Process reviewed and approved by the DPCA Excom on December 4, 2017.
1a. Any member of Democrats Abroad may ask an elected DPCA member to sponsor a Resolution to be submitted to the Resolutions Committee. The DPCA member has the choice to sponsor or not. The DPCA member does not need to be from the member's country committee.
Alternatively
1b. A DA member may also submit a draft text for a vote to his/her CC. If adopted, a CC DPCA member must be willing to sponsor a Resolution to be submitted to the Resolutions Committee.
2. If the elected DPCA member chooses to sponsor the resolution, s/he takes ownership of the Resolution, and is responsible for submitting the document to the Resolutions Committee for review.
3. The Resolutions Committee makes sure the text of the resolution is drafted appropriately, reviews the resolution for redundancy with previous resolutions, consistency with DA values and factual accuracy. If necessary, the Resolutions Committee sends the resolution back to the resolution owner (the DPCA member) for further edits/corrections and restarts this step. The DPCA member is responsible for edits and re-submission to Resolutions Committee for approval.
4. When the Resolutions Committee has approved the format and content of the resolution, the Resolutions Committee then sends the resolution back to the DPCA member for submission to the DPCA. The DPCA member then submits the draft to the Int’l Chair for inclusion in the next DPCA meeting agenda, or if the ExCom deems it necessary, the Excom may call for an online debate and vote regarding the resolution.
Additional guidance - Resolutions at the General Meeting AND throughout the year (posted April 22, 2019)
The Resolutions Committee works with authors and sponsors of resolutions to revise them for (1) technically correct formatting, (2) accuracy and inclusion of relevant facts including DA's past positions, and (3) advice regarding changes that increase the likelihood of passage by the DPCA.
Resolutions to be considered at an Annual General Meeting of the DPCA must be received by the Resolutions Committee prior to the meeting; the deadline for submission is generally a date set at least 15 days prior to the meeting itself.
At that point the official list of resolutions will be distributed by the DPCA Chair along with the 15-day notice for the DPCA global meeting itself.
Changes after that date are not allowed to avoid confusion, but changes may happen in the meeting itself by motions to amend.
Once the meeting begins, authorship and sponsorship are irrelevant; the text is in the hands of the DPCA and may be changed even against the author's wishes.
The DPCA may also approve resolutions outside a global meeting, so if your resolution does not meet the formal deadline, it is perfectly in order to submit a resolution after the deadline, as the Resolutions Committee regularly organizes online discussion and debate of new texts. With DA's adoption of a 2020 platform just over a year away, we know how important resolutions are, so do not hesitate to contact the Committee at resolutions@democratsabroad.org with your draft texts in the upcoming months.