Retreat

The Annual Retreat & Campus under the Theme “Co-creating equality, peace and sustainability” Took Place in Barcelona

The Annual Retreat & Campus under the theme “Co-creating equality, peace and sustainability” took place in Barcelona and gathered together UCLG leadership, staff and partners.

The first day of the UCLG Annual Retreat, January 22, was dedicated to an introduction to the UCLG Strategy and Work Plan for 2018. The session included a space for discussion of the innovative initiative – UCLG Local4Action Hub that aims to turn the 2030 Agenda into local actions. Participants explored the key areas and actions where support from all parts of the network will be essential to bring the Local4Action Hub to life. The first day of the Retreat concluded with a session dedicated to the launch of the development of an All-UCLG Gender Strategy. Fatimetou Abdel Malick, Mayor of Tevragh-Zeina highlighted: “Our struggle is not only a fight for equality, but also for rights, for efficiency, for the well-being of society, for development.”

The second day of the UCLG Retreat and Campus January 23 was held in the format of round table sessions on monitoring, advocacy and learning. The Committees, Working Groups and Communities of Practice presented their key priorities and challenges for 2018. The debates were aimed to define synergies between actions in different parts of the network and develop joint strategies to help identify the necessary collaborations to achieve the global agendas at local level.

The afternoon of the second day of the Retreat was dedicated to the discussion of UCLG Awards. The UCLG Awards – The Guangzhou International Award for Urban Innovation, the UCLG City of Bogota Peace Prize, and the International Award UCLG – Mexico City – Culture 21 – are conceived as collaborative initiatives for the UCLG membership to draw public attention to the achievements of local and regional governments in: urban innovation, culture and peace. At the session UCLG-Eurasia Secretary General Rasikh Sagitov delivered a speech on the priorities of Eurasian section.

The third day of the UCLG Retreat, January 24, kicked off with a focus on existing partnerships towards the implementation of the SDGs. The session presented the Know Your City campaign, a Cities Alliance initiative supported by Slum Dwellers International and UCLG Africa in collaboration with UCLG, which promoted community-collected data on informal settlements. During the session the issues on how to move the strategic partnership forward towards promoting the Right to the City were discussed. The Global Taskforce and its partners presented the report on the work done in the localization process of the global agendas.

January 25 began with a dialogue between local and regional governments and partners. Topics such as resilient and sustainable cities, city diplomacy, the Right to the City and inclusive cities were the central themes of the discussions. The President of UCLG Parks Tau highlighted the role that UCLG has played in changing the global conversation about urbanization and recalled the strong role that localization plays in UCLG strategy.

The session on reshaping local finance and GOLD Experts Meeting dedicated to the development of the fifth GOLD Report took place on January 26. The report will study the localization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the other global agendas, emphasizing the role played by local and regional governments in the achievement of the Global Goals.

The report will analyze the institutional context of the countries of the different regions in which local and regional governments are operating. Monitoring and assessment of the implementation of the global sustainable development agendas and SDGs localization in Eurasia will be conducted by Director of the Fiscal Policy Centre Galina Kurlyandskaya.

January 27 continued with the discussion of development of the fifth GOLD Report. Emilia Saiz, Secretary General of UCLG, noted that the spirit of GOLD was to inspire members to learn from each other and to create innovative solutions. UCLG members also underlined the innovative role of cities in the recognition of the Right to the City – recognized in the Habitat III Declaration – as well as of culture in building sustainable cities and territories.

09.02.2018

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