US invites 120 leaders to second Summit for Democracy

The US government has sent invitations to 120 leaders from around the world for next week’s Democracy Summit, including representatives from eight countries that were not invited to the first White House summit in 2021.

The news was shared with the AP by a senior government official who spoke on condition of anonymity about the invitations, which have not yet been made public.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Gambia, Honduras, the Ivory Coast, Liechtenstein, Mauritania, Mozambique and Tanzania received invitations to this year’s summit after being left off the invite list for the 2021 meeting.

This year’s summit will be held on Wednesday and Thursday of next week. It will be co-sponsored by the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia. The first day will have a virtual format and will be followed by hybrid meetings in each of the host countries in which representatives of the government, civil society and the private sector will participate.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to participate in a Ukraine-focused pre-summit event on Tuesday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The world has undergone great changes since the December 2021 summit, after countries emerged from the coronavirus pandemic and in the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to White House officials, President Joe Biden will try to make the case that the events of the past year have made clear that a democratic government based on the rule of law and the will of the governed remains the best system to promote prosperity and peace, despite its frequent disorders.

Biden initially proposed the idea of ​​a democracy summit during his 2020 presidential campaign and has repeatedly argued that the United States and allies need to show the world that democracies are a better vehicle for societies than autocracies.

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