Scholarship Programme for Indigenous and Afro-descendant Students
Education / Human rights
VOCES – Civil Society Voices for a More Sustainable Democracy: Dialogue between Europe and Latin America was a project co-funded by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Global Affairs and aimed at creating a space for the exchange of knowledge and perspectives between European and Latin American civil society actors on sustainable democracy issues.
According to Adam Przeworski and Guillermo O’Donnell, the term “sustainable democracy” was intended to underline the imperative need of many states in the world to extend their social action for the purposes of legitimacy and governance. Therefore, a democracy will be sustainable only if it has a good, more efficient and transparent institutional framework.
To meet these objectives, and to understand the possibilities of implementing the sustainability and rights agenda, it is necessary to count on civil society organizations. The participation of organized civil society represents a key factor of our democracy as recalled by the resolutions of the European Economic and Social Committee on the participation of organized civil society in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans 2022 and United for Democracy 2023.
In addition, Spain held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union for the fifth time in the second half of 2023 and set out to strengthen the role of civil society, involving it in various high-level forums and working meetings to discuss the European strategic agenda. Likewise, Spain, holding this presidency, intended to serve as a boost to Spanish foreign policy and represented a great opportunity to build a bridge with Latin America.
Thus, following the objectives of promoting democratic progress and the protection of human rights, FIBGAR was proposed to accompany this process by promoting a space for debate on sustainable democracy.
In this way, VOCES intended to give voice to European and Latin American organizations dedicated to the promotion of democracy, and to amplify its role as a ring of conjunction between political society and civil society.
To this end, a Call for Papers (CFP) was organized based on four main thematic areas: Justice and the Rule of Law; Human Rights and Environmental Protection; Freedom of Expression and Information; and Democratic Memory and Positive Peace. The selected contributions were reviewed and subsequently published. A series of 6 webinars were organized to present the contributions and were open to representatives of civil society, citizens, civil servants, academics, etc. from Europe and Latin America.
For more information visit the VOCES website
The contributions of the participants are available here.
Recording of the seminars.
