World Urban Forum III, 19-23 June, 2006 Vancouver, Canada

MDP-ESA participated in the third edition of the World Urban Forum (WUF3) convened in Vancouver , Canada from Monday, 19 June to Friday, 23 June 2006. Under the Networking Events, MDP-ESA and CIGU jointly organized a networking session on the theme: "Participatory Budgeting: Building Participatory Democracy and Improving Municipal Finance".

The purpose of this event was to promote a cross-regional constructive dialogue on Participatory Budgeting and review its current trends and challenges in the international context. Specifically, the event aimed to:

• Promote cross-regional dialogue and networking on Participatory Budgeting 

• Share and disseminate emerging PB practices, information and knowledge 

• Turn visible the potential of participatory budgeting for improving governance and urban management

The session was attended by about 120 people with representation from local governments, international organizations, national and international NGOs and Universities and CBOs. Panelists included: Yves Cabannes, Advisor to CIGU; George Matovu, MDP-ESA; Giovanni Allegretti, University of Cambria, Portugal; and the Mayor of Porto Alegre.

George Matovu of MDP-ESA making a Presentation

The session provided a platform for cross regional dialogue between Africa, Latin America, Europe and North America -possibly the first of its kind in an international meeting. Twelve (12) questions were asked from the floor and were ably answered by the panellists. The following interesting issues were noted:

• It was noted in the discussions that there were a variety of participatory budgeting processes aiming at the same basic principles of good governance and local democracy.                                                          

• One interesting areas of discussion was the linkage between participatory planning and participatory budgeting. It was generally understood that planning is long term vision while budgeting is annual and gives the citizens opportunity to control allocation of public resources.

• It was pointed out that often times, innovations are put in place with good intentions. However, there is often no mechanism to coordinate, monitor and evaluate the impact on ground. It was therefore agreed that with participatory budgeting, there is need to develop shared tools to monitor and for follow-up on the successes and failures as well as differences and commonalities.

• There was also consensus that there is a clear need to broaden the participation towards the most excluded (women, migrants, and youth).

• It was further agreed that there was need to improve the dissemination of experiences on a massive scale without loosing the quality of the processes. And also training and capacity building of both civil servants and citizens in participatory governance should be emphasised.
  

• In order to maintain the momentum generated at the session, and to turn the recommendations into operational reality, it was agreed that:

  1. There should be closer links among various actors
     
  2. There should be maximum utilisation of the existing facilities existing in Africa (through MDP-ESA) and in Latin America (through CIGU)
     
  3. There should be joint presentations at the 2007 World Social Forum
     
  4. There should be continuous circulation of information among the 82 participants that left their contacts.
     
  5. There should be concerted effort to take advantage of the interest and growing support from UN Habitat, UNICEF and the Social Development Department (SDV) of the World Bank to document, disseminate and transfer experiences
     
  6. There should be effort to strengthen the links between involved organizations on a multi-regional approach.