- Wednesday, February 26, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA has received an invitation to the “Summit of Democracies” which is being convened by US president Joe Biden, sources told Asian News International in New Delhi on Friday (26), adding that Indian prime minister Narendra Modi is likely to take part in the event virtually.
“We have received an invitation for the Summit of Democracies and PM [Modi] is likely to participate in this virtual event,” the sources said.
Biden will host a virtual summit for leaders from governments, civil society and the private sector on December 9 and 10, the US state department said.
A total of 110 participants feature on the state department’s invitation list for the virtual event, which aims to help stop backsliding of the democracies and the erosion of rights and freedoms across the world, ANI added.
The summit will talk about challenges and opportunities that democracies face and will provide a platform for leaders to announce both individual and collective commitments, reforms and initiatives to defend democracy and human rights at home and abroad, the state department said in a statement.
“For the United States, the summit will offer an opportunity to listen, learn, and engage with a diverse range of actors whose support and commitment is critical for global democratic renewal. It will also showcase one of democracy’s unique strengths: the ability to acknowledge its imperfections and confront them openly and transparently, so that we may, as the United States Constitution puts it, form a more perfect union,” the state department said.
The Biden administration’s decision to hold the summit comes in the wake of a recent report which warned about a reverse wave of democratisation and that the American democracy is “backsliding” for the first time.
“There is a mimicking effect that also comes into play, which we saw from the mid-1970s onwards in the world, a third wave of democratisation. What we are clearly seeing now is a reverse wave,” Annika Silva-Leander, who authored the Sweden-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance’s annual report on the Global State of Democracy, said.
