From November 11 to 15, the 6th Congress of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders took place in Durban, South Africa. The event brought together more than 3,000 people from local and regional organizations, international experts and civil society actors from all over the world.
Mayors for Peace has designated UCLG as one of the associations of local authorities which we collaborate with. Mayor Josep Mayoral of Granollers, a Vice President of Mayors for Peace and the Lead City of the Catalan Chapter participated in the World Congress to represent Mayors for Peace and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP).
Gender equality, global finances, intermediate cities agenda, the need to foster global democracy and the role of local governments in promoting peaceful and inclusive societies were at the heart of the discussions.
At the institutional level, UCLG approved the Action Plan and elected the governing bodies for the next three years. The Mayor of Al Hoceima, Mohamed Boudra, was appointed as the President of UCLG and the Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, was appointed Special Envoy for relations between cities and the United Nations until 2022. Mayor Mayoral will be again part of the UCLG World Council – the body which decides policy lines and ensures the effective implementation of the policies decided by the General Assembly – on behalf of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP).
The role of local governments in promoting peaceful societies, one of the fundamental themes of the Summit
The World Congress put the spotlight on democracy strengthening, the implementation of the Right to the City and the need to create an intergenerational agenda to promote the idea that peacebuilding is an objective and a process to generate a society shared vision.
As a Vice President City of Mayors for Peace, Josep Mayoral participated in the launch of the campaign “Plant Trees Not Bombs”, an initiative of Global Peace inspired by a visit to Hiroshima and its A-bomb survivor trees planting program. The campaign will seek to plant, in partnership with young people, governments and their Ministries of Defence, 75 million trees during 2020 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the UN. The campaign is designed to highlight the need for increased action to reduce and halt the effects of climate change.
The first tree was planted on November 14 in Durban and the ceremony was attended by the President of Global Peace, Graca Machel, the Under-Secretary-General of United Nations, Fabrizio Hochschild Drummond, the Former President of UCLG, Parks Tau, the Minister of Defence, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, and the Mayors of Strasbourg, Tunisia, Daejeon, Ramallah and Granollers, among others.
Global governance at the heart of sustainable development
Under the theme “Local Action For and By the People” the Congress marked a new stage and a strong vision of the future for the international municipal movement, based on the adoption of global agendas (The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda) as a universal framework that allows us to address the themes that will be critical for the future of humanity.
The Summit claimed placed local and regional governance at the core of sustainable development, convinced that only by returning to our roots and focusing on localization we could fulfill the ambitious global goals. Peacebuilding, resilience, and a commitment to localization are all part of the municipalist legacy that needs to be fostered and protected as we enter the next decade.
Round tables, workshops, case studies, exchange of experiences and training sessions were conducted during the Summit.
>The Durban Political Declaration adopted at the Congress
