The Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) has published a special briefing analysing the public discourse conditions that preceded Albania's protests over a planned luxury development on Sazan Island and the Vjosa-Narta wetlands.

The briefing, The Sazan Protests, is based on data from GCRD's Democracy Discourse Index (DDI) observatory in Albania, which analysed social media posts of Albanian public discourse between March and May 2026, in the months before the demonstrations began.

The briefing notes that Albania's national discourse quality composite stood at 41.8 percent over the period, within the index's Concerning band, while the national agency score, which measures the share of discourse in which citizens frame themselves as actors in public life rather than spectators, was 34 percent. Agency fell to 6.7 percent in discourse on social cohesion and 16 percent in discourse on international affairs.

The Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) has been selected to advance to the Prototyping Phase of the Global Trust Challenge for its submission, The Community Knowledge Encoder: Civic Infrastructure for Trustworthy AI Through Community-Grounded Intelligence.

The Global Trust Challenge was created by a global coalition in response to a G7 call to action to strengthen trust in the digital age. With UNESCO as a founding member, the initiative is led by a coalition including the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and AI Commons, working alongside a growing international network of experts, institutions, and organizations.

Karachi, Pakistan | 30 June 2026

The Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) and NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, today launched a first-of-its-kind joint summer course training university students in the methodology of the Democracy Discourse Index (DDI), a groundbreaking framework for measuring democratic health through the quality of public conversation.

The course marks a significant expansion of the DDI’s reach in Pakistan and deepens a research partnership that has already produced a landmark Observatory pilot study on Pakistani public discourse.

Korçë, Albania — The Faculty of Education and Philology at “Fan S. Noli” University of Korçë (UNIKO) has held a certificate ceremony honouring students who successfully completed Albania’s participation in the international pilot project of the Democracy Discourse Index (DDI), implemented between February and May 2026.

Fifteen undergraduate and postgraduate students from the University of Korçë “Fan S. Noli” will be recognised on Tuesday, 2 June, for their contribution to a pioneering international research initiative examining the quality of democratic discourse in the digital age.

The students participated in the Democracy Discourse Index (DDI), an innovative project led by the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) in partnership with Sensika Technologies. Over five months, they analysed more than 1,000 social media posts, coding patterns of empathy, civility, trust language, and democratic agency as part of a global effort to better understand the moral and informational health of democracy.  

Between March and May 2026, Pakistan assumed a diplomatic role without modern precedent: mediating between the United States, Iran, and their regional allies at a moment of acute international danger. Islamabad hosted a quadrilateral summit, facilitated direct US–Iran negotiations, and kept back-channel contact alive even when talks threatened to unravel. By any standard, it was Pakistan's most consequential foreign-policy moment in a decade.

A new policy brief from GCRD reports findings from a DDI Pakistan tracking of public discourse on X across the full seven-week arc of Pakistan's mediation.

What does it mean to study democracy seriously in the digital age?

At NED University of Engineering & Technology in Pakistan, it meant students spending months analysing more than 3,000 online posts, coding language patterns related to empathy, civility, trust, polarisation, and civic agency as part of the Democracy Discourse Index (DDI), a pioneering international initiative led by the GCRD and Sensika Technologies.  

Guided by their professor, Dr. Wajiha Raza Rizvi and a small research team, and supported by the Department of English Linguistics & Allied Studies, these students became part of a founding consortium of only seven universities worldwide helping train the world’s first real-time democratic discourse measurement system. Their work was not simulated classroom activity. It was live international research contributing directly to the development of AI models capable of identifying early warning signals of democratic deterioration and social fragmentation months before institutional crises become fully visible.  

The Board of Trustees of the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) convened on April 29, 2026 to review the organisation’s strategic direction and advance key priorities across governance, partnerships, and programme development.

Dr. Margee Ensign, one of the first foreign scholars to investigate the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi on the ground in Rwanda and a leading authority on the subject for over three decades, was a featured panellist at the national Kwibuka 32 commemoration held April 7 in Washington, D.C. The event, co-hosted by the Embassy of Rwanda and Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy, brought together diplomats, U.S. government officials, survivors, and academics to mark thirty-two years since the genocide. Dr. Ensign, Board Chair of GCRD, joined the panel discussion on rebuilding societies after mass atrocity.

The Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) has joined the Political Leadership Entrepreneur Network (PLEN), a global community of over 150 non-partisan organisations innovating approaches to political leadership across every region of the world. The PLEN is convened by the Better Politics Foundation, a Berlin-based organisation whose mission is to build better leaders for better democracies.

Across three sessions in February 2026, GCRD Founding Executive Director Dr. Jacob delivered a lecture series titled Democracy, AI, and the Freedom to Learn: A Survival Curriculum for the 21st Century. Sponsored by AltLiberalArts, the series introduced the concept of AI-Enhanced Reflexive Control (AIRC) and traced its implications for liberal arts education, academic freedom, and democratic resilience.

New from GCRD: AI Must Serve Human Dignity

To mark the World Social Justice Day 2026, the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy convened a panel discussion with UNITAR on artificial intelligence, social justice, and democratic trust. We have now published the full policy brief from that event.

"Technology must remain accountable to human dignity." That was the central message to emerge from a conversation spanning education reform, algorithmic bias, global inequality in the AI economy, and the challenge of governing technologies that most citizens cannot see or challenge.

The brief includes ten policy recommendations and full profiles of the five panellists who contributed to the dialogue: Dr. Margee Ensign, Dr. Jon-Hans Coetzer, Professor Wajiha Raza Rizvi, Dr. Nicholas Mattei, and Sabene Rizvi, moderated by Dr. Antonio Garcia.

Read and download the brief.

A consortium of seven universities across seven countries has joined GCRD and Sensika Technologies to build the world's first real-time tool for measuring democratic health through the quality of public discourse. The Democracy Discourse Index (DDI) tracks empathy, trust, civility, agency, depth, and truth across topics, and translates findings into an early warning system capable of detecting democratic deterioration.

To mark World Social Justice Day 2026, the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD), in collaboration with the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), will convene a high-level virtual panel discussion examining the growing impact of artificial intelligence on social justice, democratic trust, and the future of work. The event will hold virtually on March 4th at 4 pm - 5 pm (GMT)

The four-day residential retreat, "Sustaining Presence in an Age of AI & Acceleration," will take place April 6-10, 2026, at Broughton Sanctuary in the Yorkshire Dales—a historic 3,000-acre estate recognized by National Geographic as one of 2024's most exciting global destinations.

How can liberal education help us survive the increasing weaponisation of our cognitive environment?

Dr. Jacob, Founding Executive Director of the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy, addresses this question in a groundbreaking three-part lecture series hosted by AltLiberalArts beginning February 9th.

GCRD is delighted to announce the appointment of Ms. Croshelle Harris as Director of Strategic Projects and Partnerships, a role that reflects both her distinguished career in global development and her passion for building bridges that drive meaningful change.