Last week, the Union of Municipalities of Turkey (UMT) hosted this year's CIB annual meeting. Managers, directors and (senior) advisers made their way to Istanbul to share their insights on the latest developments in their own organizations, as well as on their position towards developments in international agendas.
Conflict and migration
The main topics included the need for capacity development of local governments in the Middle East and West Asia region as a result of the conflict in Syria. Speakers from the International Organization of Migration, the Prime Ministerial Agency for Disaster Emergency (AFAD) and the city of Gaziantep explained how their institutions ensure support for the refugees that enter their territory. CIB members discussed about their own programmes supporting local governments in the region. The CIB Working Group members will monitor possibilities for cooperation with other CIB members. In addition, the CIB Working Group secretariat will look into possibilities of highlighting policy recommendations that can feed into political debates of UCLG on the subject, in close coordination with the UCLG Taskforce on Local Government Disaster Response.
International agendas
Furthermore, the CIB members discussed the role and responsibilities of local governments in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the run up to the Habitat III conference and the activities of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation. Speakers from the Turkish International Development Agency, Cities Alliance and UNDP ART contributed to the debate and indicated concrete points for follow up that could strengthen the role of local governments in the agendas.
Members committed to exchange tools on the implementation of the international development agendas through the online CIB community. The CIB secretariat will shortly produce a comparative analysis of the way in which local government associations are being involved in the definition and implementation of national development strategies.
Effective development cooperation
CIB members actively exchanged about their development cooperation programmes and activities. The CIB secretariat presented the publications on monitoring and evaluation tools and discussed about follow up actions in this field. Findings of the study were also validated and discussed in a parallel session on monitoring and evaluation. The UCLG Learning Agenda was presented and discussed to strengthen collective learning of CIB and UCLG members.
Follow up
The South African Local Government Association announced that it would be willing to host next year’s CIB meeting. Dates will be communicated shortly.
The main conclusions and recommendations will be shared with the participants in a report, to be send out in the week to come. Furthermore, you can always follow the CIB Working Group on Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as on the dedicated website: www.cib-uclg.org. We also invite CIB members to actively contribute and exchange in between meetings through the CIB online community.