The team working on the Malian citizens’ assembly is finishing the preparatory step of the initiative. Adjustments and improvements to the project are taking place, especially connected with the expression of geo-cultural and socio-professional diversity of the assembly.
It should be pointed out that the peculiarity of the Malian process arises from the importance given to the possibility to express the various diversities on the local level, upon which regional – and, afterwards, national – visions, proposals and commitments are built. Diversity is tackled from three different angles :
- geo-cultural : multiplicity of ethnic groups and contexts in the Malian territory ;
- thematic : the various challenges which spring out from the dialog among society’s actors ;
- socio-professional : vindications and viewpoints provided by each social or professional sector.
- The first stage in the process will consist of «introducing society to the initiative and setting the goals of the project on a local level, like Ambroise Dakouo points out. A meeting will be organized in each town. We will ask them to appoint three to six delegates capable of being the spokesmen of the worries from the various socio-professional groups in a town».
- These delegates will later on get together in town circles (small administrative town groupings) to start exploring the issues and challenges. «Our priority is to listen to what Malians have to say. We want people to feel capable of identifying the challenges by themselves. In order for this happen, we will provide them with tools which have already been tested within the framework of the Alliance to re-found governance in Africa, such as conceptual cartography and transversal analysis».
- These delegates will meet other, new actors during a third stage on the Malian regional administrative level to continue building socio-professional bonds and to create new thematic groups. A document that picks up from the regional work will be written during each stage.
- Finally, the process will end with a national assembly which will re-group town delegates, new socio-professional delegates and thematic groups.
For each stage, the creation of bonds, respect towards the actors’ words, and the methods used to deal with the complexity of viewpoints are key. The first local meetings should begin by the end of July, 2009. The Alliance to re-found the governance in Africa and the Djoliba Center constitute the organizational and logistic basis of the initiative. In order to achieve this, we have great help and local contacts in Mali who have also been mobilized for the initiative.
According to Ambroise, citizens’ expectations about the assembly are huge. This should double the forces of Malian organizers as well as of the various citizens’ assembly activists in their own latitudes, then.
the Citizens' Assembly in Mali
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