Rustavi and Ozurgeti municipalities started the first Citizens Assemblies in Georgia with the Council of Europe support. The Assemblies are running in parallel in these two municipalities.

Citizens’ Assembly is a form of deliberative democracy, which allows citizens to learn about the topic of the Assembly and deliberate on the issue important to the local community.

Rustavi municipality invited citizens to deliberate on the development of floodplain forest area in Rustavi, while in Ozurgeti, the citizens discuss possible ways how to improve parking system in Ozurgeti.

Citizens’ Assembly started with a learning day, where the invited experts in environmental protection, biodiversity, urban planning, urban design presented their views and recommendations on assembly topics, answered questions from assembly members and worked with citizens in small groups to provide them detailed and comprehensive information.

Equipped with relevant knowledge, the assembly members gathered for the first deliberation day, to define their views, to formulate draft recommendations on the assembly topics and participate in preliminary voting.  Draft recommendations will be submitted to the city halls for feedback and finally reviewed and adopted at the second deliberation day on 14 May in Rustavi and 13 May in Ozurgeti.

Assembly members are randomly selected citizens based on the predefined methodology, which creates a diverse, demographically representative group, considering the criteria such as age, gender, level of education and residence.

The “Citizens’ Assemblies” in both municipalities are taking place in the framework of the project “Strengthening Participatory Democracy and Human Rights at Local Level in Georgia”, by the Directorate General of Democracy and Human Dignity, Division of Elections and Participatory Democracy, within the Council of Europe Action Plan for Georgia 2020-2023 with the financial contribution of the Austrian Development Cooperation.