Odesa's IzbirKom Newspaper January-February 2024 Highlights Local Governance and Community Involvement

The next issue of IzbirKom newspaper, founded by the Odesa regional organization of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, has been published.

The new issue of IzbirKom newspaper for January-February 2024 is available free of charge at the office of the Odesa regional organization of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine.

In this issue, readers will learn about the results of the monitoring of attendance at sessions and deputy work in standing committees, conducted by experts of the all-Ukrainian public campaign "Certification of Local Council Deputies". The study covered the activities of 61 out of 64 deputies of the Odesa City Council.

In addition, experts of the all-Ukrainian civic campaign "Certification of Local Council Deputies" monitored the publication of declarations for 2021 and 2022 by deputies of city councils of regional centers of Ukraine (except for Donetsk, Luhansk regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea).

The number of available declarations for 2023 was also analyzed based on the data from the Unified State Register of Declarations.

The section "Public Partnership "For Transparent Local Budgets!" will tell you about the involvement of citizens in the budget process, namely, how to best do it at the stage of approval of the draft budget in the community.

You can also find an express analysis based on the results of the initial assessment of the level of budget transparency and participation in 20 communities participating in the project "Budget Participation from A to Z" implemented by the Public Partnership for Transparent Local Budgets with the support of the USAID HOVERLA project.

The Legal Advice section provides information on when parents can be deprived of their parental rights.

The journalists also interviewed Serhiy Bratchuk, who was one of the first to inform the Odesa region about the military situation. Now he is the spokesman for the Ukrainian Volunteer Army - South, the head of the Public Council at the Odesa Regional Military Administration. This is a conversation about the personal in war, the pre-war Ukrainian army, and the power of words, faith, and people.

The section "Community Justice Center" describes how the Tatarbunary community has learned to more effectively protect the rights of IDPs and other vulnerable groups.

Read more in the issue of IzbirCom.

Ірина Глухова