year for election observers, by Matteo Mecacci - Director, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)   In 2024, almost half the world's population is set to vote — in elections taking place in more than 50 countries.   But why do they matter so much? And how can we make sure the elections taking place this year are above board?   Democratic elections are a time for our civil and political rights to come to the fore, playing a decisive role in the choice of our governments.   There is evidence to show that the increase in democratic practices around the world has contributed to the reduction of wars and conflict. But as we see each day, this trend is not irreversible.   Democracy cannot be taken for granted either in countries where it was just beginning to put down roots, or in those with democratic traditions stretching back decades or even centuries.   Of course, the fact that a government is democratically-elected does not in itself ensure it delivers for citizens. But regular and democratic elections give citizens the ability to change course if they see a need. In this way, an election is the opportunity for citizens to hold governments accountable both for their promises and their actions.   So much for the elections themselves. But why observe them?   Election observation is a powerful tool to strengthen the democratic process, to help elections meet international democratic standards, and to ensure that voters feel they are safe and can cast their vote in secrecy.   International observation provides an impartial, independent and objective assessment of how election rules and practices are implemented. It looks at all aspects of the process, from the legal framework through voter and candidate registration to equal media access and the right to peaceful protest.   I have the privilege of leading the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, (ODIHR), which works to strengthen democracy and human rights across the vast OSCE region. The integrity of our election observation work is recognised worldwide, and could have a particular impact this year with nearly half of the elections taking place across the globe are in the OSCE region.   All 57 countries of the OSCE have acknowledged the important role of democratic elections in ensuring long-term security and stability. And over the last 30 years, ODIHR has observed well over 400 elections, with tens of thousands of observers and hundreds of detailed analytical reports to help improve the election processes.   ODIHR's role is not to 'judge' the elections, as this is up to the national institutions of each country and to their citizens. But observation does provide an additional level of transparency, scrutiny and public accountability.   Observation has never been an easy task. But there are also new challenges that are maybe symptomatic of the current state of democracy worldwide.   'Growing reluctance'   One is the growing reluctance from certain countries to extend an invitation to observe. As a community of states that has recognised democratic elections as a key pillar of long-term security, all OSCE states have committed to inviting international observers from other OSCE countries.   For many years, this happened both on paper and in practice. But now, the commitment to be transparent and hold elections that can be described as genuine or democratic appears to mean less to some countries.   And let's be clear: depriving any country of the comprehensive, objective, and transparent assessment offered by impartial observers can ultimately do great harm to its citizens, its institutions and their collective democratic future.   Our increasingly digitalised world is creating additional challenges — for governments wishing to hold democratic elections, for voters, and for observers. One is targeted disinformation spread to mislead or simply confuse voters. Another is the use of new technologies, which in themselves can be a boon that make voting easier, faster, and more secure. However, they need to be introduced carefully, both to ensure they work and that they enjoy public trust.   Trust is key to any election. If voters don't trust the result, the entire process is undermined, potentially leading to a never-ending cycle of new elections or even to social unrest that can spill into violence.   And there we are back to observation: by helping to increase public confidence in the honesty of the election process, election observation also builds trust in elected representatives and democratic institutions.   These challenges, not just in the field of elections but also to our democratic institutions and rule of law, make bona fide observation all the more important.   Today we are seeing severe tests to our democracies and the respect for human rights whose universality was accepted for so long and in so many places (although never enough).   We are increasingly hearing the argument that centralised government action is more effective to tackle security threats and social issues than democratic debate. But this approach invariably goes hand in hand with a decrease in respect for human rights, civil liberties, freedom of the media, freedom of speech, or the right to participate in elections. In the long term, such repression cannot deliver stability or security.   The vast majority of the countries we work with appreciate our election observation and assistance. But in a time of uncertain commitment to democratic standards, the need to understand and support this work is needed more than ever. We all have our homework to do. And election observation will help us continue do it.   http://euobserver.com/opinion/157954 http://www.ohchr.org/en/stories/2024/03/2024-elections-are-testing-democracys-health http://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/rising-trend-violating-freedom-expression-and-political-rights-un-human   Dec. 2023   Who pays for politicians’ election campaigns in your country? (Transparency International)   Next year will be the largest election year in history. If you live in one of more than 70 countries heading to the polls in 2024, you might want to know: who pays for politicians’ election campaigns in your country? This should be a straightforward answer, but it isn't.   Countries with more transparent campaign finance are likely to score twice as many points in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). Yet, in far too many countries around the world, the sources of political candidates and parties’ campaign funds are shrouded in secrecy.   The Electoral Integrity Global Report 2023, which publishes data on the quality of elections worldwide, ranks the transparent reporting of financial accounts as the weakest area in elections. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA)’s political finance database, politicians running for office don’t have to report their finances in 50 out of 181 countries. In 57 countries, political parties don’t have to, either.   In 64 countries across the globe, when politicians and their parties do have to report who is backing them, they can claim not to know, due to the lack of restrictions on anonymous donations. They can also list a shell company as a donor, without having to disclose who the real owner is. In countries where reports are expected, like Malta, Indonesia, or Uganda, they do not identify the actual donors.   Opacity in political finance is dangerous for democracy. When politicians are secretly funded by businesses or wealthy individuals, there is no way to know if the policies and decisions they support are designed to benefit their financial backers rather than the public interest.   Candidates might even be receiving foreign donations which incentivises them to put the interests of other countries before their own. Over 70 countries , don’t have bans on foreign donations to candidates, while 54 allow foreign donations to political parties.   Furthermore, almost half of the 181 countries surveyed, do not mandate political parties to manage cash flows through banks, meaning they can avoid creating a paper trail that investigators could use to uncover corruption and conflicts of interest., and more than half of countries don’t put limits on the size of donation candidates or parties can receive.   The consequences of opaque campaign financing extend beyond the electoral process, affecting the very fabric of democratic representation. Countries without limits on donation sizes or regulations on personal funds create an uneven playing field. Candidates that have access to a lot of private finance, make it harder for others to compete against them. According to a recent study, 11 per cent of the world's billionaires have run for office, and 80 per cent of the time they won.   This trend, coupled with the absence of financial constraints, inhibits grassroots movements from successfully fielding candidates. This ultimately means that the issues that matter to the public are not adequately represented in government. It also often leads to the exclusion of already marginalized communities from the decision-making that matters to them.   Here are five key priorities that demand immediate attention:   1. Closing loopholes for illicit funds in politics   Corruption can enter politics through various channels, including illicit funds and opaque donations routed through shell companies, third parties or anonymous donors. Governments should enact and enforce laws that close all such loopholes, ensuring full disclosure and verification of the ultimate source of funds.   2. Introducing digital reporting and disclosure systems   Transparency is the bedrock of democracy. Governments should establish mechanisms for the timely and comprehensive public disclosure of political contributions, expenditures, and campaign financing. This should apply to all levels of government and political entities, including individual candidates, promoting the accountability of both political candidates and parties.   3. Improving oversight and accountability of political finance regimes   Accountability is essential in curbing corruption. Governments should establish and strengthen independent oversight bodies with adequate powers to monitor, investigate, and enforce compliance with political finance regulations. These bodies should be equipped with sufficient resources, autonomy, and authority to ensure the integrity of the political finance system.   4. Promoting knowledge, civic engagement and public participation   An informed and engaged citizen is essential to uphold democracy and counter corruption. Governments should actively engage civil society, encourage public participation in political finance oversight and protect the rights of whistleblowers who expose corruption within the political finance system.   5. Strengthening international cooperation.   Corruption transcends borders, and international cooperation is essential to combat it effectively. Governments should commit to sharing information, best practices and resources to coordinate and unify the global fight against corruption.   http://www.transparency.org/en/blog/2024-big-year-for-democracy-dont-let-political-corruption-ruin-it http://v-dem.net/publications/democracy-reports/ http://v-dem.net/documents/43/v-dem_dr2024_lowres.pdf http://v-dem.net/media/publications/C4DReport_230421.pdf http://v-dem.net/pb.html Visit the related web page
	The welfare state should be understood as a productive social investment by Social Europe Journal, IPS Journal, agencies   Rather than a ‘burden on the taxpayer’, the welfare state should be understood in normative terms as productive social investment, write Anton Hemerijck, Azizjon Bagadirov and Robin Wilson for Social Europe.   As the world changes, norms, values and political preferences change. As social risks evolve, so do policy ideas and reforms. The mid-20th century objective of male-breadwinner full employment has, since the momentous entry of women into the labour market from the 1980s, given way to norms of gender equality and equal pay, and policy ideas about improving family services for dual-earner families. Education and care for children cannot be left singularly to dual-earning parents engaged in remunerated employment, just as public healthcare and old-age pensions are today self-evidently accepted.   Social insurance, the breakthrough innovation of the modern welfare state, buffers boom-and-bust macroeconomic cycles while mitigating the household poverty which otherwise constrains economic engagement and impedes social mobility.   Where individuals can rely on adequate income protection, they are less anxious and freer to make autonomous choices. When, in addition, there is paid parental leave and childcare, working families are also far better off in navigating important transitions in their lives. When adequate social protection and capacity-building public services are both in place, they reinforce prosperity and stable democratic politics.   Europe has since the second world war led the world in engendering such conditions for universal wellbeing through extensive welfare.   Yet some now represent—think of the leader of the German Christian Democratic Union, Friedrich Merz—this achievement not as something to celebrate but as an intolerable burden on the taxpayer, particularly in ageing societies with more elderly dependants.   There is talk in Europe of an economic imperative of ‘competitiveness’, vis-a-vis the United States and especially China—though only companies, not countries or regions, compete in markets—with the implication that social expenditures (and indeed ecological regulations amid onrushing climate catastrophe) must be subjected to hard-nosed paring.   In fact, however, far from being a drag on economic performance, for welfare states the opposite is the case: there is a positive correlation between welfare expenditure and per capita gross domestic product, with the universal Nordic welfare states and the developed social-insurance models of mainland northern Europe in the van in both cases.   What makes the difference is that high social investment in each citizen—from quality childcare through to comprehensive public education to post-school education or training for all and lifelong learning—allows people to develop their capacities and effectively use them throughout their lives.   This shows that there is no inherent tension between equity and efficiency. On the contrary: without gender equality and supportive family services, for example, there will be less (female) employment and poorer schooling, which in turn will hamper long-term prosperity. Productivity only becomes meaningful when attached to the freedom to navigate life-course transitions.   Rethinking welfare in these social-investment terms shows that clawing back expenditure today will be costly tomorrow. Even more, it demonstrates that a generous commitment to welfare expenditure can reap social as well as economic rewards.   It directs policy-makers to privilege programmes which are ‘upstream’ (such as preventative public-health schemes like free vaccination for all) over those which are ‘downstream’, focused on compensation ex-post.   And it highlights where synergies may be achieved: for instance, a ‘housing first’ approach to homelessness can be followed up by individualised support with associated disadvantages, such as addictions. Vicious circles of accumulating disadvantage can thus be broken at the root of what causes intergeneraitonal cycle of poverty, allowing previously marginalised individuals to finally exercise their agency.   Indeed the reorientation towards investment in individuals’ capacities is particularly attuned to various social risks emerging with an era of digitalisation and precarisation, especially in the ‘gig’ economy.   By focusing not only on compensation for income loss—however important as a bedrock this remains—the social-investment perspective adduces important policy interventions, such as in universal access of young workers to training for professional sovereignty.   The European Union should articulate, steer and consolidate this changing social outlook. The European Commission and the European Parliament have adopted the language of social investment over the last decade. This has however largely been in technocratic-instrumental terms—as a policy strategy to achieve and sustain high levels of employment, needed to finance the fiscal ageing burden. It’s high time to reinforce this argument in more normative terms, to bring it closer to real lives in European societies.   As our societies change so do welfare states, but also normative thinking on what constitutes social justice. Many philosophers, including Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, have made important contributions to a shifting understanding of justice from a narrow focus on redistribution to a more contextualised and gender-sensitive approach that focuses on real opportunities people have—beyond income—to achieve wellbeing and increased agency.   In policy terms, the social risk structure of post-industrial societies requires both direct protection through social insurance and equipping with the right capabilities through ex-ante prevention, to allow citizens to overcome accumulating disadvantages and lead good and self-determined lives.   The combination of protection and capacitation aims to strengthen an individual’s agency in this process and enable them to translate opportunities into secure conditions of wellbeing.   Safety nets protect people from material deprivation, but they also foster active agency since a sense of security allows people to navigate and plan their lives against the backdrop of rapid social change, volatile labour markets and fluid family structures.   Capacitation, complementing social protection in core areas of health, education, and family, aims to enable and promote one’s capabilities and hence to securely sustain core areas of wellbeing —for example, through childcare, work-family reconciliation and lifelong learning.   The European Pillar of Social Rights can only be taken off the page and its targets on poverty reduction and training participation realised if the associated social policies are put into effect. The second action plan for the pillar, can provide a focus for enhanced commitment to social-investment welfarism.   http://www.socialeurope.eu/the-capacity-to-compete-rethinking-the-welfare-state http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/01/16/never-too-much-the-crisis-of-democratic-capitalism-wolf http://www.srpoverty.org/fr/2024/10/15/statement-on-the-first-eu-anti-poverty-strategy/ http://www.eapn.eu/poverty-watches-2024/ http://srm.solidar.org/ http://www.socialeurope.eu/how-the-billionaire-boom-is-fueling-inequality-and-threatening-democracy http://www.oxfam.org/en/research/reaffirming-european-unions-global-position-strong-external-action-budget http://www.fidh.org/en/issues/human-rights-defenders/joint-statement-on-the-attacks-on-ngos-in-the-european-parliament http://www.socialeurope.eu/progressives-under-pressure-confronting-the-gradual-rise-of-authoritarianism http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/future-of-social-democracy/a-political-vaccine-against-the-extreme-right-7643/ http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/future-of-social-democracy/let-them-eat-cake-7471/ http://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/future-of-social-democracy/ http://www.socialeurope.eu/finlands-austerity-gamble-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-pain-for-the-poor Visit the related web page
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