A Citizens Track on AI Governance: From Theory to Practice

On Wednesday 8th June 2026 we hosted ‘A Citizens Track on AI Governance: From Theory to Practice’ at the United Nations Palais des Nations as part of the multistakeholder data on AI governance, organised with PAIRS, Geneva Graduate Institute, MAP-AI, UNOCHR, B-Tech, BSR, Global Network Initiative and the Global South Network for Trustworthy AI.

On a day that began with hearing the co-chairs of the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance, Ambassadors Egriselda López (El Salvador) and Rein Tammsaar (Estonia) talk about their work to create an inclusive conversation within the practical constraints of a tight timeline and the formal mandate given to the dialogue by the UN General Assembly, and their explicit recognition that indigenous voices, women’ s voices and climate concerns had been under-represented in dialogue preparations, it was fitting to end the day with a focus on how the citizens’ track could move forward to bring diverse public voices into future moments.

The session lightly followed the structure of a deliberative workshop, starting with scene-setting from the Geneva Graduate Institute, The Global Citizens’ Assembly and PAIRS, and an introduction to the Citizens’ Track white paper.

g This was followed by an expert panel, with insights and provocations on a number of themes. A video of the panel will be available soon. In the meantime, the notes below briefly summarise some of the panel’s contributions:

On community assembly design

• Chiara Ullstein, Technical University Munich, on the Global AI Dialogues project’s work to facilitate public engagement on AI in Mexico, Bolivia, Nigeria, Germany, India and Japan. Chiara pointed to three important lessons: meet people where they are; support people in better understanding AI; adapt to and account for local customers regarding discussion dynamics, time, recruitment and communication.

On institutional interface

• Paul Ladd, UNECE, reflecting on the My World Survey, and the processes of citizen engagement leading to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With a budget of almost $35m, grant support to 100 countries, and 9.7m citizens around the world participating, as well as direct lines from public input to the content of certain SDGs, the MyWorld experience provides many lessons, albeit from a different period of multilateral governance.
• Francesca Bosco, independent consultant, warned that global institutional architecture is being rapidly formalized before democratic interfaces exist, meaning public participation must act as a corrective against the systemic concentration of power among frontier labs and national security logics. She stressed that a credible Citizens’ Track must move beyond “generic openness” toward concrete institutional “docking points” that formalize how civic input is processed and answered. Furthermore, to avoid replicating digital and geopolitical inequities, participation must prioritize Global South representation and operate via agile, continuous civic infrastructure capable of matching the rapid tempo of AI deployment.

On funding and sustainability

• Rich Wilson, Iswe, reflected on the experience of embedding the global assembly within the Climate COP process, working with host governments to secure space for citizen participation, and the need to find institutionalisation that goes beyond support from one host government.

On partnerships and governance:

• Mathilde Boddaert, Coalition for the UN We Need, introduced C4UN and it’s membership model of individuals and organisations, and reflected on the importance of building trust.
• Joshua Tan, Public AI, shared how PublicAI.ch are exploring models of cooperative governance, building on the model of consumer co-operatives established in Switzerland, and presented an approach to large language model governance based on decentralised local governance, mirroring the cantons of the country.
• Janet McLaren, Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, explored how the partnership works with civil society, governments and industry partners in different spaces.

Following the expert panel, a series of facilitated breakout groups invited participants to briefly deliberate on a set of prompt questions, and to deliver recommendations to help with the next stages of the Citizens’ Track. Notes from each group are shared below:

1. Community Assemblies

Focus Question: What does minimum viable support for a community assembly look like?

Strategic Design & Expectation Management

• Mission, Vision, and Transparency: Clearly define the challenge (mission) and the path forward (vision). Manage expectations transparently so participants can actively scrutinize the process.
• Inclusion as Agency: Open communication and transparency are the foundations of an inclusive process. Giving people agency means allowing them to help design the process itself—letting them suggest, vote on, and decide the topics to be discussed.
• Imagining the Future: Incorporate exercises focused on future-speculation to help communities overcome immediate biases and align their discussions back to the core mission and vision.

Operationalization & Delivery

• Centered on Affected Communities: Actively bring the most directly impacted communities into the center of the process.
• Decentralized Delivery (Train-the-Trainer): Use a decentralized model to scale implementation, while remaining mindful of whether the overarching leadership and agenda-setting remain truly decentralized.
• Tiered Learning Phase: Begin with an accessible “AI 101” baseline to establish a shared language for communities, then pivot to country-specific contexts, applications, and implications.

2. Funding and Sustainability

Focus Questions: What is funding needed for? Where are the opportunities? What will make the Citizens’ Track sustainable?

Autonomy & Representation

• Local Funding for Independence: Citizens’ Assemblies should ideally be funded locally to maintain independence, stay honest to their cause, and avoid being compromised by external vested interests.
• Global South Leadership: Embed strong Global South leaders directly into the organizing and ideating teams; a democratic process cannot be legitimate without them.

Alternative Financing Models

• Innovative & Trust-Based Finance: Map the landscape of trust-based funding models and participatory financing to build a sustainable, long-term approach for the Citizens’ Track.
• Deliberation as a Corporate Service: Explore impact investing and treating deliberations as a formal service. For example, use Development Impact Bonds to help corporates meet their legal and social responsibilities, bringing external stakeholders into the KPI development process.
• Diversified Pockets: Redefine structural KPIs to attract new types of stakeholders and unlock alternative funding streams. Encourage a mix of philanthropy, government co-financing, and community “buy-in” or cost-sharing.

Movement Building

• Value-Driven Alliances: Focus on building a continuous community dedicated to creating a better future, grounded in dignity, structural transparency, and a willingness to call out what is currently failing.
• Knowledge Pooling: Build mechanisms within the Citizens’ Track to continuously pool, aggregate, and scale local insights.

3. Institutional Interface

Focus Question: What are the next steps to create an ongoing institutional interface?

Multilateral & Stakeholder Alignment

• Complementary Pathways: Connect with multiple existing governance pathways to produce, enhance, and complement formal mechanisms (such as the International Scientific Panel on AI).
• Targeted Diplomatic Engagement: Proactively engage specific high-level stakeholders, including ITU leadership, co-chairs, the UN, and leading member states.
• Strategic State Alliances: Leverage countries with strong traditions of participatory democracy (e.g., Switzerland) as allies to open doors to other member states and anchor global conversations into local/national contexts (building on existing IGF experiences).

Legitimacy & Accountability

• Self-Representation: Ground the interface’s legitimacy in the principle of people speaking for themselves—holding the process accountable to ensuring people discuss the AI futures they actually want, not just how they are expected to use existing tools.
• Bridging Structural Asymmetries: Remain highly aware of global disparities in access and opportunity, explicitly connecting technical infrastructures to wider social, economic, and policy conversations.

4. Partnerships and Governance

Focus Question: What governance values and practices should guide the Citizens’ track?

Core Governance Values

• Trust, Openness, and the Feedback Loop: Trust and process transparency are mandatory, especially when navigating widespread “participation fatigue.” The absolute failure mode of engagement is an absence of response. At a minimum, contributors must be acknowledged; ideally, institutions must show what changed based on the input or explain why it was set aside (referencing models like the NIST report on community participation).
• Amplification Over Instruction: Shift the paradigm from “educating” communities to amplifying them. Governance should focus on elevating existing local knowledge rather than treating communities as empty vessels to be taught.

Proven Ecosystem Models

• The CSO-Lawmaker Pipeline (e.g., Nepal): Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) convene community engagement meetings, bringing together journalists, lawyers, and sector-specific NGOs to review legislative proposals (e.g., social media regulation bills). The resulting community input is picked up directly by lawmakers to amend the proposals while simultaneously building civic capacity.
• Multistakeholder Coalitions (e.g., Cape Verde & UK): Mobilize trusted, specific messengers to activate their own communities (e.g., entrepreneurs leading communication on entrepreneurship bills). Successful assemblies combine government mandates with cross-sector partnerships: specialized CSOs, politicians, trusted academics for data scrutiny and gravitas, and high-profile public figures (e.g., David Attenborough on climate) to drive media visibility.
• Media-Driven Public Debates (e.g., Fondation Hirondelle): Use local media and community radio networks to organize face-to-face town halls (100–300 people) where citizens quiz experts live. In-person events are essential for engaging vulnerable populations who already trust local media anchors.
• Co-Design & Local Integration (e.g., Germany & Indonesia): High-impact participatory projects succeed when they meet communities eye-to-eye. For example, collaborating directly with fishing communities in Indonesia to integrate local knowledge into the setup of AI-enabled weather stations.

> AI use statement: The post narrative was written by hand and all notes reviewed prior to AI use. Some speaker notes and breakout session notes were summarised using Gemini 3.5 to achieve consistent presentation of points. Summaries were manually cross-checking against the original for consistency of meaning.