CIB

UCLG and its CIB Working Group are proud to present our new Guidelines for Subnational Reviews: SDG reporting by local and regional government associations. Read more on what VSRs are and how you start using the guidelines, as a Local Government Association!

What are VSRs?

Following the session on Voluntary Subnational Reviews at the UCLG Retreat on 18 February, which served as a valuable first encounter, UCLG and CIB are organizing the first-ever VSR workshop on 12 March, from 13:30-16:30 CET. The workshop will count on the participation of both local government associations’ representatives and field experts of countries that are engaged in the preparation of VSRs or local government reports to contribute to the Voluntary National Reviews in 2021 in 8 pilot countries, as well as other partners.

On the 15th of December, 50 participants joined the last CIB activity of 2021: the work session on the CIB work plan 2021. Members gathered to discuss the latest developments and priorities for next year.

Looking back on 2020

The Capacity and Institution Building Working Group of United Cities and Local Governments has worked on a joint position on COVID-19 and (the continued need for) local government development cooperation (also available in

Last week (9-13 November), more than 300 representatives from local and regional governments gathered in the online UCLG World Council meeting. The digital meetings were hosted by the city of Guangzhou, which had planned to accommodate us all in their city originally. Please find some elements of the meetings with relevance for the CIB network below.

Interactive policy dialogues

The global COVID-19 outbreak requires us to rethink our (inter)national programmes and activities, in order to adequately tackle the current crisis and its aftermath. To be able to enhance information exchange on COVID-19 measures and approaches, the CIB secretariat now uses the following tools:

On April 2nd, the CIB Working Group organized a webinar on Women Leadership, which was attended by almost 90 participants.

The tenth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF10), convened by UN-Habitat, was held in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, from the 8th to 13th of February 2020. It was the first time that an Arab country hosted the world’s foremost conference on cities and human settlements. It attracted over 13,000 attendees.

In the past few years, UCLG submitted a report on the voice and actions of local and regional governments on SDGs and their implementation at the yearly High Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development.

At the end of November, two CIB members joined the evaluation team of the Flemish Association of Cities and Municipalities (VVSG) to Benin, for a peer evaluation of their ongoing programme with the Beninese association of municipalities and a city-to-city link programme. The peer evaluators returned enthusiastically to their own association or municipality. After all, it was a great opportunity for the peer evaluators to learn from the way municipal international cooperation is organised by other actors.