Older Than Turtles

Thank you very much, Ida, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Council of Europe Youth Center in Budapest, the wildest place in town, where all sorts of cool and important things are unleashed on a regular basis.

Thank you again, Ida, not only for the introduction, but first and foremost for what you and your colleagues have been doing over the last year. It is a major task to put together such a big event, and I would particularly like to thank you for coordinating this effort. This is also, at least for the time being, the last event that Ida will be doing as part of the Council of Europe team, so let this not be a goodbye, but rather a “thank you so far.”

I would also like to thank all our partners in this important, regular event, the Forum. We are very pleased to be with you. This event has real merit and produces results, and in the times we live in, it would be an understatement to say that we need results on human rights education and human rights in general.

In my brief intervention, I will zoom out and speak about democracy as well. I do this not only because I am the Director for Democracy and almost contractually obliged to mention it every time I speak in public, but also because we have to put this event and the importance of human rights education into context. You cannot organize education on safe navigation on the third deck of an ocean liner without having somebody on the bridge looking out for the icebergs, and we all agree that today’s icebergs are many, big, and scary.

Democracy is inseparable from human rights. We are not talking about two different things. You cannot have the kind of democracy that the Council of Europe was set up to defend and sustain without an effective system for the protection of human rights, and you cannot have such a system without proper human rights education in all its different forms. Equally, you cannot expect an effective system for human rights protection outside democracy.

This is also linked to my responsibilities for the new Democratic Pact for Europe, a major initiative the Council of Europe launched this year as a follow-up to the Summit of Heads of State and Government to organize an effective response to democratic backsliding. This event is an important contribution to that effort.

When talking about democracy, it is striking how quickly the tone changed. A few years ago, nobody really talked about democracy being in crisis. There was a widespread belief that democracy and human rights formed a natural, inevitable, irreversible path that everyone would eventually follow. Then, suddenly, we moved from denial to acceptance, skipping some of the normal steps in between, and now we almost behave as if we are already grieving for democracy. That is dangerous.

One reason for the misconception that democracy is inevitable and invincible is related to the notion that democracy has been with us for a very long time, over two thousand years, since ancient Greece. Right, democracy did exist there, and that system lasted for about 200 years before Antipater of Macedonia put an end to the civilizational erosion unleashed by Athenian democracy upon its citizens and the world. After that came a very long period of darkness, without democracy until the mid to late 19th century, when the first modern forms began to emerge.

After the First World War, constitutional republics erupted across Europe when the empires fell apart. A little more than 100 years ago, people were convinced, as many of us were not long ago, that this was the irreversible, natural path for Europe and beyond. But a few years later, those democracies had largely disappeared, and we know what followed. After the Second World War, and again after 1989, democracy re-emerged, accompanied by the belief that it would simply continue, regardless of what we did or failed to do to protect and invest in it. That belief is a serious mistake, and we are now seeing its consequences.

If we add up the years of modern democratic existence, they do not even amount to a full century. There are turtles in Madagascar that live longer than that. Clearly, something has to be done. The European Union is acting with its Democracy Shield, and in the Council of Europe we have launched the process for the new Democratic Pact for Europe. This Pact responds to three key needs.

First, it counters the feeling that the battle has already been lost. That sense of helplessness—that things have gone too far, that opponents of democracy are too strong, that we have lost our agency—is dangerous. The new Democratic Pact for Europe sends a political message: it is not too late. It brings together all those who still believe in this model of democracy and aims to restore the self-confidence and resolve needed to stand up to the threats and challenges undermining it. We must acknowledge the magnitude of the problem and end denial, but at the same time affirm that we are able to defend democracy because it is too important and the alternatives are too frightening.

Second, the Pact addresses the question of what we mean when we say “democracy.” Democracy is a broad, popular term, interpreted in many ways across different contexts. The Council of Europe was set up to defend a specific model: liberal democracy. The term may no longer be fashionable, but it refers to a system based not only on regular, free and fair elections, but also on an effective constitutional and legal framework for the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Attacks on this model often begin with attacks on human rights and the protection of certain groups and individuals, attempting to unravel the entire system for everyone.

One of the early outcomes of the Pact process is the work on parameters for the Reykjavik Principles for Democracy, recently adopted by the Steering Committee on Democracy. These parameters provide detailed normative guidance on what it means to be a democracy today. Based on the eleven Reykjavik principles, they set out in detail what a government should and should not do to be considered a functioning democracy.

Third, the Pact distinguishes between democracy itself and the administration of democracy. When people say they are frustrated with democracy, they are usually not rejecting democratic values as such. They are frustrated with how democracy is administered, with the gap between what politicians say and what they do. If nothing is done, this frustration can eventually lead people to reject democratic values and embrace alternative ideologies and narratives. At the same time, this frustration also shows the path forward: improving how democracy is administered, restoring trust, strengthening governance, and finding new, creative, and innovative ways to sustain democracy and enforce democratic values in a rapidly changing environment.

The new Democratic Pact for Europe works across three pillars. The first is learning and participating in democracy. The second is protecting democracy. The third is innovating for democracy. This Forum contributes in a very important way to at least two, if not all three, of these pillars.

Let me say a few words about the role of young people. The Council of Europe’s decision to step up its action is, to a large extent, thanks to young people. They were the first to insist that something needed to be done, at a time when much of the political decision-making in Europe and beyond was still in denial. They did this through many initiatives, including the “Democracy Here, Democracy Now” campaign, which significantly contributed to the Summit and its results. This led to the youth perspective adopted by ministers responsible for youth in the Council of Europe member states in October in Malta, where most delegations already included youth representatives in their ministerial teams, putting the youth perspective into practice.

In human rights and human rights education, the role of young people will be essential to success. Our priority now is to apply the youth perspective across all areas of public policymaking. This may sound technical or even boring, but it is, in fact, a game-changing, revolutionary concept. The aim is not simply to be nice to young people or to stop them from complaining, but to invest in our collective capacity to find effective solutions to the problems we face. We will not be able to find those solutions without the specific experience, perspective, creativity, energy, disruptiveness, and impatience that young people bring.

If we do this—starting here and now, on the crucial subject of education for human rights—we will already be taking a big step forward. It is encouraging that this Forum is not only taking stock but also looking ahead, which is exactly what is needed. In short, if we want democracy to survive and grow old—older than turtles, to begin with—we need young people. Perhaps we should aim for the Greenland sharks, which can live for 500 years.

Thank you very much.