UCLG
The World Organization of United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) is the largest organization of local and regional governments in the world.
UCLG, as a global network of cities and local, regional, and metropolitan governments and their associations, is committed to representing, defending, and amplifying the voices of local and regional governments to leave no-one and no place behind. Together we are the sentinels of the hopes, dreams, and aspirations held by individuals in communities around the world — searching for a life in which the ideals of the SDGs are a lived reality.
A Century Old Movement
The World Fair of Ghent opened up in 1913 and with it the first ever International Congress of Cities. Gathered under the motto “the Art of Building Cities and Organising Community Life”, the message sent, already over a century ago, was loud and clear: the planning of our towns and cities was a realm for creativity and co creation that had in the adequate management of the commons a beacon of our life together.
The whole event, as the International Union of Cities that it sparked, was the product of the peace movement. Significantly enough, one of the organizers of the event, Henri La Fontaine, won the Nobel Peace Prize that year. In Ghent, aware of the growing political unrest at the national level and the premonitions of war, our incipient municipal movement gathered to seek a global transformation that, through a new type of government, addressed the global dimension of the challenges they were about to face. This transformative initiative came to be known as city diplomacy.
In the post conflict peace building that followed the two World Wars, the solutions drawn by the international peace movement focused on the same State relations that had put our societies on the brink of self-destruction. And yet, the role of our constituency of local and regional governments was as relevant as underestimated. Technical cooperation and twinning became important articulators of our space in the international stage, and an instrument of human culture that brought together populations, strengthening the bridges between them regardless of political affiliations.
It was a dangerous world. Peace, the ultimate pre-condition for community life, was not granted anymore, and hence the art of building cities and organizing community life, as recognized in 1913, took a step forward to intensify city-to city links that superseded the conflicts of national governments.
The spirit of the municipal movement whas been steadily growing stronger and so did the call for greater recognition of cities, territories and their networks as political actors in the multilateral system. Our constituency consolidated its position in the global stage through the UN Habitat Conferences in Vancouver (1976) and Istanbul (1996), where the first World Assembly of Cities and Local Authorities took place. The municipal movement celebrated its centenary in 2013 to see, only three years later, the historical achievement of the New Urban Agenda. The Quito Outcome Document enshrined the Right to the City and brought our organized constituency together within the international system by acknowledging the World Assembly of Local and Regional Governments as its follow-up and review mechanism.
In this urban era, we are embracing our origins to deliver a systemic transformation. Safeguarding local democracy, building peace through mutual cooperation, and remaining loyal to the values and principles of decentralization, subsidiarity, gender equality, self-government and accountability.
Source: Pact for the Future of Humanity