The Council of Europe promotes the participation of citizens and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in political decision making at all levels and support the Member States to create a conducive environment for the implementation of effective civil participation.
The BePART Forum is a joint initiative of the Directorate General of Democracy and Human Dignity, Directorate of Democratic Participation, the Conference of International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) and of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe.
Targeting both CSOs and Public Authorities (PAs), the BePART Forum aspires to actively contribute to mainstream participation in political decision making by:
- Building capacity and knowledge
- Promoting democratic values
- Activating inspiration
- Reinforcing networks and processes
- Triggering change
The BePART platform is the on-line digital sharing environment of the BePART Forum targeting civil participation practices and actors.
It is designed to promote the sharing of civil participation practices by implementing a responsive digital environment acting both as repository and as catalyser.
With practitioners and institutional actors in mind, the BePART platform aims at providing experiences on civil participation to develop a network of knowledge that may evolve in networks of partners for peer-to-peer exchange and learning, across the Council of Europe member states.
The BePART platform aims to collect experiences which are representative of the views of both CSOs and Public Authorities (PAs) and therefore for each experience information is collected from at least one CSO and one PA actor involved in the process. Moreover, the BePART Working Group at the Council of Europe will undergo a validation process of each case study against the principles of civil participation as stated in the Revised Code of Good Practice for Civil Participation in the Decision-Making Process, adopted by the Conference of INGOs on the 30th of October 2019.
BEPART – THE VISION
1 – Build capacity and knowledge
BePART envisages to:
- Support the understanding of civil participation frameworks, processes, and tools among a wide range of stakeholders.
- Raise awareness on the potential levels of intensity and forms of civil participation.
- Raise awareness on the actors of civil participation processes.
- Raise awareness on the benefits of civil participation.
- Support the understanding of potential drivers for civil participation, such as needs that participatory decision making may tackle.
- Increase sharing of knowledge and practical know-how among peers.
- Increase the knowledge on the overall state of play of civil participation in Council of Europe member states.
- Increase the knowledge on emerging/innovative approaches to civil participation processes.
2 – Promote democratic values
BePART envisages to:
- Promote civil participation processes as fundamental pathways towards consolidating democratic societies and enabling good governance at all levels.
- Promote and increase the implementation of the Revised Code of Good Practice for civil participation in the decision-making processes at all levels.
- Rebuild trust between public authorities and citizens and organised civil society.
3 – Activate inspiration
BePART envisages to:
- Increase the visibility of concrete and updated examples of civil participation processes and initiatives.
- Focus the narrative of showcased practices on the learning potential/opportunity, rather than achievements.
- Stimulate the willingness to strengthen/improve existing civil participation mechanisms and processes.
- Foster the building of relations among actors beyond the on-line environment.
4 – Reinforce networks and processes
BePART envisages to:
- Promote the sense of belonging to a wider network of actors concerned with strengthening democratic processes and values.
- Stimulate peer-to-peer exchanges as a learning and growing opportunity for all actors involved in civil participation processes.
5 – Trigger change
BePART envisages to:
- Stimulate a shift in the mindset of actors towards stronger participatory approaches in the decision-making processes, by emphasising the benefits of civil participation.
- Promote the partnership and collaboration between public authorities and civil society as the key for successful decision-making process.
- Promote among actors of civil participation processes a critical view of own strengths and weaknesses in designing and implementing such processes.
- Illustrate innovative solutions to overcoming new challenges to civil participation processes.
BEPART – THE MISSION
1 – Build capacity and knowledge
BePART contributes to building the capacity and knowledge on civil participation by:
- Creating an on-line repository of practices showcasing tools and solutions for implementing effective civil participation processes.
- Centralising relevant Council of Europe sources on standards, legal frameworks and existing guidelines fostering civil participation processes.
- Providing an easy access to information and deploying a practical approach in the presentation of data within the interactive website/on-line compendium.
- Allowing for the identification and geo-localisation of practices and their promoters.
- Organising specific capacity-building (on-line) initiatives, such as webinars, conferences, etc.
2 – Promote democratic values
BePART contributes to promote democratic values by:
- Integrating the registration of future contributors, as first step of the validation process.
- Integrating Council of Europe principles and standards for civil participation as criteria for selection and validation of case studies.
- Providing an easy access to the relevant Council of Europe tools and Council of Europe projects.
- Integrating the ‘two-ends of the process’ mechanisms, which envisages the joint contribution of both PAs and CSOs involved in the practice.
3 – Activate inspiration
BePART contributes to activate inspiration by:
- Ensuring the diversity of examples in terms of geographical and cultural settings as well as of policy areas of application.
- Providing a structured visualisation of showcased practices, allowing for the identification of obstacles and solutions towards achieving the goals of civil participation.
- Providing periodical expert analysis of case studies, stemming from the validation processes.
- Allowing for the visualisation of perspectives of the different actors involved in the provided examples.
4 – Reinforce networks and processes
BePART contributes to reinforcing networks and processes by:
- Setting up a feedback mechanism around the submission of new examples.
- Ensuring interactive functionalities of the website/on-line compendium.
- Showcasing news and opportunities of the Council of Europe for civil participation.
- Allowing for identification of contacts of contributors.
5 – Trigger change
BePART contributes to trigger change by:
- Showcasing the results and impacts of civil participation processes across different policy sectors.
- Allowing users (i.e., both CSOs and PAs) to identify distinctive aspects of cases studies, check for the replicability in their context and apply them so to innovate their practices.
- Empowering users to adopt virtuous peer-to-peer learning practices, sharing challenges as well as solutions.
- Underlining the effectiveness of a sustainable partnership between civil society actors and public authorities.