During our working group meeting on decentralized government it appeared that all members of the network stimulate or even require CIGS and their partners to cooperate with local authorities. This is a way to guarantee sustainability of the project results. Moreover it helps to promote rights based development.
It appeared that local authority twinning arrangements are an important instrument to support the capacity development of local partners of CIGS. Often CIGS activities are build around these twinning practices this shows that decentralized cooperation is very helpful for CIGS and CIGS projects.
Working visits by local authority representatives can foster new pathways for CIGS and their partners to achieve their objectives. In rural areas local authorities are often weak which causes projects there to be less in tune with the local context. Situational and strategic awareness is very important to create good CIGS projects, not always we know everything about the local context. It is valuable to share context knowledge in this respect among us.
Partnerships of CIGS with local partners can play an important role in strengthening local democracy and development of decentralized governance. Diaspora CIGS and their partners seem to work more often in failed states or post conflict contexts where local governance is weak.
Problems in working with authorities are; corruption and political instability. To prevent problems it is important to have agreements in writing!
The next meeting of the capacity building working group will be on the 23rd of March 2023 from 11:30 to 13:00. If you would like to participate please register here.