Eurasia Partnership Foundation carried out “Promotion of Human rights, Democratization and Good Governance in Azerbaijan” program with the financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Netherlands.

Dicussion was held on “Public Participation. Citizen Participation in local decision-making” with participation of local authorities, local self-government bodies and civil society organization in Ganja in the framework of “Public Participation. Studying the existing situation and supporting new initiatives” program, which was implemented on the basis of agreement between the president of the Citizen’s Labour Rights Protection League, an expert, Mr. Sahib Mammadov and Eurasia Partnership Foundation on March 07, 2017.

The head of the Ombudsman’s office, Aydin Safikhanli and an expert Sahib Mammadov has presented papers for discussion.
Expert Aydın Safikhanli made a speech on “Public Participation. Models and forms of public participation”. Later, there has been debate about this topic and citizen participation opportunities in local decision-making processes.

Representative of civil society from Ganja, Gazakh, Shamkir, Samukh and Tovuz discussed capabilities and techniques of civil society’s influence to local decisions and gave successful examples about it.

At the same time, they mentioned problems in the creation of local councils by the executive powers.

A regional program manager of the Germany Cooperation Organization, the head of the Gazakh Human Rights Resources Centre, the head of the regional office of the National NGO Forum and other representatives of civil society has put forward concrete proposals.

Maleyka Alizade, the head of the “Ganja Regional Women’s Center”, was local organizer of the event.
The next regional meeting will be in Gabala.

At the end of the final discussions will be held in Open Government Initiative Government-Civil Society Dialogue Platform and monitoring report will be presented.