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Peace and democracy: Can ballots replace bullets?
Summary
3:00-4:30 pm (CET/Geneva time)
An online conversation between experts and parliamentarians to bridge International Day of Democracy (15 September) and International Day of Peace (21 September).
In 2007, Switzerland accidently invaded Liechtenstein when 170 soldiers, lost in the rain, unknowingly crossed the unmarked border. While the incident was a source of amusement for the media, it underscored a more serious point: democracies rarely wage war against one another. This principle, known as democratic peace theory, posits that the more democratic a country, the less likely it is to engage in conflict with others.
In 2024, with dozens of wars raging around the world, does this theory still hold true? What role for parliaments as agents of peace and reconciliation? Can the lens of human security and common security offer new pathways to peace?
Open to all MPs and those interested in democracy, peace and parliaments. The IPU will also launch its new toolkit for parliamentarians Human security and common security to build peace.
English, French interpretation will be available
Featuring:
Imran Ahmed is the founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate. He is an authority on social and psychological malignancies on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. He regularly appears in the media and in as an expert in how bad actors use digital spaces to harm others and benefit themselves, as well as how and why bad platforms allow them to do so. He advises politicians around the world on policy and legislation. Imran was inspired to start the Center after seeing the rise of antisemitism on the left in the United Kingdom and the murder of his colleague, Jo Cox MP, by a white supremacist, who had been radicalized in part online, during the EU Referendum in 2016.
Isabel Aninat is the Vice Chair of the Board of Advisors of International IDEA and Dean of the Law School of the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile. Previously she was a researcher at the Centro des Estudios Públicos. She has co-edited three books and is the author of several law and public policy articles. In 2019, Ms. Aninat was part of the technical commission that drafted the constitutional reform proposal for the constituent process in Chile. She has a law degree from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and an LLM from Columbia University. She serves on the Board of various Chilean think tanks and NGOs.
Thomas Carothers is the Director of the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an international affairs think tank. Widely recognized as a leading authority on democratization and international support for democracy, he has worked on democracy and governance assistance projects around the world for many public and private organizations. He is the author of numerous critically-acclaimed books and reports as well as many articles in prominent journals and newspapers. He has been a visiting faculty member at Oxford University, the Central European University, and Johns Hopkins SAIS. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the London School of Economics, and Harvard College.
Martin Chungong became the first African and first non-European to be elected IPU Secretary General in 2014. He was re-elected to a third term of office, which began in July 2022. With more than four decades of experience and knowledge of parliaments at national and international levels, he has dedicated his professional life to promoting and building democracy worldwide. He is highly committed to rejuvenating democracy, its processes and institutions and is driving the IPU’s efforts to bring more young people into parliaments worldwide.
The conversation will be moderated by Claire Doole, a former BBC correspondent who was based in Berlin, Brussels, Geneva and London. During her career, Claire Doole has interviewed some of the world’s leading statesmen including Nelson Mandela, Emmanuel Macron and Antonio Guterres. As a former spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency, International Federation of the Red Cross and WWF International, Claire Doole also specialises in humanitarian, environmental, health and development issues.