Abbreviation | IRI |
---|---|
Formation | 1983 |
Headquarters | 1225 I Street NW, Suite 800, Washington, D.C., U.S. |
Key people | Daniel Twining (President) Dan Sullivan (Chairman of the Board of Directors) |
Budget | $78m (2008) [1] |
Revenue (2016) | $55,185,831 [2] |
Expenses (2016) | $55,053,587 [2] |
Staff | 400 (2008) [1] |
Website | iri |
The International Republican Institute (IRI) is an American nonprofit organization founded in 1983 and funded and supported by the United States federal government. [3] Most of its board is drawn from the Republican Party. [4] Its public mission is to advance freedom and democracy worldwide by helping political parties to become more issue-based and responsive, assisting citizens to participate in government planning, and working to increase the role of marginalized groups in the political process, including women and youth. [5] It has been repeatedly accused of foreign interference and has been implicated in the 2004 Haitian coup d'état. It was initially known as the National Republican Institute for International Affairs.
IRI's programs include assisting political parties and candidates develop their values and institutional structures, good governance practices, civil society development, civic education, women's and youth leadership development, electoral reform and election monitoring, and political expression in closed societies. Since its founding, IRI has been active globally in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East.
In 2018, U.S. Senator John McCain, who served as IRI's chairman of the board for 25 years, informed IRI's board of directors that he was stepping down. McCain recommended U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan to succeed him. [6]
IRI was founded in 1983 following then U.S. President Ronald Reagan's 1982 speech before the British Parliament in Westminster in which he proposed a broad objective of helping countries build the infrastructure of democracy. Quoting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Reagan said, "we must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings." [7]
IRI operates globally, providing training and assistance to political parties. As a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, IRI plays no part in domestic U.S. politics. However, the majority of its board are drawn from the Republican Party. [4] Its sister organization, the National Democratic Institute, draws mainly from the Democratic Party.
In 1995, IRI established the Freedom Award "to honor individuals who have worked to advance freedom and democracy in their countries and around the world". Its first recipient was Alfredo Cristiani, who served as President of El Salvador from 1989 to 1994. Other recipients have included Miguel Obando y Bravo, the Archbishop of Managua from 1970 to 2005, Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States, Aung San Suu Kyi, the State Counsellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Myanmar, Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of Liberia from 2006 to 2018, and others. [8]
IRI received funding for its Haiti programs from USAID from 2002 until 2004. [9] [10] IRI ended its Haiti program in summer 2007. [11]
On January 29, 2006, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television premiered a documentary film about the IRI's role in the coup, Haiti: Democracy Undone. [12]
Brian Dean Curran, U.S. Ambassador at the time and a former Clinton appointee, accused IRI of undermining his efforts to hold peaceful negotiations between Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his opposition after contested parliamentary elections in 2000. According to Curran, Stanley Lucas, then IRI's representative in Haiti, advised opposition leaders not to compromise with Aristide, who was later driven from power. Curran also alleges that Lucas represented himself to the opposition as the Washington, D.C. envoy and his advice, which was contrary to that of the U.S. State Department, was advice from the U.S. government. [13] IRI responded to Ambassador Curran's allegations in a letter to the New York Times. [14]
In 2009, IRI received $550,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy to "promote and enhance the participation of think tanks in Mexico and Honduras as pressure groups to impel political parties to develop concrete positions on key issues" and to "support initiatives to implement political positions during the campaigns in 2009" following the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis. [15]
In 2008, the government of Cuba accused former U.S. congressional staff member Caleb McCarry of orchestrating the 2004 Haitian coup and attempting to provoke a coup d'état in Cuba. [16]
According to an April 15, 2011 article in The New York Times , IRI, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and other groups were credited for training activists in the Middle East, including Egypt and Tunisia, who advocated for reform in authoritarian regimes. [17]
In 2011, Egypt's Ministry of Justice issued a report on foreign funding of NGOs operating in Egypt that alleged that IRI had received approximately $7 million by USAID for the Egyptian 2011–12 elections. The military rulers who gained control of Egypt following the January 2011 revolution considered this foreign funding interference in Egypt's internal affairs. [18]
IRI has operated programs in Poland since 1991, where it says it has worked to unite and organize a diverse range of "center and center right" political parties together to create the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), which governed Poland in coalition with the Freedom Union (UW) party between 1997 and 2001. [19] It also said that it provided training in political campaigning, communications training and research which helped organise and create the AWS. [19]
In August 2020, IRI president Daniel Twining and four other U.S.-based democracy and human rights organizations and six U.S. Republican lawmakers were sanctioned by the Chinese government for supporting the Hong Kong pro-democracy movement in the 2019–20 Hong Kong protests. Leaders of the five organizations who were sanctioned alleged that the unspecified sanctions were a tit-for-tat measure in response to the earlier sanctioning by the U.S. government of 11 Hong Kong officials, which was a reaction to the enactment of the Hong Kong national security law at the end of June 2020. [20] [21]
IRI is heavily engaged in Africa, currently working in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. [22]
In the Asia-Pacific region, IRI is active in Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, China, Fiji, Indonesia, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, and Vanuatu. [23]
IRI announced its decision to open a field office in Taiwan in October 2020. [24]
In Eurasia, IRI currently works in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. [25]
In Europe, IRI operates in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkey. [26]
In Latin America and the Caribbean, IRI operates in Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. [27]
In the Middle East and North Africa, IRI operates in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Tunisia. [28]
The IRI Freedom Fund supports IRI's international operations. [29]
Countering China’s Information Manipulation: A Toolkit for Understanding and Action, September 6, 2023 [30]
Countering China’s Information Manipulation in the Indo-Pacific and Kazakhstan, June 27, 2023 [31]
National Survey of Bangladesh | March-April 2023 [32]
Engaging Marginalized Youth in Laos, March 2, 2021 [33]
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization headquartered in New York City that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policymakers, companies, and individual human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants, and political prisoners.
Freedom House is a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. It is best known for political advocacy surrounding issues of democracy, political freedom, and human rights. Freedom House was founded in October 1941, with Wendell Willkie and Eleanor Roosevelt serving as its first honorary chairpersons. Most of the organization's funding comes from the U.S. State Department and other government grants. It also receives funds from various semi-public and private foundations, as well as individual contributions.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization in the United States founded in 1983 to advance democracy worldwide, by promoting political and economic institutions, such as political groups, trade unions, free markets, and business groups.
The European People's Party (EPP) is a European political party with Christian-democratic, liberal-conservative, and conservative member parties. A transnational organisation, it is composed of other political parties. Founded by primarily Christian-democratic parties in 1976, it has since broadened its membership to include liberal-conservative parties and parties with other centre-right political perspectives. On 31 May 2022, the party elected as its President Manfred Weber, who was also EPP's Spitzenkandidat in 2019.
A publicly funded election is an election funded with money collected through income tax donations or taxes as opposed to private or corporate funded campaigns. It is a policy initially instituted after Nixon for candidates to opt into publicly funded presidential campaigns via optional donations from tax returns. It is an attempt to move toward a one voice, one vote democracy, and remove undue corporate and private entity dominance.
The International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) is an international, non-profit organisation founded in 1987. Based in Arlington, Virginia, United States, the organization assists and supports elections and electoral stakeholders. Since 1987, IFES has worked in 145 countries and has programs in more than 50 countries throughout Asia-Pacific, Africa, Eurasia, the Middle East, and North Africa, and the Americas.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI), is a non-profit American NGO whose stated mission is to "support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability". It is funded primarily by the United States and other Western governments, by major corporations and by nonprofits like the Open Society Foundations.
General elections were held in Haiti on 7 February 2006 to elect the replacements for the interim government of Gérard Latortue, which had been put in place after the 2004 Haiti rebellion. The elections were delayed four times, having originally been scheduled for October and November 2005. Voters elected a president, all 99 seats in the Chamber of Deputies of Haiti and all 30 seats in the Senate of Haiti. Voter turnout was around 60%. Run-off elections for the Chamber of Deputies of Haiti were held on 21 April, with around 28% turnout.
Lorne Whitney Craner was an American foreign policy expert, has served in key diplomatic and policymaking roles in three administrations and three times as president of major non-governmental organizations.
Kent Richmond Hill is Senior Fellow for Eurasia, Middle East, and Islam at the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington, D.C..
Hong Kong–United States relations are bilateral relations between Hong Kong and the United States.
Timor Leste, since its creation in 1999, has received aid from many different parts of the International Community to help stabilise this new country. Despite this international support, East Timor still has stability issues.
Democracy promotion by the United States aims to encourage governmental and non-governmental actors to pursue political reforms that will lead ultimately to democratic governance.
Rating, or fully the Sociological group "Rating", is a Ukrainian independent, non-governmental research organization, that specializes in conducting all types of sociological research in compliance with international standards approved by the ESOMAR and WAPOR codes. It conducts national and regional political, thematic, marketing and media research on a regular basis. Sociological group "Rating" is a part of the Rating GroupTM "group of companies ". The company has branches in Kyiv and Lviv. The network of interviewers is composed of more than 500 people operating throughout Ukraine. The company is a permanent member of the Sociological Association of Ukraine.
The McCain Institute is a Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan think tank established in cooperation with Arizona State University with the stated mission to "fight for democracy, human dignity, and security for a world that is free, safe, and just for all people." The Institute was formed in 2012 and is named after U.S. Senator and 2008 Republican Party presidential nominee John McCain. Based in Washington, D.C., the McCain Institute is part of Arizona State University. Its executive director is Evelyn Farkas, an American national security advisor, author, and foreign policy analyst, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia.
Eric Bjornlund is an American expert in democratization assistance and election observation and co-founder and president of Democracy International and the author of Beyond Free and Fair: Monitoring Elections and Building Democracy. Bjornlund is also a lawyer and adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
M. Dane Waters is a political strategist, elephant protection advocate, writer, and direct democracy advocate. He has worked on six continents providing strategic advice to campaigns, governments, activists, academic institutions, and NGO’s. He has also consulted on projects with the United Nations, the U.S. Department of State and the International Republican Institute.
Veronika Valeryevna Tsepkalo or Veranika Valereuna Tsapkala is a Belarusian political activist.
Hong Kong Democracy Council (HKDC) is a Washington, DC-based nonpartisan, non-governmental organization (NGO) with a stated mission of "protect[ing] Hong Kong's basic freedoms, autonomy, and the rule of law." HKDC's research and political work focuses on "educational outreach, community empowerment, and policy advocacy".
Library resources about International Republican Institute |