Themes we work on
Across the world, WFD works on accountability and transparency, elections, participation and openness, inclusion, environmental democracy, and women's political leadership.
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A WFD team member at the Democracy Action Partnership in Indonesia, which brought together experts and leaders from across South East Asia to consider the way forward to end violence against women in politics.
WFD works to strengthen democracy across the world. Our work focuses on:
Women's political leadership
We support women leaders to fully and equally participate in decision-making, an essential step in bringing about better outcomes for everyone - including women and girls.
Environmental democracy
Huge changes to all levels of society, politics and businesses are required to respond to climate change. This means we need effective and responsive democratic institutions, accountable systems of governance, and strong political will.
Our environmental democracy programmes help bring about the action needed to address climate change.
Elections
We support electoral integrity, by encouraging reforms that contribute to free and fair elections and organising election observation.
This helps make sure everyone gets to have a say in how their society is run and can influence change for the better.
Inclusion
We are helping decision-makers include and consider people who are often overlooked or discriminated against.
This helps make sure governments hear everyone’s voice. When decision-makers can hear everyone's voice, they can make sure their policies do not leave anyone behind.
Our work on inclusion focuses on young people, LGBT+ people and persons with disabilities.
Participation and openness
We are building civil society’s ability to access decision-making. We help to open up access to decision-making, from helping parliaments speak to citizens to advising on citizens' assemblies.
This means that when people in power make decisions about anything from education to health or the environment, they can take citizens’ views and interests into account.
Accountability and transparency
We are supporting parliaments to check how governments spend public money and assess the impact of legislation
This helps parliaments make sure the spending, laws and policies improves people lives, for example by addressing climate change or reducing inequality, while avoiding excessive public debt.
WFD works to strengthen democracy across the world. Since the fall of the Berlin wall, we have been helping to make countries' political systems fairer, more inclusive, and more accountable. We do this by working with:
- Parliaments
- Political parties
- Electoral bodies
- Civil society