Chamber of Local Authorities

SPRING SESSION
CPL(14)12REP
25 February 2008

STANDING COMMITTEE

Committee on Sustainable Development

City diplomacy

Onno VAN VELDHUIZEN, (Netherlands, L, IDLG)

Explanatory memorandum

Bureau of the Chamber of Local Authorities

R: Chamber of Regions / L: Chamber of Local Authorities
ILDG: Independent and Liberal Democrat Group of the Congress
EPP/CD: Group European People’s Party – Christian Democrats of the Congress
SOC: Socialist Group of the Congress
NR: Member not belonging to a Political Group of the Congress

 

1          City diplomacy: local governments building peace[1]

The term City Diplomacy can apply to many types of international action by local governments. But it is increasingly associated with local governments in peace-building.[2] 

International relations are no longer the exclusive preserve of national governments. On the contrary, we live in a world in which international, national and domestic arenas blend together.[3] Issues of war and peace are part of these connected arenas. In conflict areas, local governments promote social cohesion, and attempt resolution. Local governments try to create zones of peace in otherwise unstable areas. They are also involved in post-conflict reconstruction, and last but not least in promoting local democracy and human rights.

Sometimes, local governments in conflict areas receive help from foreign[4] local governments. These foreign local governments may wish to contribute to the cause of human rights and the international public order,[5] they may have a direct economic or migratory interest in the conflict area, or they may have an existing twinning relation. Local governments in the conflict area often cry out for projects or a spot on international agendas. ‘Please help us, because nobody is paying attention to our conflict!’

City Diplomacy has come to mean local governments building peace. Even so, the concept has fuzzy edges. If there is ethnic rivalry in a peaceful country and a city council tries to mediate, is that City Diplomacy? Would it be if riots break out and shots are actually fired? If mayors strife for a world without nuclear arms, but do not engage with any particular local government in any particular conflict area, is that City Diplomacy? Is everything local governments in conflict areas do City Diplomacy? Why not call it local service delivery?

This report does not intend to adjudicate between definitions, nor to legitimise any inclusion or exclusion of activities. But for the purposes of this report, City Diplomacy is defined as the activity whereby a municipal authority in a conflict area receives support from one or more municipal authorities outside of the area. The drawback with this definition is that it disregards meaningful situations in which there is no violent conflict, or no international dimension, or no local governments involved. The advantage is that it puts a spotlight on local governments that go out and help.

An informal worldwide network lies behind the development of the concept of City Diplomacy. This network includes, but is not restricted to, organisations such as United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), the Council of Europe Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Mayors for Peace, Glocal Forum, local government associations such as VNG in the Netherlands and FCM in Canada, and individual towns and cities. Conferences in Perugia (2006) and Barcelona (2007) have been organised to explore the concept and its ramifications, while the first world conference on City Diplomacy will be held at the Peace Palace in The Hague in 2008.

This report outlines aspects of conflict areas and peace building that are important for City Diplomacy (Section 2) and identifies preconditions of City Diplomacy for (mainly foreign) local governments to consider (Section 3). It examines the role that the Council of Europe Congress can play in creating an enabling environment for these foreign local governments (Section 4). It then describes what City Diplomacy is in practice, or can be (Section 5).

2          Conflict areas and peace building

This section provides a brief look at conflict areas and peace building. The conflict area is where demand for City Diplomacy must ultimately come from. It is also the context in which most of the impact of City Diplomacy is realised (but not all, because some things are to be realised at international level).

A demand for City Diplomacy from local governments in the conflict area somehow needs to match a supply from a foreign local government. There are several channels for this. They include international actors in conflict areas, such as peace-keeping forces, UN transitional administrations, humanitarian aid organisations, peace movements, and NGOs. They may also include specialised (units of) organisations, such as the Commission for City Diplomacy and Human Rights of United Cities and Local Governments, or the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The best intermediaries are those with the deepest knowledge of the conflict area, based on existing relations.

Knowing a conflict area well is difficult. Conflicts rarely follow straight paths from warning to conflict to resolution to reconstruction. Long periods of instability are normal, in which fighting occasionally stops but picks up again when political deals collapse. Conflict areas are also not homogenous; not all local institutions have disappeared everywhere, and there may well be areas where the conflict subsides while it rages on around it.[6] These are called zones of peace.

Peace building can be defined in multiple ways, with the term peace building process in use when the direction of events is considered important.

The following definition of peace building is used here: all activities that aim to keep the use of violence at bay and to create conditions that make peaceful conflict resolution attractive.[7] This definition distinguishes the absence of violence called ‘negative peace’ from building the institutions for peaceful resolution of conflicts of interest called ‘positive peace’.

Foreign local governments usually have little to do with the establishment of negative peace. But they do join efforts to build positive peace, of which (local) democracy, respect of human rights and the rule of law are part. These are values which are dear to the Council of Europe. It is beyond the scope of this report to explain how precisely these values link with institutions for permanent peaceful behaviour. However, some issues about the position and role of local government in the conflict area need to be mentioned here.

First, why is the local level of governance important in peace building? How can local autonomy increase support for peace? If strong local structures exist, they can set limits on the powers of the centre, thereby mitigating a winner-takes-all dynamic that likely leads to renewed conflict. And local conflicts about service delivery may be resolved peacefully, demonstrating the potential and the value of the processes of positive peace.[8]

Second, what are the characteristics of positive peace at the local level? They are human rights and the rule of law, but also impartiality in service delivery, a local civil society which checks local governments, and to a certain extent local elections (on which more below).

Third, what limits the role of local governments in the area in building positive peace? A UN transitional administration may have defined the competencies of local governments in such a way that restricts their options. A parallel system of local governance may have developed during the conflict. And local governments may be partial to the conflict, for instance when they are fronts for rebel movements.

The intermediate conclusion is that City Diplomacy and peace building involve complex processes in complex contexts. This implies two things:

• If foreign local governments go out to help their colleagues in conflict areas, they have to know this context. Their activities can have peace impact but also conflict impact; you may get it right but you can also, and easily, get it wrong.[9]

• The context may be full of other intervening actors. City Diplomacy efforts are always complementary to other efforts.[10]

Most of all, efforts of foreign local governments are complementary to what local people do. If positive peace is to be induced from the outside, this can only be done with good people on the inside. This is what we might refer to as the necessary preconditions for successful City Diplomacy.

3          Preconditions for City Diplomacy

Foreign local governments often wonder whether they can contribute. Understandably, they are also worried about security risks and political implications. In this section we will examine the necessary preconditions for City Diplomacy.

The first precondition is a disarmament or pacification process. If negative peace is still largely an illusion, foreign local governments have really few options, all of them concerning indirect action. These options will be examined later.

The second precondition is a certain degree of rule of law, as opposed to rule by extremists. If the judiciary and the police are on the way to becoming independent and impartial, this is a good indicator. So is the re-emergence of civil society. Local government does not exist independently of other institutions of governance – if the other ones are monopolised by factions involved in the conflict, local government is unlikely to be unaffected. At the very least, local partners in City Diplomacy activities must want to be seen to play according to the rules.

The third precondition is that competent and brave local officials in the conflict area are found. Many of activities are premised on working with them – the work involves lending legitimacy to processes of dialogue and reconstruction that they carry out. Also, if organisations acting as channels for demand for City Diplomacy cannot identify good local people, foreign local governments ought to reconsider their options.

It is often said that rebuilding institutions takes much more than elections. A complex set of conditions must be created to rebuild institutions, and democratic processes form just one of them.[11] Nevertheless, local elections can provide forceful dynamics in the right direction, so much so that they merit mentioning alongside the preconditions.

In addition to the preconditions in the conflict area, there are enabling circumstances or ‘green lights’ at home:

• Clear motives. The motives will be questioned at home and abroad, although one may be too polite to ask or confront directly.
• Clear, if modest, projected results, and adequate communication about results with the council and the citizens at home.
• Staying power to actually profit, when the conflict subsides, from legitimacy built up earlier.
• It is reasonable to expect foreign local governments to formulate the principles of a City Diplomacy policy, preferably when there is no pending request to help that puts political pressure on City Diplomacy policy formulation.

4          Role of the Congress

When preconditions are not met, few foreign local governments will engage in peace building on their own, .and even when they do, there will be some hesitation. In this situation, the Council of Europe Congress can address some of these issues. In the Council of Europe's Statute, its member States underline that "the pursuit of peace based upon justice and international co-operation is vital for the pres­ervation of human society and civilisation".

Issues of local government in peace-building manifest themselves mainly at its Congress of Local and Regional Authorities in the following ways:

• Requests from local governments in conflict zones to provide protection against central governments.
• Requests from local governments in conflict zones to put a conflict on international agendas. This happens when conflicts have already turned overtly violent, but also at earlier stages.

There are various ways in which the Congress can respond. Statements and resolutions can influence the international agenda. An address to the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities by a mayor from a conflict area may in some phases provide incentives to respect the rules of local democratic government and decentralised government. The fact that these addresses are sometimes contested underlines the importance of the Congress as a forum.

The Congress also has an important role in overseeing the implementation of the European Charter of Local Self-Government. This monitoring activity of the Congress is increasingly recognised in international circles for its value in the development and strengthening of democracy in Europe. In addition to evaluating the implementation of the Charter in Council of Europe member States, the Congress observes local and regional elections, issues reports on the implementation of a specific article of the Charter and conducts ad hoc fact-finding missions, when it is alerted to a specific problem with respect to local democracy.

The dialogue that has been established between European and Arab cities with the conferences in

Marrakesh in October 1988, Valencia in September 1994 and Dubai in February 2008, also enable, as the Dubai final declaration underlines, to pursue dialogue as the basis of a more peaceful world, thanks to strong local self-government. There is no doubt that this dialogue establishes conditions for a dynamic City Diplomacy in the Middle East and in Euro-Arab relations in general.

Over the years several support programmes of the Congress have been set up to implement the numerous recommendations and resolutions on local democracy and human rights in the field, among them the Local Democracy Agencies (LDA) and their Association (ALDA). Since 1993, the LDAs provide concrete assistance to municipalities in conflict areas in South East Europe[12] and since 2006 also in the Southern Caucasus[13] through partnerships with their counterparts in other European countries and – importantly – also in other Balkan countries. What makes the Agencies’ activities distinct from traditional town-twinning projects, is the co-operation with a network of international partners (mostly local governments and civil society organisations) to support the municipalities in question, thus taking the concept of bilateral City Diplomacy to a multilateral level. Indeed, one of the strength of the ALDA/LDA programme is the involvement of both local authorities and civil society actors alike,

Current LDA projects range from trans-border co-operation seminars, capacity-building for local authorities and civil society, youth and women empowerment activities, to local economic development, fighting human trafficking, interethnic dialogue and training on European issues. With respect to City Diplomacy, it is worth mentioning the Mahlde.net project which was implemented between 2005 and 2007, funded through the EU Interreg Programme. The programme linked local authorities, NGOs and universities from Italy with their neighbours in the Balkans. Several study visits and exchange seminars concerning multiethnic education, local economic development and related questions were organised which helped the participating cities on their peaceful way to European integration and improved the interethnic and inter-religious relationships in the participating Balkan cities.

Local governments often wonder to what degree their international activities have to march in step with their national state’s foreign policy.

As part of its responsibilities with regard to monitoring the application of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, the Congress could remind its members of Article 10, paragraph 3, which sets out local authorities' rights to cooperate with their counterparts in other states.

The preamble to the European Convention on Human Rights also affirms the belief of the Council of Europe member States in "those fundamental freedoms which are the foundation of justice and peace".

The case studies on Croatia and on the Municipal Alliance for Peace, which are annexed to this report, illustrate what this can involve in practice.

Local governments need criteria to get involved – to rationalise their choices, but also to make them confident in the midst of the international political upheaval that often accompanies violent conflicts. The Council of Europe and the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities can share their experience with foreign local governments in drawing up such criteria.

Seen from the demand side, the Council of Europe can be a place where urgent appeals from conflict areas reach foreign local governments. (The Council of Europe is not the only actor that is able to provide such a platform.) Invitations to oppressed local governments from conflict zones to address the European elected representatives of the Congress can have a major impact, in addition to the influence on international agendas. However, this takes structured communication with foreign municipalities and structured help for them with the first steps, so to provide such a platform requires resources.

5          City Diplomacy: what can it be?

Having outlined preconditions in the conflict area, favourable circumstances at home and a potential role for the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, we will now examine what City Diplomacy in its narrow definition can mean on the ground.

Figure 1 features a thematic map of City Diplomacy activities. Different types of activities are related to phases of the conflict (loosely, bearing in mind what has been said about conflicts in section 2). A distinction is made in the supply of City Diplomacy: by individual cities or through international organisations and associations.

The map shows that few City Diplomacy activities are organised in isolation. Apart from direct support in a twinning setup, partners are needed. This is for two reasons:

• Capacity for access, security and logistics in the area;
• Capacity to give lobbies a voice in international platforms.

A representative office of the United Nations Development Programme or a civil affairs unit of a NATO peace-keeping force, to name but two examples, can be partners in City Diplomacy. Organisations like this often rebuild public services, do local institution building, support civil society initiatives, and many activities besides. The point is that they are very large. They are unlikely to adapt their intervention logic, operating procedures and working paradigms when a foreign local government joins their efforts. Foreign local governments should be aware of this.

Whether with direct action or in organisations and associations, the world is full of examples of local governments building peace and getting help from colleagues. We turn to some examples covered by the narrow definition of City Diplomacy.

Common examples are activities in which antagonistic groups get to meet. Sport events and cultural events are favourites for foreign local governments (and for many other intervening actors). This is understandable; they are relatively easy to organise, often wildly popular, and access can be regimented from outside. The youth football team of mixed ethnic origin is one of the mainstays of local governments building peace. Another is the concert by artists with general appeal over factions.

Rarely do football matches or concerts address the root causes of conflict. The aim is to contribute to a change of atmosphere and to make former enemies become human again. Careless selection of participants and teams may result in a conflict impact rather than a peace impact. This means that even when the events are easy to organise, political astuteness and good local contacts are required to make them work.

When one-off activities work, a more frequent or continuous dialogue can be tried. This involves a correspondingly enlarged effort on the part of the foreign local government.

Other common examples are projects for municipal services such as transport or drinking water. Many intervening actors start these projects, but foreign local governments are especially good at understanding the services and their methods of delivery. Partners such as the ones mentioned above often ask them to contribute for this reason. Straightforward gifts may help, technical assistance too, and these projects may include public participation in the design or management of the services. In the latter case, the project becomes complex because there is no such thing as the public in a conflict area.

Some municipal services lend themselves for peace building in a special way. The absence of water and waste services, for instance, may result in health risks regardless of ethnicity or religion. This may create a joint interest and thereby a window of opportunity for City Diplomacy. However, acting on a theoretical joint interest involves much local knowledge. For instance, political movements or militia may deliver services to their particular group or neighbourhood, in which case the project may reduce their power. The safety of local staff becomes a consideration. And the issue of access to services is a political one even without such movements or militia (see the box – it is also an example of why good individual officials are needed).[14]

Essential to City Diplomacy in a services project is that the technical issues are used to bring in the institutional issues: impartiality, participation, democratic overview.

Examples of a totally different nature are those in which foreign local governments try to get conflicts on the international agenda. This sort of lobby occurs frequently but to draw attention to the plight of local governments is uncommon. The lobby can serve the following purposes:

• Firstly, to get outside help;
• Secondly, to make actors in the area, including national government, respect human rights and the terms of peace accords, which is a first step towards the rule of law;
• Thirdly, to legitimise dialogue that works better if foreign local governments inject the international dimension. ‘Trinnings’ are a fashionable word for this if two local governments in the conflict area and one outside are involved, but this idea applies to any network for exchange.

The very fact that foreign local governments or their organisations pay attention to the conflict can have an impact. Field visits can be very effective too. Easy as that sounds, this type of contribution to peace building is not without risks. The risks are caused by the political nature of lobbies. Local parties to a conflict may not believe in neutral stances. Or they may suspect that the foreign local government is merely out to score diplomatic points at home, rather than to improve the situation in the conflict area. Foreign local governments need to work hard to make themselves accepted by all relevant parties. Otherwise, a peace impact hoped for may turn into a conflict impact when relationships at the local level deteriorate.

The final set of examples are those that happen when fighting is going on. They are rare but they do exist. Visits to local human rights activists in prisons are an option, as are visits to cities under siege. It takes special people to do this – solid enough to not get sidetracked by parties to the conflict, and able to sense political subtleties.

A special situation occurs if foreign local governments help in a zone of peace. Peace-keeping forces and humanitarian aid organisations often start their interventions there, because things still work to a degree. They hope that any success on human rights, respect of peace accords, and eventually rule of law spreads out into the countryside. While it cannot be guaranteed that a zone of peace has a functional local government, the two often go together and foreign local governments are often invited to support it.

Foreign local governments never contribute to a random zone of peace. They get involved because of an existing twinning relationship, or because they know an NGO active in the zone, or because of strong political dynamics at home. Risks are high, and dependency on other actors is great. Security is not merely a consideration but a major issue. The benefits may become clear only later, when the peace solidifies and the legitimacy of having been there in difficult times pays off.

6          Conclusions

City Diplomacy in this report means that foreign local governments can and do contribute to peace building. They join lobbies for international attention, organise and legitimise dialogues, and join projects on impartial municipal service delivery and the municipal departments doing this.[15] They can even contribute in zones of peace when the conflict is still ‘hot’. Foreign local governments who built up relations and did what they could in the difficult times can create great legitimacy, to use later when tough issues of ethnic divides and human rights need to be addressed.

City Diplomacy should be considered if and when preconditions are met, the situation at home is supportive, on the basis of demand from the conflict area. In fact, foreign local governments would do well to formalise City Diplomacy in policies.

Figure 1: thematic map of City Diplomacy activities:

What can foreign local governments do?

Foreign local governments have little to contribute to the absence of violence or negative peace.[16] But they do have a role in building positive peace – creating and supporting institutions for non-violent decision making and defending of interests. The efforts are always complementary to those of other actors such as UN provisional administrations, peace-keeping forces, humanitarian aid organisations and NGOs small and large. Foreign local governments often depend on the capacity and the information of these partners, and are in practice forced to adapt to the way these partners work.

A recurring theme in this report was the importance of good knowledge of the conflict area, of the role of local governments there, and crucially of competent and brave individuals to work with. Foreign local governments should tap multiple sources of information – not depend on one NGO in the conflict area or on a few outspoken migrants who happen to live in the home city. Good intentions can lead to bad results if the local situation is not adequately understood.

In the conflict area, identification of a concrete dialogue process or municipal service to improve is important. Just outside of it, trilateral links and associations can be surprisingly effective. These can include any number of local governments from the conflict area and from elsewhere. And everything takes place in an international context in which platforms are needed to voice the concerns and the plight of local governments.

We have reached a point at which international organisations such as the UN and its specialised agencies dealing with weak states and reconstruction can help by recognising the importance of the contribution of foreign local governments.

In the mean time, local governments themselves can work to extend their contribution to peace building processes. The outcry coming from desperate local governments in conflict areas cannot and should not be ignored. Matching demand and supply of City Diplomacy could become less accidental. This is a second role of platforms at the international level, and potentially one of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The Commission for City Diplomacy and Human Rights of United Cities and Local Governments is another important institution in this regard. But it is not only a matter of the quantity of the response. The quality can be higher. Foreign local governments looking for a role in peace building ought to seek trustworthy partners, formulate realistic ambitions, and focus on results.