The History

Citizens’ assemblies are made of ordinary citizens, selected randomly to represent a snapshot of the population, for example by categories such as race, age, gender, education, income, political views and geographic distribution. In 2020, a citizens’ assembly selected by lot redistricted Michigan without gerrymandering. In 2016, an Irish citizens’ assembly recommended legalizing same-sex marriage and abortions, which was then made Irish law by the parliamentary endorsed referendum.

Some of the OWON team were part of supporting the world’s first ever Global Citizens’ Assembly on climate action in 2021/22. 100 people were chosen by a lottery style system, as an accurate snapshot of humanity. This meant that 10% had no formal education, 70% were living on $10 or less a day, 50% were women and 13% were white. They met for 69 hours over 11 weeks, learning about the climate and ecological emergency and deliberating over what the best solutions may be. Their final declaration was presented six times at COP26 in Glasgow and praised by secretary general Antonio Guterres, the UK political lead for the conference Alok Sharma MP, youth climate activist Vanessa Nakate and one of the authors of the Paris 1.5 degree, agreement Laurence Tubiana.

The roots of our name and inspiration can be traced back to the ‘One World’ movement developed from the 1930s by some of the people we most admire including Albert Einstein, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, Albert Camus, Martin Luther King, Rosika Schwimmer and Mahatma Gandhi. It advocated for a strong and democratic world system. One of the most promising paths forward is the creation of a permanent Global Citizens’ Assembly. A permanent global citizens’ assembly, recently endorsed by the government of Brazil, could meet annually to bring recommendations to the United Nations General Assembly (the body that created the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, where each government has one vote and no superpower has a veto).