From May 20 to 22, the Development Partners Network on Decentralisation and Local Governance (DeLoG) held its Annual Meeting in Bern, Switzerland.
This year’s meeting focused on the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 ‘Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels’. Dr. George Mukundi Wachira, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Maendeleo Group, an Advisory Firm on Political and Business Risk Analysis gave a keynote speech and provided insights on African countries and the implementation of SDG16.
Apart from the specific focus on SDG 16, the Annual Meeting dealt with the following topics:
Localising the SDGs: Annika Schoenfeld of the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) gave a presentation illustrating why decentralisation and local governance are key saying that ‘a functional multi-level governance system increases the likelihood to successfully implement the 2030 Agenda.’ Preeta Lall from the Local Governance Initiative (LOGIN) followed with a ‘reporting back’ from the regional DeLoG/UCLG/LOGIN workshop on ‘Enhancing the Capacity of Local Governments in Localising the Sustainable Development Goals’ in Cambodia.
Local Finance and Fiscal Decentralisation: This session started with Joern Meyer (GIZ) who gave a presentation on strategic importance for financing urban development, followed by Luc Aldon from United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) who shared the first results of the ‘UCLG-OECD World Observatory on Subnational Government Finance and Investment’ with the participants.
Local Economic Development: Andrea Iff of SDC led the session on Local Economic Development (LED) by presenting study findings from Serbia on decisive aspects and entry points for LED.
Decentralisation and Local Governance in Fragile Contexts: Daan Stelder of VNG International hosted an interactive workshop on dealing with fragility at the local level, drawing among other from best practices collected with the UCLG Peace Prize and programmes implemented by VNG International.
You can email to info@delog.org if you're interested to a detailed report of the Annual Meeting.