Purpose:
The main purpose of this Government Measure is to make active “citizenship” real, enabling participation for all inhabitants of the city. This action emphasises and draws attention on generating mechanisms to promote the participation of people with different and diverse cultural and native backgrounds in Barcelona’s different participation channels and areas.
Stimulus/Rationale:
This government measure aims to recognise the diversity that exists in the city and to place the importance of making the right to citizen participation effective for all the people who live in the city.
The new Regulation on citizen participation, approved by the municipal plenary on 6 October 2017, recognises diversity and urges the City Council to provide the necessary and appropriate means to enable the participation of all citizens.
The regulation recognises as citizens with political rights all people registered in the city over 16 years of age, thus expanding the number of people who can be consulted.
number of people who can be consulted and and thus bringing it closer to real universal suffrage. It is understood that all those who live in Barcelona should be able to influence public policies.
The aim of this measure is to make it possible to comply with the regulation and thus encourage greater participation of people from different backgrounds and contexts. participation of people from diverse backgrounds and cultural contexts in city affairs.
This government measure is not the first line of action by the City Council to promote the participation of people and groups from diverse cultural backgrounds and contexts. Despite this, there had not yet a programme of its own whose main aim was to make possible the participation main purpose of enabling participation that recognises diversity. recognises diversity.
Process:
This new government measure is an action that emerges from a shared concern in relation to the possibilities to make traditionally excluded population(s) enjoying active “citizenship” and full participation, throughout the different participation channels or areas of work. More specifically, the measure applies when lack of participation is detected as a result of cultural power relations that surface different constraints at the time of determining an active, passive or banned role in the decision-making of the political and social life of the city.
The measure takes up the conclusions of a working group with cultural and religious with cultural and religious entities that the City Council City Council promoted in April 2016 to share diagnoses and draw up strategies to reach these groups and include them in the to reach these groups and include them in the policies and channels of participation. participation channels.
Areas of work and objectives:
Pillar 1: PARTICIPATION CHANNELS
Objective: Recognise and spotlight cultural diversity to strengthen the participation of people from different and diverse native and cultural backgrounds and their grouping in the channels of participation provided by the Barcelona City Council to the overall population.
Pillar 2: WORK WITH ACTORS AND REINFORCEMENT OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATIONS AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Objective: Deepen the knowledge about sociocultural realities and needs related to citizens’ participation and contribute to the promotion of autonomous and self-organized spaces for communities through joint work in collaboration with actors of diverse cultural and native backgrounds
Pillar 3: THE CITY COUNCIL OF BARCELONA
Objective: Strengthen the capacity of civil servants and other agents at the service of the City Council to actively incorporate the intercultural perspective in actions aimed at promoting citizens’ participation and intercultural mediation.
Pillar 4: COMMUNICATION CHANNELS
Objective: Incorporate intercultural diversity criteria in the municipal channels and media.
Pillar 5: POLITICAL PARTICIPATION
Objective: Facilitate the exercise of political rights of people residing in the city of Barcelona. This is an on-going programme with a variety of actions of which some have already been implemented while others are currently being carried out or will be developed as part of the 2017-2019 Work Plan.
The effective implementation of this government measure requires cooperation to achieve mainstreaming in the City Hall structure and in the city. In this sense, it is co-led by the “District and Participation Council” and the “Immigration, Interculturality and Diversity Commissioner”.
The measure also foresees the involvement of many other different actors, from institutions and departments, such as the communication department and the city Districts among others, to civil society: citizens’ councils and associative networks, grassroots organizations, NGOs, or any other kind of “grouping” modality.
Impact:
The impact of the measure will be assessed based on three actions:
- A follow-up of the indicators for each work’s axis that will allow acknowledging the degree of fulfilment of each objective;
- The segregation of all indicators by gender and age;
- A qualitative methodological approach in evaluating the work, and dialogue and informal interviews with grassroots organizations and other civil society (formal or informal) groups.
Key Reference documents: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/participaciociutadana/sites/default/files/documents/mesura_es.pdf
