About the Fifth ICNRD
The Fifth International Conference of New or Restored Democracies (ICNRD) was held in Ulaanbaatar on 8-12 September 2003 as a forum to share knowledge and experiences in promoting pluralistic democracy and in particular its participatory aspect as the theme of the Conference Democracy, Good Governance and Civil Society specified.
The ICNRD since its First Conference held with the participation of 13 countries has grown into a global event bringing together more than 100 countries from the developing and developed world. To this date a total of five International Conferences of New or Restored Democracies have been held in Manila, the Philippines, 1988; Managua, Nicaragua, 1994; Bucharest, Romania, 1997; Cotonou, Benin, 2000 and in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 2003. The next international conference is to be hosted in Doha, Qatar in November 2006. The ICNRD is an intergovernmental process that enjoys high support from the United Nations expressed in a number of UN General Assembly Resolutions and through practical assistance provided by the UN agencies and UN system organisations in the preparation and conduct of the Conferences since 1994.
The Fifth ICNRD was a threefold activity comprising the Civil Society Forum (8-9 September), ICNRD (10-12 September) and the Parliamentarians Forum (11 September).
The Fifth ICNRD hosted more than 500 delegates from 119 countries.
The theme of the Fifth ICNRD was Democracy, Good Governance and Civil Society and the three sub-themes were:
* Strengthening democratic governance and Cooperation with Civil Society
* Challenges to and Opportunities for Democracy
* Partnership and participation in poverty reduction and attainment of MDGs
The Conference issued the Ulaanbaatar Declaration and the Plan of Action on Democracy, Good Governance and Civil Society as its final documents. The findings and recommendations of the Civil Society and Parliamentarians fora were reflected in their reports and fed into the final documents of the ICNRD.
The Ulaanbaatar Declaration sets forth six key principles or benchmarks endorsed by the Fifth ICNRD, that is, democratic societies are
(1) just and responsible,
(2) inclusive and participatory,
(3) promote and protect the rights and freedoms of all their members,
(4) open and transparent,
(5) function under agreed rules of law and accountability regardless of the challenges they may face, and
(6) show solidarity toward others. The countries agreed to a total of fifty-two commitments falling under these six principles.
The Plan of Action outlines ways in which the commitments of the Declaration can be implemented at the national, regional, and international levels.