IRI’s the Ideathon, is a place  to apply practical skills for political and civic participation. Inspired by the concept of a “hackathon,” the Ideathon has been held in over eleven countries, including Panama, Thailand, Haiti, and Korea, and uses a competition model to encourage young people to challenge themselves and their ideas.

Through youth-led leadership groups like Generation Democracy (GenDem) and the European Youth Democracy Network (EDYN), IRI helps young people contribute to their nation’s development. IRI understands that young people themselves are able to provide the best, most nuanced understanding of youth issues.  For example, as a result of IRI’s research on barriers to youth civic engagement in Laos, Proud to be Us Laos developed a Peer Educators Program, a program now funded by IRI.

IRI supports young leaders through investments in civic and political engagement, ensuring that young people play a role in protecting democratic governance and overcoming sustainable development challenges. IRI provides young people with critical civic education training in Ukraine as well as space to launch community projects and dialogues to get out the vote in Mongolia.

IRI works to ensure young people have access to peaceful ways to express their insights and concerns. In Indonesia, IRI holds multi-party Emerging Leaders Academies (ELAs) across the country to train young party members on leadership, party operations, and campaigning. In Turkey, IRI’s Youth Fellows have supported political parties, demonstrating to senior political figures the benefit of working with younger generation in decision making.

Recognizing that intersectionally vulnerable youth – such as young women, LGBTQI+ youth and young people with disabilities – are particularly at risk for political exclusion, IRI provides support to amplify often excluded voices. In Panama, IRI partnered with Colón’s Black Ethnicity Foundation (Fundación de la Etnia Negra) to help it promote the rights of young Afro-Panamanians in their quest to make their demands heard.

Generation Democracy – IRI’s flagship youth network – consists of over 325 young leaders from across 81 countries. Over six years of its existence, GenDem has created a pool of young people who promote civic and political participation and expose their colleagues to new approaches and ideas.

GenDem members have access to subaward funding, opportunities to serve as elected officials on the group’s board, and ways to participate in global panels to share their expertise. Recognizing that youth-led programming works best when it is buttressed by preparation and support, Generation Democracy provides learning in virtual training sessions and Global Summits that bring members together to share best practices and lessons learned.

Throughout Europe, IRI works to advance young people’s role in revitalizing democracy, rights, and governance through networks that foster meaningful connections across ideologies and borders. In a joint effort between IRI and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), EDYN is a coalition of more than 300 young leaders from 22 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. EDYN members are committed to promoting political and civic engagement in their communities. They make an impact through cross-border networking, best practice exchanges, projects supported by IRI, and individually tailored professional development. ALPI encourages emerging political leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia to realize the benefits of working across parties while equipping them with the political skills they need to advocate for greater youth participation and representation in politics. To replicate ALPI’s success in other countries, IRI has created a toolkit so interested parties can apply best practices that have prepared ALPI members to overcome barriers to youth political participation.

IRI intentionally includes opportunities for young people to engage across sectors. IRI partners range from universities to media firms to business leaders. For example, ahead of the 2021 election in Ethiopia, IRI partnered with a local television station to launch a TV series connecting Ethiopian youth so they could exchange ideas and debate some of the country’s most pressing issues. In Bangladesh, IRI partners with political party student wings to bridge the ongoing political divide and understand best practices for non-violence and build critical thinking skills. Through the McCain Fellowship for Freedom (MFF), IRI brings together a global cohort of rising political and public leaders who are committed to political and economic freedom.

To promote lessons learned from these programs and others, IRI is collaborating with CEPPS partners to develop a Youth Democracy and Governance (DRG) Cross-Sectoral Initiative (CSI) toolkit which will serve as a resource for youth development practitioners and young leaders as they design and implement cross-sectoral programs and initiatives.ms and initiatives.

Men and women are often disparately impacted by conflict and the policies and interventions designed to promote stabilization, reconstruction, and durable peace. Whether a society is entrenched in conflict or consolidating democracy, there are demands and opportunities for women’s inclusion. Recognizing the profound effect that women’s participation in public life has on a country’s security, justice, and resilience as described in the United Nations Security Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, IRI empowers women to seize opportunities during periods of conflict and transition while also building skills for them to engage in long-term political processes in advancement of sustainable peace and greater prosperity for all. As systemic inequality faced by women and girls serves as a known driver of conflict,  IRI’s women’s empowerment programming works to mitigate conflict at its source.

Increasing women’s participation in public life brings significant benefits to a country’s stability. Yet women remain underrepresented in public life around the world. IRI uses its WDN SheVotes toolkit to identify and address the three types of interlocking and mutually reinforcing barriers to public life that women face. The first is individual barriers, which impede women’s agency and efficacy. The second impediment is institutional and governmental barriers, which include legislative and regulatory provisions that undermine—through omission or commission—women’s participation. And the third is societal, which includes a patriarchal system and/or misogyny that exclude women from participating fully in the public sphere. These barriers create different expectations for women and men, shape the dynamics between and within them, and affect individual decision-making power and experiences.

To address these challenges, IRI’s political and civic participation programming centers on the following three pillars: the first pillar broadens women’s understanding of how to participate in political processes and why that engagement is important. Leveraging WDN’s Women’s Leadership School and Women’s Political Leadership Academy curricula, this pillar offers leadership and skills training that builds self-confidence and introduces women to avenues for public engagement.

The second pillar aims to build a critical mass. IRI helps women develop connections with people in civic and political networks. It also builds their skills to run for office and participate in civil society and political parties using such resources as WDN’s Toolkit for Effective Activism, Ask a Woman to Run curriculum, and its Transformative Alliances Toolkit.

Last, IRI equips women with the technical and soft skills to serve effectively once in positions of leadership, utilizing WDN’s Gender-Responsive Policymaking Toolkit and Violence Against Women in Politics curriculum. As part of this pillar’s programming, IRI supports women to promote gender-responsive policies and inspire a new generation of women leaders.

Gender-responsive policymaking addresses the different needs and priorities of everyone, regardless of their sex. This leads to better policies and ultimately establishes a more just, productive, and peaceful world. Gender-responsive policymaking is simply smart policymaking.

Via WDN’s Gender-Responsive Policymaking Toolkit, and its Transformative Alliances Toolkit, IRI builds a common understanding of how gender norms, roles, and power imbalances affect policymaking. IRI also supports gender-responsive policymaking and builds the skills to integrate gender in the policymaking process. With this work, IRI helps to equip female and male leaders – in government positions, civil society and political parties – with the tools and knowledge to incorporate gender considerations in policy, to work to reverse gender inequality, and to correct power imbalances. By supporting women leaders, cultivating male allies, providing technical training and resources, and running forums to share best practices and lessons learned, IRI and its partners can shape how policies are created. IRI’s work in addressing gender-based violence, in all its myriad forms, and promoting women’s economic empowerment are particularly important.

IRI utilizes rigorous social science methods to identify and track program outcomes, to ensure interventions are evidence-driven, and to capture what works (and what does not). This work is done both in-house and in collaboration with leading academic and research partners, such as the Political Violence FieldLab, D-Arch, and EGAP. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, IRI’s research efforts are developed and implemented in collaboration with program teams and community actors to ensure efforts are appropriately targeted, culturally sensitive, and rooted in the local context.

By design, IRI research efforts are intended to generate actionable learning for IRI program teams and for the broader DRG community. For example, impact evaluations of a training program targeting female politicians in Sri Lanka offer lessons for the design and sustainability of empowerment interventions. Deep-dive qualitative research, part of a series of “life histories” projects conducted in Colombia, the Sahel, Burkina Faso, Cote D’Ivoire, Benin, Ghana and Togo, capture richly textured individual perspectives that inform approaches and targeting. Finally, a partnership with D-Arch led to the Closing Space Barometer, a forecasting tool that can help DRG practitioners anticipate and respond to closing or opening democratic space.

Our monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems prioritize participatory, utilization-focused, and complexity-aware approaches to ensure they yield applicable takeaways for practitioners and policymakers. Such approaches include evaluations to understand experiences of diverse local stakeholders and empower them to define success and using complexity-aware monitoring techniques such as Most Significant Change, Systems Mapping, Outcome Mapping and Ripple Effect Mapping that allow our partners to define and track their own goals and progress. We use a variety of M&E approaches and methods that allow for rapid data collection, analysis, and application in real time.

In line with our goal to build sustainable M&E systems and capacity, we empower our local partners to undertake meaningful monitoring and evaluation and efforts that guide their decision-making, not just fulfill funder requirements. By providing M&E mentorship and coaching as well as M&E tools and techniques, we empower our local partners to be involved in every stage of M&E design and implementation. By investing in our partners’ M&E capacity, we are preparing them to design and lead their countries’ own development priorities.

Inclusive M&E approaches that incorporate diverse perspectives ensure that IRI’s efforts capture factors related to marginalization and underrepresentation. With on-the-ground perspectives embedded in all our processes, we balance rigor with participant security to ensure all M&E activities are conducted ethically and do no harm to participants.

In fluid environments success often requires an intentionally flexible and responsive management approach. Recognizing this, IRI employs a range of methods and tools to help its team and partners to regularly pause, reflect, and adjust course as necessary. IRI’s focus on adaptive management is intrinsic to its character as a learning organization. Adaptive management requires organizational flexibility, in systems and approaches, a comfort with iteration, and a commitment to leveraging an evolving evidence base and understanding of local contexts to ensure interventions are relevant, responsive, and minimize risks. IRI’s adaptive management approaches seek to look outside familiar disciplinary silos to absorb, tailor, and apply lessons from other fields to the democracy and governance sector.

IRI’s two-pronged approach to information integrity focuses on increasing the availability and distribution of accurate, reliable information and reducing the impact of misinformation and hate speech on civic discourse and political processes. Given that all information ecosystems are unique and prone to rapid evolution, IRI focuses on building the capacity of democratic actors to respond effectively in their local contexts, and then scaling and sharing relevant best practices globally.

IRI implements information integrity programs in every region of the world. Examples of projects include the BEACON project, a Europe-wide effort that that uses data-driven analysis to develop political alliances to push back against Russian soft-power meddling in democratic processes. The BEACON team published a Media Monitoring Handbook in 2021 that serves as a basic starting point for researchers interested in conducting media monitoring but are not sure where to start as well as those looking to ensure methodological best practices are being applied. In Taiwan, IRI has supported innovative grassroots responses to China-linked election and health disinformation in country, and platforms those approaches in Asia and elsewhere in order to inspire and inform other civil society organizations combatting similar threats. This project led to the release of a joint report “Detecting Digital Fingerprints: Tracing Chinese Disinformation in Taiwan” with Graphika and the Institute for the Future.

Key resources published:

• Combating Information Manipulation: A Playbook for Elections and Beyond, jointly created with the National Democratic Institute and Stanford Internet Observatory, to increase the capacity of democracy partners to identify, respond, and build resilience to efforts to undermine election-related information integrity.   
• Going Digital: A Playbook for Legislatures, designed to guide legislatures seeking to replicate core functions safely and efficiently online when normal operations have been disrupted, and also for those looking to increasingly incorporate digital operations in their everyday legislative business.

IRI recognizes that combating digital threats and countering the negative use of technology only goes so far – we believe it is critical to develop a positive alternative: a positive global vision for what a digitally empowered democracy could – and should – look like. Through IRI’s civic and govtech programs, we support democratic actors the world over who are already using technology to advance democratic principles. The beneficiaries we support range from citizens using the Internet to organize and equalize who has a voice; sub-national governments implementing policies and technologies to increase accountability; and national governments deploying technology platforms to develop greater consensus.

IRI examines these local and subnational efforts, determines what works and shares that information with the global community of civic- and govtech actors. We aim to inspire technologically experienced and inexperienced actors alike to invest in innovative efforts to advance towards a positive vision of a digitally native democracy. IRI is investing in supporting the scaling, replication, and entrenchment of these subnational initiatives through financial and technical support – starting small, finding what works, iterating, and expanding our efforts as needed.

Democratic activists across the globe face increasing censorship and state surveillance intended to thwart their efforts to promote rights and freedom. IRI beneficiaries operating in repressive environments find that technologies, such as censorship circumvention tools, are critical to enhancing the capacity of independent media to operate in Latin America; the counter-surveillance technologies that help CSOs collaborate in the Middle East; and, in Asia, piercing information firewalls and supporting activists in repressive societies.

IRI supports critical internet freedom technologies and tools widely used by at-risk IRI partners to enable citizens worldwide to exercise their fundamental human rights online and to share these key technologies and resources with IRI partners who are less knowledgeable and do not have access to these resources. There is often an artificial separation between those developing internet freedom technologies and traditional democracy programming, which has led to a systematic lack of awareness of these tools in the traditional democracy community, as well as user interfaces that are needlessly inaccessible to those without a technology background. IRI is working to bridge this gap and develop user-friendly tools for non-technical users.

Please find an inventory of applications that IRI’s Technology & Democracy Practice regards as trusted tools for the DRG community. This inventory is not intended to be comprehensive. It is a curated set of resources which may provide invaluable for democratic actors to operate and work in a practical, safe, and secure way. 

Digital safety has become essential to ensuring the full political participation of vulnerable groups and individuals as they govern, run for office, organize advocacy campaigns, or participate in social movements. Without appropriate digital safety measures, democratic activists can be undermined by their own governments, hate groups, or foreign malign actors cheaply, easily, and at scale. This is true for every democratic actor, regardless of whether they consider technology to be important to their work. Cybersecurity and digital safety capacity building is thus embedded every IRI program.

To minimize partners and beneficiaries’ digital risks when implementing IRI programming in the field, IRI’s Technology and Democracy team created resources, such as the Cybersecurity Campaign Playbook, and trains these democratic actors on digital safety and cybersecurity risks and best practices. IRI aims to normalize these measures throughout the lifecycle of each program and activity so that cybersecurity programming and security and safety considerations are built into the core framing of all IRI programs globally and that IRI adheres to “do no harm” principles.

Societies around the world are being shaped by the rapid development and use of new technologies. In the fight for democracy, both leaders for democratic change and autocrats alike leverage emerging technologies for their own purposes. With the increasing availability of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, an important dynamic will be how AI systems can be used to help move countries toward democracy; how autocrats and other malignant actors can use AI to thwart democratic change; and how democracies can ensure emerging technologies are developed with respect for democratic principles, human rights and fundamental freedoms.  

IRI’s Technology and Democracy Practice focuses on building partner capacity to better understand, use and influence emerging technologies in ways that enhance rather than undermine the democratic cause. IRI aims to identify risks emerging technologies present to democracies, identify opportunities for democratic applications, and develop recommendations to guide partners as they establish guardrails for the safe use of these technologies. IRI’s Generative AI and Democracy Working Group specifically aims to answer to these questions, and intends to map threats, and share concerns, opportunities and recommendations for democratic actors to keep in mind as they consider the use of artificial intelligence and its impacts on democracies.

IRI’s two-pronged approach to information integrity focuses on increasing the availability and distribution of accurate, reliable information and reducing the impact of misinformation and hate speech.  IRI helps democratic activists and leaders best respond in their local contexts; IRI then supports scaling and sharing these best practices globally. IRI works to minimize disinformation and hate speech through political party training and social media monitoring to inform platforms, policies, and education initiatives. IRI also supports a wide range of media outlets and civil society organizations (CSOs) to produce and disseminate impartial news and respond to disinformation through a network of online, print, and social media outlets.

In addition, IRI creates joint programs between the world’s leading disinformation researchers and local, country-focused researchers to expose global threats to information integrity.  IRI also designs digital ethics pacts that limit the use of misinformation in political campaigns and runs cybersecurity, digital safety, and information security information sessions for everyone involved in the democratic process.

IRI believes that citizen journalism is important because it allows people to participate in democracy-building and accountability in their communities. IRI provides training to CSOs, democratic activists, and young people on the tools and techniques necessary to capture and share important stories. Citizen journalists can also spark dialogue on the content they produce, strengthening communities’ democratic participation.

In many countries entrenched corruption, weak media and civil society oversight, and poor access to public information allow transnational criminal organizations to flourish. Journalists’ ability to investigate corruption varies considerably within and between countries. Reporting on corruption can be dangerous; reporters often face threats while investigating and publishing their findings. Reporters working in such environments need comprehensive training on investigative journalism, the sociology of corruption, and digital and personal security.

To improve accurate reporting on corruption, IRI relies on training and exchange programs to strengthen journalists’ and media organizations’ investigative skills. IRI also supports the development of a transnational network of journalists and civil society leaders who can help each other push for better government accountability.  IRI is doing just this sort of skills building in Latin America, including in Mexico, Guatemala, and Panama.

Over the years the role of conventional media has increasingly narrowed in scope, as digital and web-based platforms gain popularity. The growth of different forms of media presents its own challenges and opportunities for democracy and development. IRI works with young people and marginalized populations to teach them how to use digital tools and platforms to tell their own stories. IRI’s Digital Storytelling training provides instructions on building an audience, doing interviews, editing, and promoting completed work.

IRI works with a wide range of partners to make sure that technology plays a responsible role in citizen engagement by creating channels for the democracy community to share observations and concerns with the technology industry. To that end, IRI works with social media platforms and other tech companies to promote the needs and perspectives of democracy activists and democratic governments.

IRI has developed locally relevant civic education curricula for young leaders around the world. IRI has piloted virtual and in-person modules using participatory training to equip communities with an understanding of the principles of citizen-centered governance and provide opportunities to engage with local government stakeholders.

In Bangladesh, IRI has provided civic education to university students engaged in party politics and campus activism. IRI conducted focus group research across Bangladesh to understand student concerns; the responsiveness of the political system to youth issues; and how best to address the challenges young people face. IRI used this research to design a civic education curriculum on democratic norms, nonviolence, constitutional rights, and political activism.

Recognizing that democratic resilience depends on cultivating the next generation of democratic leaders, IRI empowers hundreds of young Ukrainians through its Youth Civic Academies (YCAs) to increase their understanding of the role citizens, the civic sector, and the government play in a democratic society. Similar to youth academies in Sri Lanka and the Solomon Islands, in 2020, the YCA successfully engaged young activists to work with local governments to analyze problems facing their communities and develop solutions.

To develop the long-term capacity of local organizations to participate in and influence political decision-making systems, IRI partners with CSOs to provide tailored capacity development support. IRI trainings cover a variety of topics, including monitoring, evaluation, and learning; financial management; program management; marketing and outreach; business development; and digital security.

IRI’s capacity-building programs employ a “learning by doing” approach that ensures the practicality and applicability of skills. For example, in IRI’s MERCI program, with participants from places like Tunisia and Jordan, participating CSOs can apply for grants to design projects aimed at increasing the political participation of youth and women; providing support for elected officials and upcoming candidates in creating policies that respond to their constituents needs; and economically empowering underserved communities such as gender-based violence survivors and people with disabilities.

Central to capacity building, IRI sees mentorships as a key tool for amplifying citizen voices and strengthening democratic institutions.  breaks the mentor and mentee relationship into five key steps, offering best practices and lessons learned from Laos, Panama, and Cuba.

IRI partners with civic actors to ensure citizens have access to comprehensible calls to action, means to participate, and ways to stay engaged in the long term. With a focus on youth and women, IRI has provided online social advocacy trainings to hundreds of Cambodian citizens, improving their capacity to push back against the closing space for civil society. This has resulted in digital advocacy campaigns, ranging from wildlife conservation to body positivity, which have reached tens of thousands of Cambodians and millions of people worldwide.

By bringing together communities around shared interests and goals, the Institute supports activists and CSOs effectively advocating for the change they wish to see. In Mexico, IRI supported civic coalitions in three states to advocate for the passage of strengthened anti-corruption legislation. Through tailored advocacy efforts, Mexico’s anti-corruption laws now contain policies and language provided by these coalitions – resulting in laws that go above and beyond Mexico’s federal requirements for such legislation.

To support peer-to-peer sharing and coordination for collaborative action, IRI developed the Networks Field Guide. This tool uses findings from an ex-post evaluation series, academic research, and IRI’s experience to provide guidance and resources for programs that seek to connect individuals or organizations to learn from each other and/or to engage in coordinated action. The tool has been used to design and implement evidence-based programming in more than 20 countries, including Mexico, Laos, Moldova, Iraq, and Mozambique.

IRI assists civic actors in restrictive spaces to promote human rights and democratic principles; counter autocratic rule; respond strategically to repression; and build networks of support. IRI’s assistance prioritizes participant-first interventions that provide partners with the appropriate skills, tools, and opportunities to accomplish their goals. For example, in Burma, IRI worked with pro-democratic actors on the Thai-Burma border for more than 20 years, delivering robust technical assistance to civil society and political leaders pushing for democratic reform. Since the 2021 coup, IRI has leveraged its extensive networks within and outside of Burma to provide holistic support for inclusive non-violent resistance efforts demanding a return to democratic rule.

IRI’s history of programming in these environments enables the Institute to build upon existing, trusted relationships with key actors and forge new partnerships in response to emerging opportunities and challenges. In Syria, IRI’s long-standing relationships with local civil society actors allowed the Institute to establish citizen-led conflict resolution mechanisms that supported successful de-escalation efforts with buy-in from local communities, as well as tribal, religious, and governmental figures.

LGBTQI+ populations face fundamental barriers that inhibit them from engaging in political and civic life. In many countries, the basic rights of such populations are not protected, including safety and access to justice. Accordingly, IRI places a premium on our principles of “do no harm” and using a cross-sectoral lens for related programs. For instance, in Bangladesh, we partnered with a local organization to promote the rights and awareness of transgender women through dance performances, television, and storytelling. In all programs, IRI responds to unique circumstances faced by local LGBTQI+ communities by conducting innovative research and assessments, such as a barrier analysis conducted in Laos and focus group discussions in Bangladesh.

IRI’s relationships with key stakeholders who can influence LGBTQI+ individuals’ lives – including government actors, civil society, political parties, and media – uniquely positions us to partner with LGBTQI+ populations. We partner with such organizations globally to bolster opportunities for LGBTQI+ populations to have their voices heard and rights protected. Examples include building advocacy for more inclusive laws and practices, connecting the LGBTQI+ community to government actors to ensure their priorities are heard, building inclusive elections through non-discrimination trainings and activism through art.

Persons with disabilities (PWD) face systemic and enduring exclusion and discrimination that makes it difficult to shift sociopolitical norms and necessary for them to fill leadership roles in their communities. To overcome barriers to political inclusion in countries like Jordan, IRI mainstreams PWD into leadership development programs. IRI also provides platforms for PWD advocates to promote the meaningful inclusion of all people in government processes. In Sri Lanka, for instance, an intern from IRI’s Emerging Leaders Academy used this platform to establish a disability focal point within the Department of Information.

Recognizing that representative governance is a hallmark of healthy democracies, a cornerstone of IRI’s inclusion efforts to remove barriers to political participation is to make sure all people have equal access to elections. For example, ahead of the 2019 elections in Guyana and the 2020 elections in Mongolia, IRI launched voter education campaigns to help PWD understand how to access information about how to exercise their right to vote. Following elections in countries including Georgia, Tunisia, and Nigeria, IRI released reports that analyzed PWD inclusion to bring awareness to the challenges and successes for ensuring all voices are represented in a democracy.

Religious, ethnic, linguistic, and indigenous minorities – and other such communities who are marginalized though they are a demographic majority in their country – comprise a substantial portion of the population in many countries in which we work. IRI ensures our interventions are inclusive of these groups, starting with diversity of participants in our activities. In counties including Tanzania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, IRI has partnered with communities that cross ethnic divisions, using approaches that harness sports, art, and film to promote engagement. An overarching theme of IRI’s work with minority groups is building tolerance, peaceful interaction, and collaboration across communities.

IRI empowers partners to translate civic and voter education materials to minority languages and disseminate them in communities where linguistic minorities live. Across programs, IRI creates a safe space for people of all identities by providing spaces for prayer, catering to a variety of diets, and working with trainers from minority communities.

IRI creates space and the ability for minority groups to play an active role in political processes, while building more inclusive, peaceful, and democratic political systems.

IRI works on preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) through the four-pillar Understand, Inform, Equip and Adapt methodology as described in the Institute’s Preventing Violent Extremism: A Technical Guide for Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance Implementers. IRI examines local contexts, identifying vulnerable populations and the leaders best situated to support anti-radicalization and resiliency efforts. Next, IRI builds on its civic and political networks to share data with those who can address issues of conflict or VE. IRI then develops, supports, and evaluates local P/CVE interventions, partnering with influential leaders.

This last is where creative solutions are key, and IRI relies on different programs in different regions. In the Sahel, the emphasis is on policy coordination between local and regional bodies. In Indonesia, the focus is on media training with journalists on responsible reporting to ease communal tensions, while in Lebanon and Tunisia, IRI works to boost women’s involvement in P/CVE. In all of these areas, IRI has done research to understand the dynamics of VE in a range of circumstances, including in the Philippines, Jordan, Bangladesh, and Kosovo, among others

When aiming to build peace in fractured regions IRI takes a whole of society approach to maintaining stability, preventing conflict, building institutions that can promote peace through transitions, and promoting community resilience. IRI’s approach in fragile and conflict-affected areas is to coordinate with legitimate actors and inform programming via a deep analysis of the situation. This is outlined in the Institute’s Conflict, Governance and Legitimacy Assessment Framework, which lays out the key steps required for successful peacebuilding and stabilization programming. IRI’s Field Guide for DRG Programming in Fragile and Conflict Affected Contexts provides insights on how to tailor interventions in fragile and conflict-affected areas based on rigorous evidence and conflict sensitivity considerations. Building on its conflict analysis, as well as evidence collected from its programming across the globe, IRI devises peacebuilding initiatives that address local conflict dynamics. This includes facilitating dialogue between conflicting parties, increasing the inclusion of marginalized groups in peacebuilding, and creating policies that address the root causes of conflict.

IRI’s peacebuilding work does not end when the immediate conflict concludes. IRI then helps build effective governance institutions through which people can resolve grievances nonviolently. IRI’s stabilization projects play a unique role in supporting responsive governance and inclusive political systems in places like Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Burma, Ukraine, the Sahel, and Iraq.

In many countries around the world, organized crime and high rates of violence are often a result of democratic deficits. IRI takes an evidence-based approach to citizen security by conducting rigorous conflict analyses, capturing the full range of violence in a community in order to understand the interaction between different forms of insecurity. To promote citizen security and establish a culture of peace, IRI supports violence prevention strategies in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In these countries, IRI created municipal violence prevention commissions, aided by local governments, to improve coordination and draw on specialists in security, peace, and justice. Additionally, IRI focuses on how violence and insecurity interact with gender dynamics, and through its Women’s Democracy Network raises awareness of violence against women and addresses the gendered causes of insecurity.

Displacement and migration require a response that include protecting and improving democratic governance and stability. In Uganda, Colombia, and Lebanon, IRI helps displaced, migrant, and host populations by promoting social cohesion and good governance to reduce potential tensions. IRI supports national and local stakeholders, helping them balance humanitarian challenges with the needs of their own populations and strengthening their capacity to govern effectively. This includes direct citizen consultation, especially at the local level, in government decision-making to better understand the needs of youth, returnees, and their social networks, as well as other marginalized populations.

IRI’s Social Cohesion and Displacement Toolkit outlines IRI’s approach to the myriad challenges associated with forced displacement, from civic engagement to government strategies to address the  challenges that displacement crises often bring.

The CCP undermines democratic processes in vulnerable countries by exploiting governance gaps and ensuring a lack of local awareness of the risks of engagement with Beijing. While Chinese entities conclude infrastructure investment deals that bring financial leverage and corrupt benefits to elites, the PRC uses various means to simultaneously shape the information space and influence domestic political decision-making in its favor. China employs these “sharp power” tools more aggressively as democracies begin to push back against its malign behavior.

IRI has developed and implemented a framework to build resiliency against growing PRC interference through its flagship Building Resiliency for Interconnected Democracies in Global Environments (BRIDGE) initiative, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Through BRIDGE, IRI has developed and refined the three-step approach described above, working with partners in more than 35 countries to identify channels for PRC authoritarian influence, as well as opportunities for resilience.

However, the broad range of tools used by the PRC to pressure democracies demands equally broad responses. That is why IRI has expanded its work into the information sphere, working in partnership with the U.S. State Department’s Global Engagement Center and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to examine the PRC’s impact on the information environment in the Indo-Pacific and Africa, respectively.

Through these initiatives, IRI and its partners throughout the globe are working together to develop and implement effective policy responses to PRC interference, translating key lessons into actionable steps that CSOs, media, and policymakers can use to expose and counter PRC influence and interference.

The Kremlin’s malign influence is more opportunistic than the PRC’s but has the same destructive impact on democratic institutions. The Kremlin’s main objective is to keep Russia’s political elite in power indefinitely and without accountability for decades of criminality, including for widespread kleptocracy it has used to fund corrupt proxies at home and abroad. Suppressing dissent within Russia is a key component of keeping the elite in power; so too is undermining democracy in other countries. Moscow fears being surrounded by a larger number of successful democracies where Russian-speaking population votes in free and fair elections and where Russian-language media offer unbiased coverage of events in the post-Soviet space.

If exposed to this, the people of Russia would inevitably increase their demands for significant changes to the oppressive political and economic systems at home. The lack of opposition and the presence of state-sponsored multi-language propaganda outlets allows Russia to portray its illiberal governance model as highly successful to domestic and foreign audiences. This, in turn, drives these audiences away from supporting a democratic model of governance and turns them into proponents of the views and agenda of Moscow.

To exert its malign influence in other countries, the Kremlin employs a variety of tactics with the overarching goal of undermining democracy and backing client governments. Among other approaches, the Kremlin actively seeks to destroy values-based alliances—preferring, instead, to deal bilaterally with weak or weakened states. It also employs a range of tactics—from sharing surveillance technology to training police in violent riot suppression tactics—to eliminate all domestic opposition (politically active citizens, free media, and religious minorities) who might otherwise challenge its ally governments.

IRI addresses these threats by empowering local politicians, civil society organizations, media, and researchers with data and tools necessary to counter the impact of the Kremlin’s malign influence, building national and transnational alliances, and equipping key implementers with research and data essential to design and implement successful interventions tailored for the local context.

IRI addresses corruption through a three-step process. First, we conduct rigorous analysis of the local context, based on proven methodologies. Second, through the Vulnerabilities to Corruption Approach (VCA), the Institute assesses weaknesses in local governance and supports public officials and civil society in the design and implementation of context-specific responses to improve transparency. Third, IRI then leverages our extensive relationships with stakeholders to build trust and receptiveness to anti-corruption reforms. 

Constant innovation is essential to staying ahead of kleptocrats and combatting corruption. To address this gap and equip local partners, the Institute conducts original research on tactics used by corrupt actors and tests and scales proven approaches to counter them. Through this work, IRI produces cutting-edge research products and tools aimed at development practitioners and stakeholders on the ground.

IRI’s Kleptocrat’s Playbook systematically catalogues tactics that kleptocrats deploy to strategically expand opportunities for public resource theft and to suppress civil society efforts to expose and counter kleptocracy. It helps activists, journalists, CSOs, and policy makers to better anticipate, identify, and counter kleptocrats at home and abroad. Our Anti-Corruption Toolkit for Civic Activists is designed to further increase their capacity  to conduct anti-corruption research, build alliances, develop a successful reform agenda, and leverage relationships with the media. 

Democratic governance distinguishes a system of government in which citizens meaningfully participate in planning and decision-making, while those in office exercise accountable responsiveness to citizen needs. IRI programs provide technical expertise and facilitate initiatives, led by the government and civil society, aimed at establishing and improving open government practices. In Panama, for example, IRI is helping improve the quality of and use of data in public procurement. Recently, IRI trained the Armenian government to improve its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, IRI works with demand side actors and trains CSOs and citizens to effectively engage with the government offices and elected representatives to channel public demands and demand accountability, including through citizen budgets and participatory budgeting.

IRI works with partner organizations, including the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and leverages support to governments and hundreds of CSOs in their efforts to create transparent, participatory, inclusive, and accountable governments. For example, in the Middle East and North Africa region, IRI is working to build stronger links between local and national governments through boosting public awareness about open government reforms, including access to government data and helping with peer-to-peer engagement of CSOs.

Legislative strengthening provides tools and resources for legislatures in any stage of their democratic journey and delivers resources for all levels, from local to national. As co-implementer of the House Democracy Partnership (HDP) and the Institute for Representative Government (IRG), IRI is one of the leading organizations in supporting legislative strengthening. Since its creation more than 15 years ago, HDP has contributed to the legislative institutional development of 22 partner parliaments and trained thousands of legislators and legislative staff, while IRG has conducted almost 100 programs for nearly 1,000 foreign legislators and officials from all over the world.

IRI bolsters the abilities, capacities, and independence of legislatures through technical assistance that supports legislators in fulfilling their policymaking, budgetary, oversight, and representational roles for the benefit of their constituents. At its core, legislative strengthening encourages and enables legislatures to take their rightful place as a co-equal branch of government providing a check on the executive branch. Through a partnership model, IRI’s programs create a network of partners committed to emphasizing the role of parliament in democratic governance.

IRI builds the capacity of local government officials and CSOs to generate more accessible, accountable, effective, equitable, responsive, and transparent subnational governments. Through extensive research on capacities of local governments and officials, from North Macedonia to Ukraine to Tunisia, IRI implements customized programs that address the capacity development needs of subnational institutions. IRI then supports civil society efforts to demand accountability from subnational governments by carrying out civic awareness campaigns, developing context-tailored toolkits to improve the understanding and functioning of local governments, and connecting citizens with their immediate representatives to better engage in conversations related to improving service delivery.