US President Joe Biden on Thursday kicked off the first-ever summit for Democracy by acknowledging the challenges within the United States, saying American democracy is an ongoing struggle to live up to "our highest ideals".
Around 80 world leaders attended the opening remarks virtually, including from France, Canada, India, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Japan, Israel and the Philippines, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke after the president, The Hill reported.
The virtual gathering is expected to include more than 100 participants from governments, civil society and the private sector.
"Here in the United States, we know as well as anyone that renewing our democracy and strengthening our democratic institutions requires constant effort. American democracy is an ongoing struggle to live up to our highest ideals, to heal our divisions and to recommit ourselves to the founding idea of our nation," he said in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
This summit, Biden said, is "not to assert that any one of our democracies is perfect or has all the answers, but to lock arms and reaffirm our shared commitment to make our democracies better, to share ideas and learn from each other, and to make concrete commitments of how to strength our own democracies and push back on authoritarian, fight corruption, promote and protect human rights of people everywhere, to act, to act."
The summit will launch a year of action, during which the U.S. intends to work with participating governments and non-governmental actors to develop new pledges and initiatives that can be announced at a second Summit for Democracy next year.
"Democracies are not all the same, we don't agree on everything, all of us in this meeting today, but the choices we make together are going to define, in my view, the course of our shared future for generations to come," Biden said.
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