As the United Nations system’s focal point for local authorities, UN-HABITAT has been cooperating with local authorities at the policy and programme levels for many years.

At the global policy level, the Commission on Human Settlements decided in 1999 to create UNACLA which held its inaugural meeting in Venice in January 2000. Under the chairmanship of the Mayor of Barcelona, Mr. Joan Clos, UNACLA has provided a number of substantive inputs to the work-programme of UN-HABITAT and has been able to advise the Executive Director on several strategic issues.

Its composition, combining Mayors of large cities – from Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro to Chengdu and Moscow - and leaders of international associations, guarantees stimulating exchanges and geographically-balanced insights.
Recently, UNACLA has communicated the views of local authorities on the relationship between the UN system, civil society and local governments to the High-level Panel on Civil Society, established by the Secretary-General under the chairmanship of former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

UNACLA has also played a crucial role in promoting the international dialogue on decentralization.

A number of global programmes of UN-HABITAT have involved local authorities associations in their governance structure. The Urban Management Programme, for example, has worked closely with most regional and sub-regional associations in Latin America. The Cities Alliance has benefited from the presence of representatives of the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA), the United Towns Organisation (UTO) and Metropolis in its Consultative Group. IULA has been active in the Steering Committee of the Urban Governance Campaign for the last three years. In each case, the perspectives and expectations of local authorities have proven very useful to guide UN-HABITAT and its international partners, such as the World Bank and UNDP, in their programming and evaluation activities at the global and regional levels. UN-HABITAT expects that the new World Organization would be even more involved in the definition of UN policies and programmes and that it could benefit from UN-HABITAT’s contribution to its own initiatives.