Global response to local challenges

To influence global responses to increasingly support Local Government ability to implement their mandate and serve citizens.

There is a growing need to be alert and adaptive in a rapidly changing global context. The Sustainable Development Goals remain the universal and most comprehensive framework for ending poverty, protecting the planet, and improving the lives of people everywhere. They are the bedrock of international development around the world. We need to be responsive to the volatile geopolitical context and the changing global aid landscape. Our goal is to engage with other global partners in order to respond holistically and systemically. But also, to account for the underlying causes and interconnections between different factors and trends impact development, and to avoid reactive, reductionist and fragmented response to crises. One essential ingredient is to fully take account of the roles and contributions of local governments, on an everyday basis and during crisis.

Through this domain of change we strive to:

• Diminished power inequalities between persons of different genders in decision-making, policies, and service-delivery at the local level.
• Improving the position of local governments in EU accession processes and enhancing their access to financial instruments.
• Enabling learning, cooperation, knowledge-generation and practice-sharing in local governments across contexts.