A new CECHE initiative in the field of democracy promotion received widespread international support in 2007. Long concerned that diplomats from democratic countries frequently shy away from supporting movements for democratic change, whether students in Iran or monks in Burma or women in the Arab world, CECHE Vice Chairman Ambassador Mark Palmer proposed to the Community of Democracies (which brings together the world’s 120 democratic governments and also nongovernmental organizations from free and not free countries) that a Diplomat’s Handbook for Democratic Development Support be created by them. With support from the Community, Ambassador Palmer persuaded the leading Canadian diplomat of his generation, Ambassador Jeremy Kinsman to take charge of identifying and compiling successful case studies of diplomatic assistance and composing a tool box of practical measures. With financial contributions from the Foreign Ministries of India, Canada and the United States, and from a number of private sources including PrincetonUniversity, Freedom House and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, an initial draft of a Diplomat’s Handbook for Democracy Development Support was presented to and positively received by the Ministerial Meeting of the Community in Mali November 14-16, 2007.

The finished first edition is now on the Handbook’s own interactive website www.diplomatshandbook.org.  The Preface was written personally by  President Vaclav Havel, leader of the Velvet Revolution, and the Introduction is by  the Foreign Ministers of Portugal and Poland, respectively the Chair and Permanent Secretariat Host of the Community of Democracies. An initial print run of 2,500 hard copies is being distributed to the foreign ministries of participating nations in the Community of Democracies for training of their diplomats and for operational use in embassies inside not free countries. Nongovernmental, democracy supporting organizations also are receiving copies for their use. Ambassador Kinsman, Ambassador Palmer and others have begun discussions with a variety of diplomatic training academies about specific courses built around the handbook. Training sessions already have taken place involving diplomats and nongovernmental democracy activists from a number of countries.