What does it mean to strengthen citizen participation in local governance and why is it important?

Citizen participation in local governance involves ordinary citizens assessing their own needs and participating in local project planning and budget monitoring. It is important for improving public resource management and reducing corruption, by making public servants and political leaders accountable to the people.

For citizen participation to work, transparency of government information is needed, as well as the inclusion of members into decision-making from groups whose concerns are being addressed. Excluding the weak and powerless from decision-making is a cause of poverty because it denies them rights and creates unequal power relationships. Brazil has addressed this by introducing a number of mechanisms to enhance citizen participation, including its Participatory Budget and its public policy councils.

Civil and political rights, including freedom of expression and access to information, which are at the basis of political participation, are human rights in themselves. Citizen participation requires trust, belief and wholeness - trust in their co-participants, belief that participation can make a difference, and feeling socially included. To ensure strong participation of citizens in local governance, citizens need to understand and want to exercise their right to participate in local political issues. They need to feel confident and know where and how to participate, while local institutions should be prepared to facilitate the citizen participation. Engaging citizens in local governance improves accountability and the ability of local authorities to solve problems, creates more inclusive and cohesive communities, and increases the number and quality of initiatives made by communities. One way to increase awareness and to empower citizens to have a voice is through increased access to technology and in particular social media. The potential of public media working in conflict regions is especially interesting, says one participant, for opening spaces for debate and dialogue and improving transparency and the hidden social structures that generate corruption.

A project in Pakistan is building the capacity of teacher training institutions to teach good governance, human rights, gender and youth development and empowerment, and the positive role of media in promoting these concepts with the hope of producing a core of teachers capable of teaching these values to high school students in conflict areas. In the Philippines, where the tradition of human rights activism is grounded on a moral basis of being human, asserting human rights tends to be associated with opposition politics. While activists accept the risks and costs of promoting human rights, those for whom they struggle can be made more vulnerable if human rights issues are not translated into citizens' rights. In Portugal the last few decades have brought major social changes, improving the standard of living of some but leaving many ‘stateless citizens’.  In countries such as Portugal and the Philippines we see the need for human rights to be operationalized, and for a focus on education to solve social challenges. Around the world, community based organizations do much to bring about real social transformation and empowerment of people - the Civil Rights Movements of USA, the Dalits and Tribal Rights movement in India, the freedom movement in India or South Africa, the Labor Rights Movement in Russia, and the Women’s rights movements across the globe serve as examples that people do not need to be socio-economically well off or even highly educated. What is most important is the ownership of people with full commitment to the mission of the movement.