Key ideas and methodological axes of the Asian Citizens’ Assembly

* elements extracted from the report of the coordinators meeting in Paris - June 2008

This is a continent where strong economic growth goes side by side with poverty and terrorism. Take India, for example, the country of TICs, business and tourism but also of the pitiful slums of Bombay
The military context is tense and diplomatic relations are hard due to opposing political ideologies
This continent houses almost half of the planet’s inhabitants (China and India have a third of the world’s population)
There are 37 very heterogeneous countries with different countries and geographies.

Betting on youth and intergenerational dialogs in those countries where youth represents 60% of the population
Dealing with common worries, such as sustainable development or education. It is of the outmost importance to start there, since the diversity of contexts needs to discover the other before tackling any political ambition.
Beginning with bilateral or trilateral meetings (India-China Forum, India, China, Japan Forum) so as to broaden them to wider multilateral meetings
Associating forums and assemblies, and then joining all these platforms in order to achieve an Asian Citizens’ Assembly. Thus, these forums have not been thought to transform themselves into media or specific strikes, but they rather linger in time so as to enable the development of a capacity to exercise citizenship through the acquisition of knowledge and results (e.g. the experience of the Asian Forum of Solidarity Economy)
Reaching a collective, autonomous reflection and action space which respects the actors’ diversity (for instance, urban and rural) and which associates those who make decisions, inhabitants and researchers, experts, by the issue.

the Citizens' Assembly in Asia