UN-Habitat / UCLG session at the International Anti-Corruption Conference www.16iacc.org “Governing with the citizen: Transparent cities and accountable local governments in an urbanizing world”, Putrajaya (Malaysia) 4th September 2015, 11h In cooperation with
Our world is becoming increasingly urban and data is staggering, by 2050 about 75% of the population will live in cities and it is estimated that most urbanites will be concentrated only in about 600 cities; when nearly 3 of each 4 will be located in developing economies. Cities already account for 60% of the world’s GDP and growing...Urbanization is occurring at an unprecedented speed and pace in the developing world, but it is also happening within a context of weak institutional and governance structures. As a result, certain sectors and services such as infrastructure development, health or education are often prone to corruption, misappropriation and, even worse on terms of quantity: inefficiency. It is often perceived that local decision-making is at the risk of being captured by special interests, but it is also a fact that local governments are closer to the citizen, and opportunities to control and monitor local spending are often higher at the local level. Local governments bear the responsibility of ensuring the quality of life of their citizens, but they are also increasingly responsible to respond to the people’s demands for transparency and accountability in managing the city. In the world of today, governing without the citizen is becoming nearly impossible. But local governments need also help on to face this new challenge too, as many do not have the capacities, resources or legal tools to effectively respond to the citizen’s demand for increased participation in the city matters. The general perception amongst the development community that local government officers are all corrupt is also not helping a new generation of young and committed local government officers to fight historically and culturally accepted behaviors. Citizens should also help their governments to function better, by checking, controlling and requesting increasing access to information, but the final result of the process should not be to build the necessary trust, as, without trust, govern is difficult, inefficient, if not impossible.