Foreign Affairs committee  If I have time to contribute, although very briefly, one thing we really have to fight against is the view that development can be separated from democracy. I think we all know that Amartya Sen argued strongly against that. Democracy is development. What you see now is a Chines

Foreign Affairs committee  I have just a very brief addition to that. Within each country, obviously, you need to have democratic institutions that enable voices to be heard when the policies are made—the trade policy of the country—that provide confidence that the trade agreements the country is signing o

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Carl. Our programs can only exist and operate if we have a partner in the country. We do not go in with an agenda for a country and say, “This is what we want it to do.” Of course, we have an overall strategy that pulls out certain things that we think are critically

Foreign Affairs committee  Very quickly, the key issue for us about long-term presence is that what we're trying to support is a democratic culture. Helping to share rules and procedures and technical skills is one thing. What really counts is the leadership and the understanding at every level when politi

Foreign Affairs committee  Let me start. Our operating model provides political stability in that we are a cross-party organization. All the parties in our Parliament are represented on our board. This means that in agreeing to a long-term strategy and in taking day-to-day operational decisions, we need t

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll build that into a—

Foreign Affairs committee  My response to the first question is that I don't believe there is a continuing acceleration of decline. I think the decline coincided with a period of a range of crises in the world, including an economic crisis. The causes of it range from the political conflicts that resulted

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Chair. I'll try to be quicker than that. I'm very grateful for your invitation to give evidence to this inquiry. Having read the remarks of some of your previous witnesses, I won't repeat some of the general points they made about the recent trends in democ