Date: September 15, 2025
Time: 10:30 – 13:30 PKT
Location: Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan
Host Organization: Accountability Lab Pakistan
Virtual Participation Link: Details coming soon!
South Asia’s democratic landscape in 2025 is shaped by digital frontiers: internet shutdowns (e.g., Pakistan, 2024), online hate during election cycles (Bangladesh), and emerging digital surveillance frameworks (Nepal). Simultaneously, youth-led civic innovations, interfaith solidarity, and grassroots resilience offer pathways for renewal. This hybrid event will surface region-specific challenges and innovations through participatory diagnostics; will ensure intergenerational and intersectional dialogue, elevating women, minority, and disability perspectives; will co-create a South Asia IDD Action Charter with concrete policy and programmatic commitments; and will lay groundwork for sustained impact via a Community of Practice and an Impact Dashboard.
Objectives:
a) Provide a platform for intergenerational, cross-sectoral dialogue on the state and future of democracy in South Asia.
b) Highlight and celebrate grassroots democratic innovations, especially those leveraging digital tools and platforms.
c) Facilitate the co-creation of regional strategies and collaborative actions to counter civic space shrinkage, digital authoritarianism, and misinformation.
d) Generate concrete policy and civic commitments from participants to sustain democratic renewal in the region.
e) Showcase the resilience and leadership of youth, women, and marginalized communities in defending democratic spaces.
Event Programme:
- Opening Ceremony (15 minutes):
- Welcome addresses by an International IDEA representative and a GDC delegate
- Youth keynote presentation summarizing key findings from the 2025 South Asia Democracy Index
- Social Mirror Dialogue (40 minutes):
- In facilitated peer circles (8–10 participants each), individuals share concrete experiences of democratic challenges and commit to two actionable, peer-reviewed steps they will take within the next quarter. Accountability Lab coaches guide reflection and ensure commitments are SMART.
- “DemocraTech” Lab (20 minutes):
- The three hackathon finalists each present a 5-minute demo to the full assembly. A live audience poll via Mentimeter determines the winner, who receives seed funding and mentorship from our Civic Innovation Fund.
- Storytelling Café & Rapid Policy Sprint (45 minutes):
- Participants rotate through five facilitated tables, each focused on a sub-theme:
- Digital Freedoms & Restrictions
- Civic Funding & Resource Mobilization
- Media Integrity & Countering Disinformation
- Interfaith & Minority Inclusion
- Youth–Government Engagement
- At each station, small teams use rapid design-thinking prompts to generate 2–3 concrete policy or program proposals, recording them on shared canvases.
- Participants rotate through five facilitated tables, each focused on a sub-theme:
- Plenary & Charter Ratification (20 minutes):
- Rapporteurs synthesize each table’s outputs into a draft South Asia IDD Action Charter.
- Participants then use an online voting tool to adopt the Charter, formally endorsing the region’s collective commitments.