INTERACTIVE GUIDE "VISION FOR COHESION"
Kofi Annan
7th UN Secretary-General and Nobel Peace Prize winner
"Nobody is born a good citizen and no nation is born democratic. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over time. Young people need to be involved from birth.""
Rated 5 out of 5
Civic participation life is still ambiguous notion. The civic participation is essentially about “having the right, the means, the space and the opportunity, and when support is needed, to participate and influence in the decision-making process.
For the politic life the civic participation is a necessity. It ensures real involvement of people in solving problems of their daily lives and therefore – provides adequate solutions. Moreover, citizens involvement or the so-called “democratic participation” provides greater transparency and accountability of institutions and accumulates many positive effects, including:
- helps to know the way of decision-making and the predictability of the developed norms;
- creates an opportunity for the ideas of the citizens to be directly realized;
- leads to the restoration of trust;
- offers different points of view and improves the quality of the decisions;
- ensures readiness for implementation of the adopted decisions;
- provides an opportunity for periodic civil monitoring of the actions, decisions and policies pursued by the country.
For people, civic participation is a right guaranteed by national and international law. Citizens and civil society organizations can state their position, propose alternative solutions and make recommendations to the institutions.
But it is also a process. This process requires the government and the local authorities to constantly move forward in providing and promoting mechanisms for adequate participation in all stages of policy-making. For the citizens, this process is related to the formation and protection of values for stating the position and active engagement in public discussions.