The Dutch ‘Democratie onder Druk’ coalition consists of a variety of democracy organisations, which have been joining forces for a year and a half to protect, strengthen, renew and improve democracy – anywhere in the world. Indeed, all over the world, democracy is under threat. Too many people feel unheard, more and more activists are persecuted when they stand up for their rights, more than ever, authoritarian and non-authoritarian politicians adapt laws to make democracy work for them instead of citizens.

On Monday 27 March 2023, our coalition discussed this importance of strengthening and renewing democracy. Both in Amsterdam Southeast, as in the Netherlands and the rest of the world. Democracy is the best way to serve people’s interests and the best guarantee of achieving peace. “Nothing about us, without us!”, is our motto in this regard.

On 10 November last year, we as a coalition presented a manifesto at the Democracy under Threat conference. This contained calls to put democracy as a subject much higher on the agenda (also in the Netherlands), to strengthen the rule of law (the government should better protect residents from that same government) and to fight corruption much more firmly, to establish an independent fund that organisations that want to strengthen democracy can make use of, to give more support to dissidents and fighters for democracy and human rights, to deploy more direct democratic procedures, to create more civic education and inclusiveness and to include a structural place in policy processes for future generations.