UCLG Supports Strengthening Global Coordination in a Letter to the World Health Organization

25.05.2020

On behalf of the Presidency of the World Organization of United Cities and Local Governments and our members around the globe, we would like to commend the critical role that the World Health Organization is playing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our Organization is encouraging our members to follow at all times the indications of the scientific community and the World Health Organization and to ensure that the local policies are complementing the above.

Since the start of the outbreak, we have provided exchange platforms among cities around the world to ensure peer learning encouraging local governments and their associations to focus on the most vulnerable groups and settlements.

We are convinced that overcoming this pandemic, and preparing ourselves to prevent and respond to the ones that might come, is a task that can only be done with all relevant actors on board and through a true global response built with the knowledge of local realities.

In this context we would like to express our support the work done by the World Health Organization and emphasize that we are convinced we need strengthening global coordination against the Covid-19 pandemic and would support a systemic and impartial review of its evolution.

As the constituency of local and regional governments, we would like to confirm our commitment to collaborate with the World Health Organization and establish a structural dialogue that will allow us to disseminate good practices in order to bend the curve and transformational local policies towards a sustainable future.