International Day of Democracy 2026

GCRD Insights · Keynote Address

A Learning Response to Democratic StressPublic Discourse, Democratic Health and Civic Renewal

Anchored in UNITAR Strategic Framework 2026–2029 & UNESCO New Social Contract for Education

Keynote delivered at the Policy Dialogue on Rehumanising Democracy: Public Discourse, Democratic Health and Civic Renewal, convened by the Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy (GCRD) in collaboration with UNITAR to mark the International Day of Democracy, 15 September 2026. Read the concept note.

Dr Jon-Hans Coetzer

Senior Programme Specialist, Online Learning and Education Unit, Division for Peace, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR)

Download the PDF Event concept note

Good morning.

On behalf of UNITAR, I would like to thank Dr. Jacob Udo-Udo Jacob, Global Centre for Rehumanising Democracy for organising this International Democracy Day Virtual Policy Laboratory.

Democracies rarely collapse in a single moment. As Levitsky and Ziblatt (2018) observe in How Democracies Die, democratic breakdown is typically gradual — a slow erosion of norms, not a sudden rupture. The question before us is not whether we can prevent democratic stress, but whether we can read it early enough to respond proportionately.

That is precisely the challenge UNESCO's International Commission on the Futures of Education placed at the heart of a new social contract: not simply the transmission of knowledge, but the cultivation of civic capacities — empathy, civility, collaborative reasoning — that sustain democratic life (Reimagining Our Futures Together, UNESCO, 2021). It is also the challenge at the core of UNITAR's Strategic Framework 2026–2029, which anchors sustainable capacity development around four objectives: empowering individuals, strengthening institutions, building learning ecosystems, and supporting the United Nations system (UNITAR, 2025).

My argument is simple: democratic stress is not primarily a constitutional event. It is a learning problem — and it demands a learning response.

Let's look at the Four Vital Signs

Public discourse is democracy's vital sign. I propose we read it through four indicators.

01Empathy

In democratic theory, empathy means recognizing the dignity of those we disagree with — not agreement, but mutual recognition (Nussbaum, 2013, Political Emotions). When groups are portrayed as threats or traitors, and harm to "them" is minimized, empathy is in decline. SDG 16's call for inclusive societies and accountable institutions is structurally impossible without this prior recognition of shared humanity (UN General Assembly, 2015, A/RES/70/1).

02Civility

Democratic civility is not politeness — it is the condition under which disagreement remains non-violent and non-exclusionary (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996). Protest is democratic; intimidation is not. The distinction must be protected, especially for journalists, election workers, and marginalized communities.

03Trust

The Pact for the Future (UN General Assembly, A/RES/79/1, 2024) identifies rebuilding multilateral trust as a precondition for collective action. The same logic holds domestically. Healthy scepticism is democratic; totalizing distrust — where all processes are delegitimized and no peaceful outcome is acceptable — is not. Norris and Inglehart (2019) demonstrate empirically that declining institutional confidence correlates with rising support for authoritarian alternatives.

04Democratic agency

Agency is the conviction that participation can change outcomes. When it fails — particularly among young people and marginalized communities — democracy loses its most essential renewal mechanism. The UNESCO New Social Contract calls explicitly for the right to education to be "expanded to include the right to quality education throughout life" (UNESCO, 2021), which must include the civic capacities to participate meaningfully in public life.

Democratic Stress Needs A Proportionate, Evidence-Based Response

Reading these signals requires more than anecdote. It requires surveys, media monitoring, community listening, and civil society reporting. And the response must match the evidence: dialogue programming suits a mild decline in cross-group understanding; protection mechanisms and platform accountability are necessary when dehumanization becomes coordinated.

This is precisely where UNITAR's strategic objectives become operationally relevant.

• Empowering individuals means equipping people with the critical and civic literacy to recognize manipulation, navigate disagreement, and engage with confidence.
• Strengthening institutions means investing in the transparency and accountability that make institutional trust rational, not demanded.
• Building learning ecosystems means embedding civic dialogue, media literacy, and conflict-sensitive training within self-sustaining national systems — not one-off projects (UNITAR Strategic Framework 2026–2029).
• Supporting the UN system means connecting national democratic resilience to multilateral frameworks: SDG 16, the international human rights architecture, and the Pact for the Future.

I would like to conclude:

The UNESCO New Social Contract asks us to renew our relationship with each other, with the planet, and with knowledge. Democratic stress is, at its core, a breakdown in all three. Empathy, civility, trust, and agency are not soft indicators. They are measurable, trainable, and institutionally supportable — the infrastructure of democratic life.

Monitor them carefully, and we intervene earlier. Interpret them honestly, and we avoid both complacency and panic. Act proportionately — through the learning investments UNITAR's framework calls for — and we keep conflict democratic.

Thank you.

Key References

1. Gutmann, A. & Thompson, D. (1996). Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
2. Levitsky, S. & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How Democracies Die. New York: Crown.
3. Norris, P. & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural Backlash: Trump, Brexit, and Authoritarian Populism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Nussbaum, M. C. (2013). Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
5. UN General Assembly. (2015). Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. A/RES/70/1. [SDG 16 — Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions]
6. UN General Assembly. (2024). The Pact for the Future. A/RES/79/1.
7. UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education. (2021). Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education. Paris: UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000379707
8. UNITAR. (2025). Strategic Framework 2026–2029. Geneva: United Nations Institute for Training and Research. https://unitar.org/sites/default/files/media/publication/doc/UNITAR-Strategic-Framework2026-2029-web.pdf
9. UNITAR. (2026). 2025 Results Report: Strengthening Capacities and Expanding Partnerships for Sustainable Development. Geneva: United Nations Institute for Training and Research.

Download and shareThe full keynote is available as a co-branded PDF, alongside the concept note for the Policy Dialogue.

Download the PDF Event concept note

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