UCLG participated in the 2nd Global Alliance Workshop to report the progress on the promotion of peaceful, just and inclusive societies

Photo credits: @UNDPOGC

On September 7-8, 2017, UCLG participated in the second regional Global Alliance Workshop on Monitoring and Reporting Progress on Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a coordinating platform for UN Member States, private sector, civil society, and international entities, co-facilitated by UNDP, UNESCO and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The event took place in Oslo, and was co-hosted by the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre and the Norwegian National Association of Local Authorities (KS), a member and long-standing collaborator of UCLG. This meeting gathered experts from academia, civil society and international organizations together with representatives from the governments of many Eastern European and Central Asian countries, analysing progress in monitoring and reporting on the achievement of SDG 16.

UCLG assisted and was represented by Ms. Lene Conradi, mayoress of Asker, a 90,000-inhabitant city in the surroundings of Oslo. While presenting the strategic advances and plans of UCLG to promote the involvement and participation of local governments in processes of localization around the world, Ms. Conradi also showcased the initiatives and programmes of ‘SDG co-creation’ that Asker has undertaken to promote awareness of the SDGs and tailored policy actions to make the city a first-mover in the country in the implementation of Goal 16 and its targets.

The two-day conference also featured state-of-the-art presentations on academic and practitioners’ approaches to monitoring and reporting on global goals. The contributions highlighted strengths and weaknesses of current indicators, techniques and methods, all the while suggesting integrations and adaptations (e.g., qualitative, bottom-up approaches). Providing more resources, visibility and room for participation to local governments, territories and communities was a key topic of the conversation: engaging the population in the definition of SDG 16 tools and objective is crucial to guarantee accountability, transparency and power to societies, in their effort to pursue justice, inclusiveness and diversity.

National representatives were invited to present their current systems for monitoring and evaluation on the realization of SDG 16. The exercise was extremely useful to shed light on those processes that UCLG and the Global Taskforce highlighted in their 2017 Report on SDG Localization at the HLPF. Several of the presenting countries have already committed to submit their national review to the HLPF in 2018, and all vowed to foster and perfect dialogue and collaboration mechanisms to guarantee further participation and involvement of all local governments in such an important process.

The Global Alliance is currently building on the meeting’s follow-up to organize their next event. After one meeting in the Latin American region and another in Europe, the next step will take place in Istanbul, likely covering Middle East and Asia.

You can find out more on the Global Alliance here

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