Platforma

FR - EN

Partners

Newsletter – n°40 – April 2016

Headlines

Local authorities from the Mediterranean call for help to tackle the refugee crisis

Cities of the Mediterranean are not equipped to face the refugee crisis, stressed representatives from Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey at a debate organised by PLATFORMA during CEMR Congress in Nicosia. They called for concrete help from EU local authorities to ensure a better integration of migrants in host communities.

News from the Secretariat

PLATFORMA political council: refugee crisis, Slovak EU presidency and EU policy

Members of PLATFORMA’s political council debated the role of decentralised cooperation in managing the refugee crisis at their meeting in Brussels on 8 April 2016.

Central and Eastern Europe PLATFORMA partners met in Bratislava

PLATFORMA member associations from the Visegrád Group and from the Eastern Neighbourhood took part in the final conference of the project “New challenges for local governments – role of umbrella organizations in the development cooperation” on 12 and 13 April.

News from partners

VNGI promoting gender equality in Uganda

VNGI (Netherlands) has recently carried out a pilot study within the Uganda Country programme to find out how the programme can become more gender sensitive.

The world at a glance

The report on the new EU Global Strategy adopted with PLATFORMA’s contribution

The European Parliament adopted the report on the new EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy at its April plenary sitting in Strasbourg.

Local and Regional Governments be active participants in the Habitat III process

Members of PLATFORMA adopted key recommendations towards Habitat III process. This joint Declaration, which complements the Global Task Force (GTF) of Local and Regional Governments’ recommendations, comes before the conclusions of the European Council on Habitat III to be issued on the second week of May.

Initiative worth following

Local governments and civil society: a win-win relationship for decentralised cooperation

Local and regional governments – through their decentralised cooperation activities – can play a decisive role to create a concrete link between their citizens and the international, national and local development policies, agreed participants of a session organised by PLATFORMA at the 2016 CEMR Congress in Nicosia (Cyprus) at the end of April.

Calendar

Upcoming

12-13 May (Paris, France) : AFCCRE-ALDE – Public event “Capitalisation of the European Year for Development: the added value of Decentralised Cooperation to promote local governance”

16-17 May (New York, USA): Global Task Force, Habitat III Hearings for Local Authorities

19 May (Paris, France): Cités Unies France, workshop on the resilience of decentralized cooperation partnerships in the areas at risks

19-20 May (Istanbul, Turkey): Annual meeting of the UCLG Capacity and Institution Building Working Group 2016

23-34 May (Istanbul, Turkey): UN World Humanitarian Summit

26-27 May (Bordeaux, France): AFCCRE – Training session on twinning and partnerships (Exchanging, cooperating, moving in Europe)

26-28 May (Kazan, Russia): UCLG Executive Bureau

14 June (Brussels, Belgium): PLATFORMA event “Integrated territorial partnerships and SDGs: how to leave no one behind”

15-16 June (Brussels, Belgium): European Days for Development 2016

[Archive]

Refugees. Crisis.

Refugees. Crisis. Those two words, chained together, have become Europe’s hot Rubik’s cube. Human misery and shame on one side, sociological, financial and political aspects on another, logistical nightmares on yet another side… It has also become one of PLATFORMA’s campaigns: from AICCRE’s congress last March, the debate on cooperation and the refugee crisis at our latest meeting of the Political Council, to our session on the same topic at CEMR’s recent congress in Nicosia.

Representatives of towns from Jordan and Lebanon, of specialised UN and EU bodies, of Europe’s local and regional governments have gathered within PLATFORMA to see how cooperation can help find solutions. In Nicosia, the Lebanese representative asked PLATFORMA’s help to pool financial resources from European towns willing to help their Lebanese counterparts, the Nicosia platform created within ARLEM also asked PLATFORMA and its members to help, and Connect, the future “Delivery Mechanism” developed by VNGI and PLATFORMA will include a refugee dimension.
Because if decentralised cooperation is not in synch with today’s big issues, than what is its purpose?