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The Internet and Democracy-Building: The NED Experience
Carl Gershman, President
The National Endowment for Democracy

Wilton Park, UK
April 27-28, 2001

Carl Gershman's presentation for an International Workshop organized by the Great Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Wilton Park, UK on April 27-28, 2001.

I want to thank the FCO policy planning staff for organizing this workshop on the Internet and democracy building, and especially for raising so many important questions regarding priorities, obstacles, opportunities, and needs. The extraordinary potential of the new communications technologies as a tool for democracy building grows out of the link between democracy and the flow of information. All the essential features of democracy -- from a legitimate and accountable government to an engaged and informed citizenry -- depend upon the flow of information among citizens and between citizens and their government. This flow does not depend entirely on the Internet; there are still books, newspapers, phones, faxes, radio, television, flyers, posters, graffiti, and what have you. But the Internet is especially suited to the increasingly complex and interactive world in which we live. Whether it is responsible for creating this world or is one of the principal means by which we try to cope with it, its impact is pervasive and inescapable. And it is already exercising a powerful influence in the field of democracy-promotion, often in ways that are ingenious and unexpected, and in places that are far from the beaten path.

How the Internet is used in democracy-building is determined by a number of factors: the conditions in a country, what needs to be done; the relevance of the new technology to the specified objectives; and its accessibility, cost, utility, and effectiveness in relation to other tools. The key point to bear in mind is that the new technology is only a tool. It's there to help accomplish objectives, not to determine what those objectives should be. The best projects respond creatively to need and are generally developed by indigenous groups seeking solutions to problems. In an autocracy, for example, the Internet is increasingly being used as a way to open a closed system by challenging the regime's control of information. In an emerging democracy it is used as a tool to make governance more efficient and transparent. It is also a means of empowering NGOs and civil society in a variety of political contexts. The governing principle here is the power of human ingenuity -- if a technology is available, people will find ways to use it, even in the most difficult circumstances.

For example, take the toughest cases -- dictatorial or semi-authoritarian systems where democracy groups are fighting for more political space against an unfriendly government. The classic case is the role played by Radio B-92 and other independent media and NGOs during the 5-year period framed by the Dayton peace agreement and the ouster last fall of Slobodan Milosevic. When the Milosevic regime closed down the station in December 1996, B-92 used the Internet to send its programs outside the country, where they were picked up by VOA, BBC, Radio Free Europe, and Deutsche Welle and rebroadcast back in, reaching an even wider audience and forcing the regime to lift the ban after only 51 hours. The B-92 model was later used by the nation-wide Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), a network of 50 local radio and television stations that circumvented continued regime restrictions by transmitting their signals by Internet and telephone to the BBC, in London, where they were rebroadcast back into Yugoslavia via BBC satellite.

B-92's use of the Internet was not restricted to news broadcasting. Having set up immediately after Dayton the first legal Internet Service Provider in Yugoslavia, thereby pre-empting the establishment of a state monopoly over the new medium, it developed its OpenNet Internet branch as a kind of multi-media center for independent NGOs, anti-war activists, alternative artists and many others. Magazines were provided in electronic form over the Internet, as were books, articles, movies, documentaries, and television programs; and English-language news was transmitted to international stations for broadcast to foreign audiences. OpenNet also provided NGOs with networking and training courses for the development of the civic sector, Internet classrooms for those without computers, training for pensioners to enable them to communicate with their refugee children, and courses that helped artists provide technical services for art projects.

Other groups also made ingenious use of the Internet in the tumultuous period leading up to last September's election. The student organization Otpor used the Internet to organize rallies and demonstrations, deploying mobile servers that could transmit signals from remote and shifting points, and using mirror sites in safe locations outside the country to preserve back-up databases and to continue transmitting if servers were shut down inside. The Center for Free Elections and Democracy (CeSid) partnered with the Bulgarian Association for Free Elections (BAFE), which maintained a mirror site in Sofia that protected the critically important election data during the tense days following the vote.

The Internet is less developed in Belarus than it is in Yugoslavia, yet it has nonetheless become a growing outlet for independent information and the principal means of challenging the Lukashenka regime's almost total control of the media. There are now over 100,000 Internet users in Belarus, more than the circulation of the largest newspaper, and the users are predominantly young people. To reach and mobilize this audience during the run-up to the presidential election that will be held later this year, the financial newspaper, BDG, has established an election Web site that provides candidate profiles and election-related news. A month before the close of campaigning, it will conduct a "virtual election" in which Internet users will nominate candidates, discuss the issues, and cast ballots. Another Web site, the most visited in Belarus, is maintained by Charter '97, one of the leading opposition NGOs. It reports on human rights violations, the activities of the united opposition, and political and economic developments. In addition, reporters in Minsk for Radio Racja (the Poland-based successor to the Belarus station Radio 101.2, which was shut down in 1996) produces materials which are sent via the Internet to Warsaw, where they are packaged with other news and transmitted back into Belarus over Polish Telecom facilities located outside Warsaw and Bialystok.

In Ukraine, where the major media outlets are controlled by the state or the industrial oligarchies, and where the state uses financial sanctions, tax inspections, and other administrative measures to harass journalists, the Internet offers a low-cost option for independent journalists. Ukrainska Pravda (UP), the country's first Internet newspaper devoted primarily to political reporting, reaches a daily audience of 60,000 readers with hard-hitting, unbiased coverage produced in both Ukrainian and Russian. It is widely suspected that UP's exposure of government incompetence and corruption led to the murder of its editor Heorhyi Gongadze, whose mutilated body was discovered last September in a village outside Kyiv. It was the subsequent disclosure of tape recordings that allegedly showed President Leonid Kuchma ordering the silencing of Gongadze that caused the recent eruption of mass demonstrations and calls for Kuchma to resign. The entire episode testifies to the power of the Internet as a means of disseminating information that eludes regime censorship, and the difficulty authoritarian governments have in controlling this new medium.

The contradiction between an authoritarian government and the new communications technologies is nowhere sharper than in China, where the regime is simultaneously fostering the growth of the Internet as a way to promote economic modernization and trying to limit its subversive potential by controlling its use. The growth of the Internet in China has been geometric -- from 120,000 users in 1996 to 22 million four years later, an increase of almost 20,000 percent. The number of users is expected to rise to over 100 million by 2004, and that figure could increase substantially if agreements are reached to allow Internet access through cell phones and cable television. The regime, whose legitimacy relies heavily on its ability to control what people think and the information they receive, fully understands the potential threat posed by a medium that allows people to obtain and share information from anywhere in the world. It has, therefore, developed a variety of mechanisms to control Internet content and use, including attempts to block access to independent Web sites, the passage of sweeping new regulations that criminalize "spreading false information" and "rumors" on the Web or "organizing cults," using well-publicized arrests to intimidate Web-users and thereby encourage self-censorship, saturating the Web with official propaganda, and training cadres of cyber-police to man new Internet monitoring units in provincial capitals and major cities throughout the country.

The regime's efforts at control have been at best only partially successful. Mainland-based content providers, which are subject to regulation, remain more popular than foreign sites, which the regime has tried to block. But easy access to encryption programs and proxy servers makes it possible to evade censorship and reach blocked sites, and the regime's enforcement of the regulations has been less than fully resolute, partly because economic growth would be hindered by tying up the Internet in a knot of rigid controls, and also because the sheer volume of information on the Net defies comprehensive monitoring. The regime's predicament was on display last month when Prime Minister Zhu Rongji was forced to apologize for the explosion at an elementary school that killed 38 children, after reports circulating on the Internet undermined the regime's attempt to deny that the school was being used to manufacture fireworks. Internet reports have also exposed other issues that the regime has tried to hide, from an AIDS epidemic in Hunan Province to police torture and ecological disasters. The tendency for the Internet to serve as a shadow media and a potential organizing tool by independent social and political groups (as happened in Indonesia in 1998 during the student uprising against the Suharto regime) will only grow as more Chinese citizens gain access to the Web.

An additional factor is the link the Web provides to pro-democracy exile groups, who can be a source of ideas, information, and political support to their counterparts on the mainland.

Intellectuals involved in the democratic struggle in Poland have testified to the importance of the Paris-based journal, Kultura, which was smuggled into Poland during the Cold War. The Internet has greatly magnified the ability of exile publications to reach into China. For example, the New Jersey-based Democratic China magazine used to print 6,000 copies per issue every other month, of which 1,000 were sent into China. It now publishes on the Internet as a monthly, receiving 2 million hits per month on average. Another U.S.-based publication, the biweekly Press Freedom Guardian newspaper, used to publish 5,500 copies per issue, of which 500 reached China. As an Internet publication, it now has more than 27,000 subscribers in China. Human rights and other exile-based NGOs are also using the Internet to expand their links on the mainland.

The Internet is being used in many other ways to create new linkages both between internal activists and exiles and within the Diaspora, and to foster communities' support for opening the most closed and inaccessible systems.

The dissident Uzbek journal, Harakat, is produced outside the country, then downloaded off the Web at five regional centers inside Uzbekistan and circulated in a printed version.

Independent Cuban journalists send reports by phone and fax to the U.S.-based CubaNet, which then circulates them over the Web to the international media whose reports often find their way back into Cuba.

The Citizens' Alliance to Help Political Prisoners in North Korea, a Seoul-based human rights organization, has used an e-mail news bulletin to nurture the development of an international support network for human rights in North Korea. A Web site called Iraq Net offers the 4 million Iraqi exiles, who are dispersed all over the world, a way to meet each other and develop a sense of community, a process which may in time connect them with family and friends inside the country and give them hope.

In Africa, where the new technologies are not widely used, the Internet has helped activists break out of isolation and develop new forms of common action. In Sudan, for example, 60 women's organizations used e-mail to form a coalition and recruit international partners in a successful campaign to force the Khartoum State government to repeal a law forbidding women from engaging in public employment. Human rights organizations in the Congo and Sierra Leone use the Internet to distribute their reports and issue urgent appeals for international support. Journalists throughout Africa have become adept at researching articles on the Internet and producing Internet editions of their papers, which are circulated around the world as well as within their own countries, often in defiance of government censors. In Zimbabwe, as The Economist reported just last week, the democratic opposition is challenging the government's control of information in the rural areas by e-mailing a daily news bulletin to six rural sites, where it is printed and then distributed by youths on mountain bikes, who carry digital cameras to record and publicize incidents where violence is used against them by regime thugs.

With its ability to instantly connect people at low cost across great distances, the Internet has become a tool for fostering decentralization and cross-regional networks of civic engagement. A collaborative project between the U.S. National Democratic Institute (NDI) and South Africa's second house of parliament, the National Council of Provinces (NCOP), produced NCOP Online! -- an Internet-based data management and communication system that ensures the participation of provincial and local government in national policy-making. In Russia, the Internet has made possible the formation of the Inter-regional Human Rights Network Group that links 30 human rights centers across 11 time zones, with each center receiving computer equipment and training as well as access to human rights databases and up-to-date reports on political and legislative developments affecting human rights. Another group in Russia fosters citizen action and government accountability in the regions by providing information on federal reforms and helping local civic groups direct their complaints to the appropriate officials.

The Internet has been especially useful in involving technology-oriented young people in political and NGO activity. Working with youth groups in Turkey, the International Republican Institute (IRI) has developed GencNet, a Web-based networking project that provides youth-related news and discussion groups, exposes young people to NGO projects being carried out across Turkey, and helps them get engaged by matching each person who registers with a number of NGOs in his or her vicinity. In Slovenia, in the parliamentary elections held last October, IRI tested the electoral utility of the Internet in a get-out-the-vote program directed at youth called Tvoj Glas, or "your voice." Young people were engaged by a lively site that included cartoons and appeals from celebrities to take part in the election as well as a more conventional listing of political party slates with links to candidate profiles. An award-winning new technology, mobile phone text messaging, was used at the end of the campaign and on election day to encourage voting. A survey conducted after the vote concluded that the test was successful, given the high level of traffic on the site. That result, and the fact that the party that won the most seats was the only one that effectively used the Internet, demonstrated the potential of the Internet as a way to reach voters, a point that might affect the conduct of elections elsewhere in Central Europe.

An especially interesting initiative is Journalists Against Corruption, a Latin American regional program that integrates the diverse advantages of the Internet as a networking and communications tool and also as a means of promoting transparency in government and business dealings. Launched last summer with the support of the Center for International Private Enterprise, the PFC (Spanish initials for Periodistas Frente a la Corrupcion) provides critical help for Latin American journalists who investigate and report on corruption. Journalists can use the PFC's Web site, e-mail network, and advisory services to obtain contacts and information needed for their investigations; to learn about laws related to access to information, censorship, protection of news sources, defamation, and journalist ethics codes; to identify human rights organizations, projects promoting investigative journalism, and international and local groups fighting corruption; and to find out about conferences, workshops, training opportunities, and grants to support their work and professional development. Most of all, it offers a supportive community that can rally to the defense of journalists who are persecuted or threatened because of their investigative work. PFC pressure has already contributed to the release of journalists in Bolivia and Mexico. Among its many other initiatives, it has also provided contacts and information to journalists investigating reports of corruption in earthquake relief efforts in El Salvador and in money-laundering activities between U.S. and Latin American banks.

Still another area where the Internet is beginning to make a significant impact is in the empowerment of women in the Middle East and elsewhere in developing countries through networking, advocacy, and leadership training. The work of groups like Sisterhood is Global International (SIGI) and the Women's Learning Partnership (WLP) has trained women to use the new technologies to defend women's human rights, fight so-called honor crimes and rape, and foster women's leadership development and self reliance. I won't say more about this important area of work since you will be hearing from one of its pioneers, Mahnaz Afkhami, the president and founder of the Women's Learning Partnership.

The capacity of the new communications technologies to empower citizens at the grassroots level by giving them access to information on a scale never before imagined and making it possible for them to network with each other and to share experiences over vast distances inspired the NED, in cooperation with its four institutes and other democracy assistance groups and NGOs, to launch the World Movement for Democracy (WMD) in 1999. The World Movement is a loose association of groups and practitioners from all over the world who work in one or more sectors of the extraordinarily heterogeneous field of democracy building. Some work on issues of governance -- from fighting corruption to promoting decentralization and the rule of law. Others focus on human rights and its various sub-categories dealing with the rights of women, workers, and minorities. The Movement includes journalists, civic educators, trade unionists, entrepreneurs, academics who do research on democracy and specialists in conflict management, political party leaders and parliamentarians, as well as activists in civil society. Most work within their native countries, but many are exiles who are a lifeline of support to compatriots working to open closed societies from within. To them all, the Internet offers a new resource whose potential they have only begun to mine.

The World Movement is organized around the principle of establishing networks of democracy practitioners. Some of the networks are problem-oriented: How to defend minority rights or prevent backsliding in semi-authoritarian countries. Some bring together groups or practitioners functioning in the same field of activity: Democracy research centers and assistance foundations, women's groups and youth organizations, pro-democracy parliamentarians and groups working on local government. Finally there are regional and sub-regional networks covering, for example, Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Eventually, all the networks will have their own Web sites that will be interconnected through the World Movement. Some of the networks might meet periodically between the biennial World Assemblies of the Movement, but essentially they will interact over the Web.

One of the most interesting networks has come together around the theme of "using the Internet and other media to promote democracy." Its purpose is to help NGOs overcome the chief obstacles to effective technology use. These include access and cost, government controls, the lack of NGO resources and training, and problems having to do with the lack of content on the Web in languages other than English or that is geared toward poorer communities. The network began by establishing a listserv to foster communication and exchange -- allowing the participants to advise each other on how to solve problems, share experiences, share software and talent, and generally support each other as best they can. The network would also promote training and resources for NGOs; help them pair up with companies looking to donate resources; provide technical or strategic help, including how to access "anonymizer" and encryption programs and proxy servers to circumvent government controls; help groups design their Web sites; and work with international groups to pressure governments to lift censorship where it exists and to develop better communications infrastructure and Internet policies.

One of the critical issues is helping groups define what they need to accomplish their objectives and how to develop workable technology strategies. Just having the technology is irrelevant -- and possibly even counter-productive -- unless groups clearly identify and analyze their target audience, think through what kinds of information they need and how to deliver it, and understand how the technology can best fit into their overall strategy and work-plan. One way to address this problem is to make available to NGOs, at no cost, qualified consultants who can conduct "technology use audits" that help them define their needs and develop their strategies.

Already groups are emerging to help NGOs address these issues. One initiative just getting underway is the TechFoundation, which has been established by a former high-tech entrepreneur who wants to find new ways to provide democracy groups with the technology, expertise and capital they need to solve social and political problems. Its plans include helping NGOs connect with corporations that are prepared to donate or discount technology products and services, and recruiting tech-savvy young people just out of college to spend a year or more sharing with NGOs their expertise -- a program that has been dubbed "geeks for democracy." This is an initiative that governments could also support.

Helping some of the regional groups develop the technology and expertise needed to build up their networks is an area where outside assistance might be especially productive. I would call special attention to the Africa and Middle East regions, where the needs are greatest. The Africa Democracy Forum (ADF), as the World Movement's Africa network is called, is just taking off and has great potential as a way of connecting various campaigns and keeping activists informed about local and pan-African events and issues. The ADF will hold a parallel NGO forum when the Organization of African Unity (OAU) meets in Lusaka in July, and one of the issues they will be discussing there is how they can make better use of the Internet to strengthen NGOs as a coherent and interconnected force for democracy in Africa. In the Middle East the network that is developing will draw together partners and organizations whose first objective will be overcoming their isolation from each other and from potential allies in democratic countries. While the Internet is less developed in the Middle East than in any other region, the establishment in Jordan of AmmanNet, an Internet radio station launched last summer by the independent Arab Media Institute, suggests that the potential of the new technologies in this region should not be underestimated.

The rise of the Internet does not guarantee democratic progress. As I have said, it is simply a tool. But its emergence should remind us of the famous passage in Tocqueville's Introduction to "Democracy in America," where he lists the great events of the previous 700 years, each of which -- from the Crusades to the invention of firearms and the art of printing to the discovery of America -- promoted equality of condition. The Internet does that as well. With hard work and imagination, we can ensure that it will also be a force for human freedom and democracy.