Roel von Meijenfeldt
Roel von Meijenfeldt is a political scientist by training, with majors in public administration and international relations. He obtained his degree at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1972 and lectured in public administration. He was President of the Dutch Committee for International Youth Affairs. In 1970 he organized and presided over the first parallel NGO conference within the history of the United Nations family at the occasion of FAO's Second World Food Conference.
He worked on international co-operation and globalizing markets within the trade union movement in The Netherlands and in the management of a national educational institute. In 1984 he moved to Harare, Zimbabwe, as the Regional Representative for southern Africa for the Netherlands Organization for International Development Co-operation (OXFAM/NOVIB). He became the Secretary General of the Standing Committee of NGOs in Brussels in 1988, and managed an EU programme in support of the eradication of apartheid and the transition to democracy in South Africa and Namibia. Subsequently, he worked as an independent adviser on issues of democracy and development for the institutions of the European Union, wrote a report on ‘Democracy's Development' for the EU and assisted with the establishment of the EU electoral observation system.
In March 1996 he was appointed Programme Director of the newly established International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in Stockholm, Sweden. In this position he designed and directed programmes aimed at the consolidation of democracy in new democracies. Under this programme, national dialogues about democratic reform processes were managed in-countries around the world, including Indonesia, Nepal, Burma, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, the Arab region, the Balkans, Romania, Slovakia, Guatemala. The programme developed an innovative framework for democratic development to guide international assistance for advancing democracy and produced national assessments for the aforementioned countries. He became an adviser for the World Bank on the application of the Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF), specifically in conflict-affected countries.
In March 2002, Roel von Meijenfeldt was appointed Executive Director of the new Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) in The Hague. Today, the NIMD engages the political leadership - both of government and opposition - in 17 young democracies in furthering the consolidation of multiparty democracy from within, in advancing the institutionalization of political parties as key pillars for stable democratic systems and, in improving relations between political and civil society.
Roel von Meijenfeldt is a member of the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy (WMD), the Steering Committee of the NGO network of the Community of Democracies (CoD) and he is currently acting Chairman of the EPD Board of Directors. He is co-editor of the recent publication: Democracy:Europe's Core Value? He has produced numerous country democracy assessments and has hands-on expertise in facilitating national dialogues on democratic reform. He speaks regularly at international conferences about the state of democracy in the world and about the lessons learned in providing democracy assistance.