The President of the United States, Joe Biden, will kick off the second Summit for Democracy by committing the United States government to spending $690 million to strengthen democratic initiatives all across the world.
According to a senior administration official, the Biden administration plans to use the two-day conference that starts on Wednesday to focus on making “technology work for and not against democracy.”
Over 120 of the most influential people in the world have been invited to attend.
Biden regularly discusses the fact that the United States and its like-minded friends are at a crucial juncture in which democracies need to show that they are capable of out-delivering autocracies. The summits, which were something that Biden vowed to do as a Democratic contender for president in 2020, have become an essential part of the effort that his administration is doing to attempt to develop stronger partnerships and move autocratic-leaning states toward at least moderate changes.
The newly allocated funds will be used toward initiatives that promote democratic values such as free and independent media, the protection of human rights, the development of technology that strengthens democratic institutions, and the facilitation of free and fair elections.
On the condition of anonymity, the official provided a preview of the meeting and said that the administration had also reached an agreement with ten other countries on guiding principles for how the governments should utilize surveillance technologies.
The agreement regarding the surveillance technology was reached after President Joe Biden signed an executive order earlier this week that placed restrictions on the use of commercial spyware tools by the United States government. These tools have been known to be utilized in the surveillance of human rights activists, journalists, and dissidents all over the world.
Since President Biden hosted the inaugural democracy conference in December 2021, the globe has gone through a turbulent period of 15 months.
Joe Biden, the President, has also gotten into a spat with the Chinese government by regularly criticizing the country’s political and economic power in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
