The UN has propagated national democracy as a universal value, defined its essential human rights-based features and helped putting it into practice by election monitoring. It has emphasised that human rights, the rule of law and democracy are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. More recently, it has also promoted international democracy, including through UN reform. But in the UN sources there is no reference to any individual or collective general human right to national or international democracy which would be helpful at a time of democratic backsliding.