Rabat Declaration

Across the globe, diverse communities, organizations, and coalitions are spearheading innovative governance approaches, weaving a rich tapestry of citizen engagement strategies, tools, and insights, rooted in unique social, cultural, epistemic and political contexts. Some initiatives have focused on organizing this extensive knowledge production around global policy mandates with curated stakeholder engagement. However, the application of uniform standards, disconnected databases, and a lack of pluriversal operability, continues to poses a risk that these vocabularies may lead to tensions, unrest, and failure. 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. 

Please feel free to provide us with your thoughts, comments and suggestions!

Rabat Declaration, September 17, 2023

We believe that the challenges of this century demand new, dynamic and fair models of governance.

We believe that the complexity of these problems require our Àjọṣepọ̀ (collective intelligence): the participation of many and diverse citizens, not just a privileged few.

We believe that there is no “one best model“ of شورى (citizen participation) and that useful Nunya (knowledge) can come from all places and cultures.

We believe that the vocabulary and language used in governance have an essential, and often hidden, impact on processes and institutions.

We believe that the languages of the Global South have too often been suppressed or ignored in the discourse of governance, both in these countries and globally.

We believe that better models of governance will use language and concepts that resonate with local realities.

We believe that we can support one another across borders of all kinds in reinventing the language of governance around the globe. 

We believe that words create worlds of possibility

GVI’s mission

We seek to build better, more resilient and inclusive models of governance by:

• Establishing common understandings and clarifying the discourse of governance, both the inherited terms of the West and the historic or emerging terms of the Global South.
• Creating new linkages between tools, platforms, and databases on governances, enabling them to be accessible and helpful to more communities.
• Using the vocabulary of governance more intentionally, critically, and inclusively, and supporting one another in creating these practices.
• Leveraging this treasury of words, ideas and practices to build better, more resilient and inclusive models of governance for humanity and our planet.