Washington, March 15 Representatives of civil society from ten Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa are converging on Tarrytown, New York for a conference that will explore ways of advancing teaching about democracy in their region. The March 18-20 gathering is hosted by the Pocantico Conference Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It is organized by the Council for a Community of Democracies in collaboration with the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and the New York-based American Forum for Global Education.

Some thirty participants ranging from Turkey and Iran to Senegal and Nigeria will share ideas and propose strategies on advancing democracy education in the Middle East and Muslim Africa. They will interact with representatives from American and European nongovernmental organizations with experience in the field. Noted Egyptian democracy advocate Saad Ibrahim will give a keynote address on March 19 offering participants insights into how recent events in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and even Saudi Arabia can be encouraged to blossom into a sustained democracy movement for the Arab world.

Conference participants will hear from Turkish, Senegalese and Nigerian experts on how the values of democracy and citizen participation in the democratic political processes of their countries are promoted in their schools. Participants from Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq and Libya will explore barriers and opportunities to the promotion of democracy through institutions of civil society and in their educational systems. An important agenda item will be the question of religion and how Islamic principles can be interpreted in ways compatible with democratic values and ideas and how those values can be presented in the context of Muslim societies.

The conference’s major objective will be to produce recommendations for the Ministers of the more than 100 countries expected to attend the Third Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies to be held in Santiago, Chile from April 28-30. The Pocantico participants are expected to appeal to the Ministers to endorse the importance of democracy education as fundamental for the development of democracy in the Arab world and Muslim Africa and to ask that donors provide resources to implement their proposed strategy.

Speaking of the significance of the Conference, the Executive Director of the Council for a Community of Democracies, Robert LaGamma noted that promotion of democracy education in the Arab world would greatly advance the dialogue about democracy in that part of the world where democracy and democratic ideas have made the least progress. He noted that there were some signs of democratic stirrings in the Arab world, a process that has been encouraged in the West but also by the recommendations of the United Nations Development Program. He cited past UNDP reports that identified a “freedom gap” and a “knowledge deficit” that prevented the region from making economic and social progress while all other world regions were experiencing waves of democratization. LaGamma added that it was the hope of Pocantico participants that the movement known as the Community of Democracies would assist in promoting democracy in the region. He also called for Americans and Europeans to work together on advancing democracy education in the Arab world and Muslim Africa.