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“Good governance is perhaps the single most important factor in eradicating poverty and promoting development.” — United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan
One of UN-HABITAT’s strategic areas of work is to support cities in the adoption of socially integrated, inclusive, accessible, transparent, participatory and accountable urban governance and management, with a view to ensuring sustainable urban development. As the UN focal point for local authorities, UN-HABITAT encourages cities to apply good urban governance practices, through two complementary mechanisms - the Global Campaign on Urban Governance and the Urban Management Programme. How can these initiatives assist cities in achieving better governance?
The Global Campaign on Urban Governance (www.unhabitat.org/campaigns/governance) promotes increased acceptance and use of principles of urban governance. Through advocacy and outreach activities, collaborating and engaging with partners and constituencies, as well as the launching of national campaigns, norms of urban governance have received a wide acceptance, application and adaptation.
During the campaign launch in Abuja, Nigeria in April 2001, President Olusegun Obasanjo, reiterated his government’s commitment to broadening and deepening the democratic process by encouraging greater transparency and fighting corruption. He called on “the three tiers of government, Federal, State and Local to implement the Good Urban Governance Campaign in our cities and towns. It is one of the best ways for us to ensure that ordinary Nigerians can fully benefit from the democracy dividend.”
Addressing mayors and other delegates at an urban governance conference in February 2002, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines said: “Good governance should result in the improvement of the lives of the poorest of the poor, and effectively close the gap between the rich and poor.” She added: “Your initiative to localise the principles … deserves commendation because these norms will be meaningless unless we are able to contextualise, concretise and translate them into action.”
To further translate urban governance principles into practical measures, the campaign has developed tools to support participatory decision-making; transparency in local governance; inter-regional exchanges on participatory budgeting; and local-to-local dialogues between grassroots women groups and city authorities. These tools are now being adapted, translated and integrated in urban development programmes in countries such as Cameroon, Chile, Egypt, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
With the support of its Global Steering Group, comprising United Nations agencies, local government associations and international NGOs, the campaign has succeeded, four years after its launch, in initiating concrete activities aimed at spurring policy change and enhancing organisational capacities in more than 30 countries.
The Urban Management Programme (UMP) represents a major effort by UN-HABITAT and UNDP, together with external support agencies, to strengthen the contribution that cities and towns in developing countries make towards economic growth, social development and poverty alleviation. It complements the efforts of the campaign working through 19 anchor institutions and over 40 local and national institutions, which have been involved in developing the capacity of local partners and city governments for participatory governance, reaching 140 cities in 58 countries. Over the past 18 years, UMP has been able to provide a platform for partners to engage in work related to emerging urban management themes such as youth participatory budgeting, urban agriculture and HIV/AIDS.
As one of its key activities, the UMP engages in city consultations as a core strategy in meeting the objective of improved urban governance. The city consultation is a process designed to bring all stakeholders concerned with urban management and development issues together and agree on possibilities for action to address urban issues.
A city consultation on implementing pro-poor participatory governance in Chhim, Lebanon, has succeeded in establishing a Union of Municipalities in the region which comprises 13 municipalities. The city consultation in Colombo, Sri Lanka led to the preparation of a poverty profile, while Community Development Councils undertook further capacity building. The city is now undertaking participatory budgeting initiatives and national replication is underway. A city consultation on youth involvement in local government in Malindi, Kenya, led to ward-level elections for a Youth Consultative Council and action plans to involve the youth in governance issues. The city consultation process and the resulting micro-credit system in Maracaibo, Venezuela was expanded to four communities and led to the establishment of a Fund for Social Inclusion, open to households headed by women, indigenous groups and displaced people and refugees.
In response to the critical urban management implications of HIV/AIDS, leadership training and consultations have been held in Port of Spain (Trinidad & Tobago), Blantyre (Malawi), and Mumbai (India). It is being initiated in five other cities. A handbook on local government response to HIV/AIDS, in collaboration with the World Bank, was published in Africa.
There is a growing consensus about the strong correlation between good urban governance and positive human development outcomes. However, improved urban governance does not automatically lead to enhanced quality of life because of other factors. UN-HABITAT is now exploring these linkages in more detail, through the development of an Urban Governance Index, which will help cities measure progress in the quality of their governance relationships.
Rafael Tuts is a Human Settlements Officer with the Urban Governance Section of UN-HABITAT.
The Urban Millennium Partnership - local actions for global goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reflect the agreements and resolutions made at world conferences organised by the United Nations over the past decade. They have become commonly accepted as a unique opportunity to get better development results and as a framework for measuring development progress.
However, the national focus on achieving the MDG targets and the current framework of monitoring and implementation, do not sufficiently take into account the urban and the local dimension. There is, thus, an inherent danger that even if the targets are achieved, the inequalities within a nation across people and places would still persist. Therefore, implementation of the MDGs should also involve the local government sphere. In most countries, local governments are required to provide basic services, primary education, primary health care – a spectrum that covers most of the MDGs.
In response to this need, UN-HABITAT, UNDP and bilateral donors are now designing a proposal for an Urban Millennium Partnership (UMP) on “localising MDGs”, to complement ongoing efforts of various UN agencies and their partners. Recognising that inclusive urban governance is one of the most important factors in reaching the potential of cities in meeting the targets set by the Millennium Declaration, the Urban Management Programme’s large network of anchor institutions and local authority associations is well placed to take on the challenge to support cities in the implementation of MDGs.
The Partnership will work with networks of local authorities at the global, national and local levels, to raise awareness about MDGs, mobilise stakeholders, and establish monitoring and implementation frameworks. In each region, UMP anchor institution networks will conduct city consultations leading to local MDG action plans. They will also coordinate core activities related to knowledge management, policy and institutional analysis, building partnership and networking. The MDG Partnership framework provides a broader platform for building partnerships and mobilising resources at the local and regional levels. It is expected that in 2005, at least five countries will be selected in each region to begin the process of localising the MDGs.
— Rafael Tuts
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