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US pledges new funding for global democracy

World ‘turning tide’ after backslide on democracy: Biden

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — U.S. President Joe Biden announced new funding to bolster democracies around the world at a meeting on Wednesday, although dozens of countries were holding back on a summit declaration laying out commitments to democratic principles.

Amid criticism his administration has made little progress in advancing human rights and democracy in its foreign policy, Biden announced a planned $690 million in funding to help fight corruption, support free and fair elections and advance technologies that support democratic governments.

“We’re turning the tide here. As we often say, we’re at an inflection point in history here, when the decisions we make today are going to affect the course of our world for the next several decades for certain,” Biden said addressing the largely virtual Summit for Democracy, the second such event organized by the White House.

Although leaders of 120 nations were invited, a summit declaration — which included backing to basic

tenets of democracy like free and fair elections and called out Russia for its invasion of Ukraine — was initially endorsed by only 73 countries.

Twelve of those dissociated themselves from parts of the text, including India, Israel and the Philippines, which all opted out of a part backing accountability for human

rights abusers and acknowledging the importance of the International Criminal Court. “To meet the rising challenges to democracy worldwide, we commit to strengthen democratic institutions and processes and build resilience,” the declaration said.

A senior administration official said the declaration remained open and additional

countries could still endorse it.

“As is the case with any joint statement, negotiations can sometimes be intense. In this case, we were dealing with an extraordinarily large number of governments and some of the conversations went pretty far down to the wire,” said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.

World

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2023-03-31T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-31T07:00:00.0000000Z

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