This article is written by Raul Cordenillo, international communications and public policy advisor (self-employed)

In June 2010, I was tasked with setting up a neutral platform where the heads of the world's leading intergovernmental regional organisations could come together and candidly share their initiatives and experiences around democracy.

These regional organisations included the African Union; my former employer, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; the European Union (EU), the League of Arabs States, the Organization of American States (OAS), the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and the Pacific Islands Forum.

One does not need a degree in international relations to recognise that bringing all these organisations together would not be an easy feat. There had to be compelling reasons for these VIPs to take time from their busy schedules to participate, as well as a venue with a conducive environment for such a dialogue to take place. My task was to find these reasons and create such a space.

Is there a gap to fill?

The very first thing that had to be done was to ascertain whether such a meeting among regional organisations already existed. At that time, there was indeed such a platform, and this was in the form of a biennial retreat organised by the UN Secretary-General.

The retreat is premised on Chapter VIII of the UN Charter (on Regional Arrangements). This particular Chapter places importance on the role of regional organisations in the maintenance of international peace and security for which the Security Council has the primary responsibility.

Other than this meeting presided by the UN, there were bilateral relations between the regions, which are sustained by meetings. The most prominent among these are those overseen by the EU, which serves as a venue for discussing political cooperation, as well as promoting trade and investment alongside development cooperation.

The other bilateral meetings, on the other hand, tend to be sporadic and are usually limited by resource considerations.

Thus, other than those done under the auspices of the UN or led by the EU, there was no meeting among a group of regional organisations. Moreover, at that time, there was no platform for them to talk about their experiences in promoting democracy in their regions or their member states.

Is it within their mandate?

Another important area to look at was whether there were mandates in the charters of these regional organisations to work on democracy. Without these bases, there would have been no vantage for the heads of regional organisations to engage with one another.

There are different models of running a democracy, key principles of democracy and even varying characteristics of democracies, but there is no one "right way"

A close look at the mandates of the various regional organisations revealed different types of expectations from their respective member states.

Some organisations had norm-setting powers, which enabled them to build standards that their member states should be guided by. This meant empowered departments and highly capable staff that observed elections and ran capacity building programs.

Other organisations were only expected to exchange information among their member states, or even just had aspirational language vis-a-vis democracy in their charters. In some cases, this left a lot of room for the organisations to realise their work vis-a-vis democracy.

However, given that democracy is not explicitly mandated, there are minimal resources — human and financial — attached to it.

Are they willing to engage?

Having established that there were these bases to talk about democracy, it was now important to ascertain whether there was room for engagement and how that was going to come about. In this regard, it was important to set the ground rules for a neutral platform.

The engagement among regional organisations was not meant to pass judgement. No organisation was in the lead and could talk down on the others.

After all, there is no one "right way" to do democracy. There are different models of running a democracy, key principles of democracy and even varying characteristics of democracies, but there is no one "right way".

The engagement must be that among peers. It is really meant to highlight trends in the respective regions, share experiences, build knowledge and learn from one another.

This was taken as the premise by which these various organisations were approached to join the inter-regional dialogue. The envisaged neutral platform appealed to the regional organisation, and the idea of sharing experiences and learning from others was very much welcomed.

Is it relevant and useful?

As a final step, it was crucial to make the meetings relevant and useful to all.

At the same time, it was also important to establish ownership among the regional organisations. Thus, it was agreed that each organisation would host the annual high-level meetings and that each meeting would focus on a theme that would be selected by the host organisation.

The theme would be timely and would allow not just for the host organisation to highlight their experiences and successes but also enable the other organisations to showcase the progress of their work, including innovations.

After a series of preparatory meetings where all of the modalities were discussed, the very first high-level meeting of the Inter-Regional Dialogue on Democracy was launched in Washington DC, the USA in 2011.

It was hosted by the Secretary-General of the OAS, Jose Miguel Insulza by the OAS in Washington DC. The theme of the meeting was the "role of regional organisations in promoting the integrity of elections".

In sum, when initiating an inter-regional policy dialogue, three things are key. You must establish that there is a need for such a dialogue. You must know what could motivate your target participants to join the dialogue.

Finally, you must communicate clearly to each of the participants why a dialogue is important and what they could obtain by engaging in it. — Raul Cordenillo

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