Washington, DC — Civil society representatives from Muslim countries will attend

Representatives of civil society in Muslim countries in the Middle East and Africa are converging on Tarrytown, New York, March 18-20 for a conference that will explore ideas and propose strategies on advancing democracy education in their respective regions.

Participants from some 30 countries -- from Turkey and Iran to Senegal and Nigeria -- will forward recommendations for action in the Middle East and Africa to the ministers of the more than 100 countries expected to attend the Third Ministerial Conference of the Community of Democracies, to be held in Santiago, Chile, April 28-30, according to a March 15 press release from the Council for a Community of Democracies, based in Washington.

The participants are expected to appeal to the ministers to endorse the importance of democracy education as fundamental for the development of democracy in the Arab world and Muslim Africa and to ask that donors provide resources to implement their proposed strategy.

In Tarrytown, conference participants will interact with representatives from American and European nongovernmental organizations with experience in the field of democracy education. Noted Egyptian democracy advocate Saad Ibrahim will give a keynote address, offering participants insights into how recent events in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and even Saudi Arabia might blossom into a sustained democracy movement for the Arab world.

Turkish, Senegalese and Nigerian experts will discuss the ways schools in their countries promote the values of democracy and citizen participation in the political process, and participants from Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq and Libya will explore barriers to and opportunities for promoting democracy through institutions of civil society.

A key issue for the conference to explore will be how Islamic principles can be interpreted in ways compatible with democratic values and, conversely, how those values can best be presented in the context of Muslim societies, the press release notes.

Speaking of the significance of the conference, the executive director of the Council for a Community of Democracies, Robert LaGamma, noted that the promotion of democracy education in the Arab world would greatly advance the dialogue about democracy in that part of the world, where democracy and democratic ideas have made the least progress.

The gathering will be hosted by the Pocantico Conference Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It is organized by the Council for a Community of Democracies, in collaboration with the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy and the New York-based American Forum for Global Education.

The Pocantico Conference is funded through a U.S. Agency for International Development grant provided to the Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. The German Friedrich Ebert Foundation is also providing support and participating.