Atsuko Hirakawa

Atsuko Hirakawa is the Project Coordinator of the Democracy Tracker, a policy-oriented tool that monitors and assesses the state of democracy and human rights in 173 countries. The Democracy Tracker is part of the Global State of Democracy (GSoD) Initiative and complements the annually updated, quantitative GSoD dataset maintained by International IDEA’s Democracy Assessment Unit. She previously served as Gender Focal Point for the Support to Electoral Processes and Democracy Programme in Myanmar. Before joining International IDEA in 2020, she spent over 13 years working with UN agencies. Her experience includes 8 years with UNDP in the area of democratic governance and elections, managing projects and providing technical assistance to EMBs, government and civil society actors, focusing on gender and inclusion, outreach, capacity building and field operations, in Haiti, Afghanistan, Armenia, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone. Atsuko is part of the UN Single Electoral Roster and UNDP’s Global Policy Network Experts Roster for Rapid Response. She holds a Master of Arts in Governance and Development from the Institute of Development Studies.