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Supporting and strengthening Local Authority Association at ACP national and regional levels
26/03/2011
In the fall of 2010 VNG International and its implementing partners officially launched the ARIAL programme "Supporting and strengthening Local Authority Associations at ACP national and regional levels" in Brussels. The specific objective of the project is to enable Local Government Associations (LGAs) to take part in the creation and implementation of development policies, in particular with the EU (as provided for by the Cotonou AgreementThe Cotonou Agreement: The Cotonou Agreement is the principal instrument of the European Union’s development policy and was signed on 20 June 2000 by representatives of the European Union’s member states and 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. It succeeded and replaced the Lomé Convention that had been in place since 1975. Based on partnership the agreement aims at promoting economic, cultural and social development of the ACP states. It provides for regular and wide-ranging political discourse and emphasizes that the Agreement shall promote human rights, democratisation, the rule of law and good governance. Since the revision of article 4 of the Cotonou Agreement in 2004, local decentralised authorities have officially been recognised as having a “complementary role of and potential for contributions (…) to the development process”. The Cotonou Agreement provides for following institutions: an ACP-EU Council of Ministers, meeting at least once per year; a Comité of Ambassadors in Brussels; and an ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly meeting twice per year.. ). In the upcoming three years the ARIAL programme will organize a wide range of supporting activities to reach this objective. LGAs in the ACP region will be invited to participate in, among others, the following main activities:
- Capacity building activities for LGAs and RLGAs in the field of communication, lobby and policy development
- Support to the establishment of Emerging Local Government Associations and Regional Local Government Associations
- Capacity building of (sub-)continental Local Government Associations
- Support in the creation and management of an information network and establishment of linkages between actors at ACP (sub-)continental level
- Increased capacity in the field of advocacy vis-à-vis national institutions and development partners (esp. the EU)
The programme is currently implementing an extensive assessment of all in the programme identified LGAs. The assessments will result in an elaborate ‘state of the art’ of local government representation in the ACP region and provide valuable input for the further development of ARIAL support activities that will start in the spring of 2011.
The project has a duration of three years and will be completed in the summer of 2013. Partners within the project are the Commonwealth Local Government Forum (CLGF), the Municipal Development Partnership for Eastern and Southern Africa (MDP-ESA), le Partenariat pour le Développement Municipal (PDM), the Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific International (FSPI) and the University of the West Indies (UWI).
More information on the programme, our activities and the implementing partners can be found on the ARIAL website: www.arial-programme.eu
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