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STOCKHOLM: Executive overreach and foreign aid funding cuts during US President Donald Trump’s first six months in office have hurt international democratization efforts and encouraged populist leaders around the world, an intergovernmental democracy watchdog said on Thursday.
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance  said it issued 20 alerts between January and April 2025 — twice as many as in any of the previous two full years — documenting instances in which the US government eroded rules, institutions and norms that shape the country’s democracy.
It named efforts to restrict academic freedom, criminalize protest activity, question the legitimacy of certified elections, selectively restrict media access to the executive and circumvent normal due process.
“In less than six months, US domestic political institutions have also lost much of their symbolic sheen, increasingly serving as a reference point for executive overreach and offering more encouragement to populist strongman leaders than to pro-democracy hopefuls,” IDEA said in its annual Global State of Democracy report.
The Trump administration has frozen and then cut back billions of dollars of foreign aid since taking office, saying it wants to ensure US taxpayer money goes only to programs that are aligned with Trump’s “America First” policies.
The cutbacks have effectively shut down the US Agency for International Development, a move that could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal.
IDEA’s report also showed its global democracy index declined for a ninth consecutive year in 2024. Some 54 percent of countries went backwards in 2024 versus five years earlier in at least one of the IDEA’s key indicators, which range from credible elections to freedom of expression.
Last year’s electoral “super-cycle” — when around 1.6 billion people globally cast ballots — saw the indicator for credible votes fall to its worst in 30 years, with declines in a fifth of the 173 nations surveyed.
“To fight back, democracies need to protect key elements of democracy, like elections and the rule of law, but also profoundly reform government so that it delivers fairness, inclusion and shared prosperity,” the IDEA said.

ACCRA: Ghana is accepting west Africans deported from the United States, Ghanaian President John Mahama said Wednesday.
Deporting people to third countries — in many cases places they’ve never lived — has been a hallmark of US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, notably by sending hundreds to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Mahama told reporters Wednesday that Ghana had agreed to take in nationals from west Africa, where a regional agreement allows visa-free travel.
“We were approached by the US to accept third-party nationals who were being removed from the US. And we agreed with them that west African nationals were acceptable,” Mahama said.
He said a “first batch” of 14 people had come to Ghana, including “several” Nigerians who have since returned to their home countries though he did not provide a timeline for when that occurred. Another arrived from The Gambia.
Ghana has long been home to Nigerian immigrants, though recent weeks have seen sporadic anti-Nigerian protests in several cities where groups of demonstrators demanded their expulsion, blaming them for rising crime, prostitution and unfair economic competition.
In late July, Nigeria sent a special envoy and its foreign ministry urged calm while Ghanaian and Nigerian officials held talks to defuse tensions.

Deal comes amid tariff, visa pressure 

The deportation agreement comes as Washington has hiked tariffs on Ghanaian goods and restricted visas issued to its nationals.
Mahama described relations between Accra and Washington as “tightening,” though he said relations remained positive.
Neighbouring Nigeria, for its part, has pushed back against accepting third-party deportees.
“The US is mounting considerable pressure on African countries to accept Venezuelans to be deported from the US, some straight out of prisons,” Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar said in an interview with local broadcaster Channels Television in July.
“It will be difficult for Nigeria to accept Venezuelan prisoners,” he said, going on to suggest that recent tariff threats were related to the issue of deportations.
In an unprecedented move, Trump has overseen the deportation of hundreds of people to Panama, including some who were sent away before they could have their asylum applications processed.
Hundreds have also been sent to El Salvador, with the US administration invoking an 18th century law to remove people it has accused of being Venezuelan gang members.
Some were sent despite US judges ordering the planes carrying them to turn around.
The White House has also deported third-country nationals to South Sudan, a war-torn, impoverished country.