Rising to the Moment
Six ways the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal is bolstering democracy, countering corruption, and defending human rights globally
During the first Summit for Democracy in December 2021, President Biden officially launched the Presidential Initiative for Democratic Renewal (PIDR), a landmark set of policy and foreign assistance programs to expand and modernize U.S. efforts to bolster democracy, counter corruption, and defend human rights abroad.
These efforts center on countering authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and tackling other salient threats to democracy. And they also look at areas where our democracy assistance efforts need an update to meet the present moment.
Through a range of bold efforts and partnerships, the PIDR is harnessing the power of collective action to transform democratic challenges into opportunities that demonstrate how democracy delivers tangible benefits for average people.
A second summit, scheduled for March 29–30 and co-hosted by Costa Rica, Korea, The Netherlands, Zambia, and the United States, will provide a platform for the U.S. to elevate and showcase this progress, announce new commitments, and forge new coalitions and partnerships. Read on for a preview of some progress highlights.
1. Enabling Media Sustainability
Globally, independent local media are facing an existential crisis due to the collapse of traditional business models — forcing them to reinvent their business structures to meet consumer preferences and compete in a competitive digital marketplace. USAID’s Media Viability Accelerator is a new data platform that will enable media outlets to better understand the markets, audiences, and strategies that will maximize their odds of profitability.
The multilingual tool will visualize media performance data in user-friendly, rich graphics, and benchmarks — and will generate actionable daily and weekly alerts based on thousands of market and media sources. As a result, media outlets using the Accelerator will become better informed about their own performance — including with their audiences — better equipped to adapt to market changes, and better known to organizations that can assist their work. The web-based portal is being designed in collaboration with a private sector technology partner, which will be announced at the second Summit for Democracy.
2. Empowering Journalists to Counter Corruption
In an era of rising transnational corruption and kleptocracy, USAID is redoubling efforts to support investigative journalists around the world. Building on USAID’s existing programs in Europe and Eurasia, as well as in Latin America and the Caribbean, the new Empowering the Truth Tellers activities will support regional investigative journalism networks across Southeast Asia and Southern Africa aimed at identifying and exposing transnational corruption. Other new USAID programs are aimed at protecting investigative journalists, media, and civil society organizations facing defamation lawsuits designed to bankrupt or silence their reporters.
With this goal in mind, USAID partnered with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Cyrus R. Vance Center to launch Reporters Shield, a global initiative through which investigative journalists, media outlets, and other civic activists will be able to access legal defense against lawsuits, and help avoid them in the first place through training, legal consultation, and pre-publication review. Reporters Shield will be available to media and other public interest reporting outlets in most countries by summer 2023.
3. Fostering Anti-Corruption Innovation
USAID’s Countering Transnational Corruption Grand Challenge is building coalitions and sourcing innovative solutions to curb the threat of transnational corruption in three key areas: detecting and disrupting illicit finance and trafficking in commodities; strengthening transparency and accountability in global supply chains; and promoting standards, practices, and norms that enhance integrity in the public and private sectors.
USAID’s Powering a Just Energy Transition Green Minerals Challenge (JET Minerals Challenge) — the inaugural activity under the Grand Challenge — launched in November 2022 and focuses on rooting out corruption in green mineral supply chains to fulfill the promise of an inclusive, sustainable, and just clean energy future. USAID will announce and recognize the selected JET Minerals Challenge semi-finalists as part of the second Summit.
4. Strengthening the Effectiveness of Activists and Social Movements
Nonviolent collective action — in the form of social movements — has been twice as effective as violence at achieving its stated goals, despite the significant challenges these movements face in the 21st century. Through the Powered by the People (PxP) initiative, USAID, alongside foundations and other multilateral donors, will seek to provide direct and accessible support that addresses the needs, opportunities, and challenges identified by activists and other civic actors engaged in nonviolent collective action, and explore how to best assist such actors.
Through this support, PxP will strengthen the agency, resiliency, and efficacy of activists and people-powered social movements that advance human rights, social justice, democracy, and inclusive development. USAID together with the successful applicants, other donors, foundations, researchers, and activists will collectively design this initiative in June 2023.
5. Tackling Technology and Democracy Challenges
New forms of digital innovation, including the steady integration of social media platforms, big data, and algorithmic decision-making into our lives and governments, has radically changed the global political and economic landscape over the past 15 years. In response, USAID’s Advancing Digital Democracy Initiative will work in partnership with governments, civil society, the private sector, and academia to provide comprehensive development support at the global, regional, and local level to tackle current technology and democracy challenges.
The initiative also helps with technological development so that the design, use, and governance of technology and data does not enable democratic decline and human rights abuses in the years to come.
It currently has two pilot programs in Serbia and Zambia, and is in the process of standing up six additional programs in 2023 that span Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America.
6. Advancing Global Electoral Integrity Norms
During a time when democratic elections around the world face an evolving and increasingly complex set of threats and challenges, sustained cooperation among global electoral integrity stakeholders is urgently needed. The Global Network for Securing Electoral Integrity is bringing together the international electoral integrity community — including regional and global networks of election integrity actors, donor agencies, intergovernmental organizations, and international NGOs — to establish, for the first time, a standing platform for strengthening cooperation and advancing electoral integrity norms and guidelines.
USAID has worked collectively with more than 30 international organizations, intergovernmental organizations, development agencies, and election networks to develop the Global Network. In advance of the second Summit, the Global Network will publicly launch with an initial focus on two priority issues: safeguarding the independence of election management bodies and supporting genuine and inclusive public debate on electoral reform.
Find more information on the second Summit for Democracy here.
About the Author
Jessica Benton Cooney is the Senior Communications and Outreach Specialist in USAID’s Center for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance.
