Osama Alrajhi
REBUILD Coordinator in Libya
The Ministry of Local Government and the project REBUILD pay great attention to multi-level governance and provide technical and strategic support for community participation or participatory governance.
REBUILD, being co-funded by the European Union and part of the Nicosia Initiative framework as the Transparency intervention funded by the Flemish government, has contributed with own local expert to the work of Transparency Belgium to prepare a strategic policies and procedures manual for communication and outreach between municipalities, citizens, civil society and the media.
The document is mainly addressed to the Community Development Department, which deals with community participation through the Community Participation Development Section, as well as the Public Relations and Media Office, which deals with some types of community communication, such as audio-visual programs.
This comes in implementation of the provisions of the organizational structure No. 1500 of 2021 issued by the Minister of Local Government and the Local Revenue System Regulation No. 330 of 2021, which obligated municipalities in Article 5 and Article 6 to the need for community participation and the citizen’s budget.
Based on the above, the team of experts of the REBUILD project prepared and developed a strategic policies and procedures manual, which was adopted within the applicable documents in the national programs for community participation and communication according to the decision of the Minister of Local Government No. 765 of 2023, which aims to enhance trust between the community and municipalities and establish the concepts of decentralization and democracy.
The main objective of this guide is to define policies that guide and control the process of municipalities’ communication with citizens, civil society and media organization’s, in addition to defining the executive steps, work procedures and flow that must be followed by those involved in the communication process. This policy aims to ensure the municipality’s commitment to participatory governance standards. It also aims to build effective community partnerships between localities, civil society organizations and citizens, in addition to establishing democratic practices within the framework of local administration, such as activating the citizen’s budget, achieving local development with community participation, activating the role of local community organizations within municipalities, and promoting the concept of advocacy and networking.
