The Pact for Government and Democracy calls for, at its core, redefining governing in Partnership. The Pact for the Future will continue to put our communities at the core of the decision-making mechanisms, building peace and prosperity from our cities and our regions.
 
With the ultimate goal of transitioning from an international system to one driven by our communities, we will push for the development of capacities for local and regional governments and a stronger, structural dialogue with national governments to ensure we can deliver for our communities. We will push for the renewal of the multilateral system to ensure the next generation of multilateralism.
 
The local and territorial level is critical to rethink and to reshape the governance systems into more participatory, accountable and transparent ones. Responding to these calls and rebuilding trust between citizens, institutions and communities, at all levels, are determinant elements to achieving the global agendas. Citizens, and citizenship, through social movements and civil society, are increasingly calling for the transformation of governing systems.
 
Renewing democracy and citizenship will be at the core of the pact for government. As the UNSG’s Our Common Agenda acknowledges, there remains a clear lack of trust between our communities in the institutions that represent them, and governing systems are being challenged.
 
To bring about the Pact for Government is to ensure that local democracy and strong local governance are the building block of sustainable peace and prosperous societies. This is the way to ensure livelihoods that are decent for people, to bring about a future in which work is decent for all and where people can fruitfully enjoy their time.
 
The Pact for Government will contribute to ensuring that local and regional governments, as well as all stakeholders, can adapt to the changing times, bringing perspectives that can facilitate governing in emergencies, rethinking democracy and citizen participation in a society in the new society of (dis)information, different relations.
 
All of this needs to happen through local democracy as a catalyst. Through governance of proximity and door-to-door democracy that cares for the dreams of our communities and defines solidarity and resource capacity as the backbone of humanity. Only then will we ensure a system is built for all.
 
A system that transforms relations with our community. A system that creates synergies between local and regional governments, organizations and academia to improve the quality of democracy and enhances public administration all over the world to rise to the challenges of urbanization.An international system built on the force of cities, local and regional governments that learn and define policies together supported by strong associations that will allow scaling up of actions. This system will put sharing and local democracy at the core, defining solidarity and resource capacity as the backbone of humanity.
 
The axis on Government will be based on on the principles of the Durban Political Declaration, the UCLG Decalogue for the post-COVID era as well as the work of the Emergency Governance Initiative for Cities and Regions, the International Observatory on Participatory Democracy and our partnership with International IDEA.

The International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (IOPD) is a consultative mechanism of UCLG that brings together cities, organizations and research centres with an interest in learning about, exchanging and applying experiences on participatory democracy at local level. It organizes an annual conference and awards prizes for good practices in citizen participation. We also work on an agenda to deepen local democracy and policies for social, economic, ecological and cultural transformation through the active participation of citizens.
 
Democracy cannot afford to exclude half of the population, so participatory processes must include a gender perspective in their design and implementation. We will continue to prioritize and raise awareness on this essential issue for the feminist municipal movement.

Local government development cooperation has never been an end in itself; it should be regarded as one of the key instruments to localize the international agendas and to tackle global challenges at local level, in view of reaching greater effectiveness.
 
The international community has long been discussing the efficiency of international cooperation. Decentralized and city-to-city development cooperation has grown over the last decade, and an increasing number of governments are engaging in cooperation with local governments.
 
More than ever, international cooperation is proving to be essential. It will be critical to guarantee exchanges of knowledge and experiences, through decentralized cooperation to build back better, stronger, and more inclusive after the pandemic. Local and regional governments must be the guardians of this international solidarity.
 
The longstanding relations among local and regional governments around the world have strengthened despite the trying times and decentralised cooperation, peer to peer learning and project implementation have resisted and in fact gained momentum as efficient and flexible tools for transformation.
 
The Pact will allow us to the impact of decentralized cooperation on SDG localization, reinvent the core of cooperation, and ensure we renew financing mechanisms and ecosystems to enhance the impact on decentralized development cooperation.

We are calling for the link between decentralization and governance. Renewing the relationship between different spheres of government through the principle of subsidiarity. Bring the local sphere to the conversation because there are elements of public life that are better suited at the local level. In this regard, we are working with the London School of Economics in what is called the Emergency Governance Initiative, which gathers experiences and practices of local and regional governments worldwide focusing on recovering from the pandemic but also working to mitigate and provide basic services to communities in emergency situations.
 
The lessons learned from the experience shared in the Emergency Governance Initiatives show us that the responsibility for ensuring all populations do have access to quality local public services lies with the state, and in particular, with local, metropolitan and regional governments. Despite the front-running role played by local and regional governments to address the emergencies we face; recovery strategies and national service delivery frameworks still fail to consistently account for the investments necessary to ensure and reinforce local public service provision.
 
Cooperation between national, local, metropolitan and regional governments, as well as alliances with local actors, are critical for upholding such responsibility. As we move into the future, reinforcing the capacity of our local public service systems will define how cities and territories can mitigate the negative impacts of complex emergencies on their populations. The time is thus ripe to join forces and make these systems as robust as possible

Localizing financing is at the heart of our strategic priorities. UCLG has historically been engaged in research and data collection efforts in order to map the situation of local finance internationally and to inform its advocacy work towards development and investments banks, in particular the World Bank, for the creation of adequate financing mechanisms to meet the growing needs of the urban era.
 
The recovery from the current crisis is deeply intertwined with responses to other complex emergencies that are unfolding in parallel, most significantly the climate emergency. Financial decisions taken in response to COVID-19 as part of the recovery initiatives are likely to have significant impacts on the ability of subnational governments to respond to the crises and ensure that major budget shortfalls do not jeopardise longer term sustainable development.
 
To enhance UCLG’s Strategy on Localizing Financing, we aim to define recommendations to unlock the required financing for cities and regions to achieve the global agendas. The International Municipal Investment Fund (IMIF), a joint initiative of UNCDF and UCLG in collaboration with FMDV, was officially launched at the UCLG World Congress in Durban in November 2019. The Fund aims to facilitate access to financial markets for cities (especially intermediary cities) to help them finance capital infrastructure