Across the globe, diverse communities, organizations, and coalitions are spearheading innovative governance approaches, weaving a rich tapestry of citizen engagement strategies, tools, and insights. Some initiatives have focused on organizing this extensive knowledge production. However, the application of uniform standards poses a risk that these vocabularies may not be suitable for all communities and contexts. Successfully navigating this challenge calls for a thoughtful consideration of community contexts before implementing uniform standards. There is also a need to develop tools and methodologies to better understand deliberative practices emanating from communities in the Global South. 

From 15 to 17 September 2023, the Innovation for Policy Foundation, UMP6 School of Collective Intelligence, and Participedia organised the Governance Vocabularies Conference gathering a diverse group of governance innovation networks, practitioners, academics, researchers, and activists in UMP6 Rabat Campus, in Rabat, Morocco. Their mission is to decolonize governance models and vocabularies, highlighting practices and theories from the Global South. To achieve this, they aim to promote shared understandings, encompassing both Western and Global South terms, and establish connections between tools and databases. 

Members of the Governance Vocabularies Initiative came up with the Rabat declaration, and today, would like to include more views and collect further opinions to help improve the declaration and enrich the initiative’s missions.