Newsletter – n°15 – October 2012

The world at a glance

A new agenda which will follow the Millennium Development Goals after 2015 is being defined under the leadership of the United Nations.

The UN Secretary General conveyed a high level panel of 26 eminent persons from civil society, governments and the private sector reflect on the post-2015 development framework. Local governments are represented by Kadir Topbas, Mayor of Istanbul and current President of the world organisation of local authorities, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG).

The High level panel already met twice, at the end of September in New-York and on November 1^st in London.

The first meeting of the Panel aimed at setting the framework of discussions and addressed the need to prioritise and identify catalyst of development. Mayor Topbas stressed the need to identify the actors that need to be empowered to trigger change and further called for a new financial architecture and a new global governance model.

The London meeting focused on poverty eradication, job creation and the promotion of sustainable development. UCLG´s President stressed the importance of addressing inequalities at local level, through the provision of basic services, adequate infrastructures and the definition of local development strategies.

The next meetings of the High Level Panel are due to take place in Monrovia and Bali in the first quarter of 2013. The final meeting which will take place in May will be the occasion in which the Report to the UN Secretary General will be delivered.

UN post-2015 consultation

Moreover the United Nations are coordinating over 50 country consultations, national dialogues involving all stakeholders, and 9 thematic consultations. All information and procedures to take part to the consultations can be found on the very well documented website www.worldwewant2015.org.

In order to support local governments’ contributions to these consultations, UCLG prepared briefing papers on several key issues that can be found on UCLG webpage dedicated to the post-2015 development process.

The EU and the post-2015 agenda

At the European level PLATFORMA is working so that the European Union position is inclusive of local governments’ perspectives. The network already participated in the Commission led public consultation on the post-2015 development agenda, highlighting the need to introduce objectives which aim for institutional development, stressing the necessity to include the strengthening of democratic local governance as an underlying objective of all future goals and the importance to keep a strong focus on the poorest and most fragile countries. PLATFORMA will also take a leading role in the organisation of a round table, in the context of the Assises of decentralised cooperation organised by the Committee of the Regions in April 2013, on local and regional governance in the post-2015 development framework.