The logic of thinking in “Your Role 2” was based on adopting the electoral process as a model through which societal interaction with local administration can be extrapolated, and because this societal interaction differs according to Syrian societies and geographies, as each Syrian local area has resources, contexts, and economic and social maps, and has challenges and societal and political actors that differ from the challenges of the rest of the localities in Syria.
The movement followed up on the status of the elections at the governorate level, and issued 14 follow-up reports for the localities and a central report.
Because local administration directly affects the central authority and transregional institutions, whether governmental or non-governmental (civil organizations and entities, media, private sector, political parties), Follow-up Report No. 15 was issued, monitoring the interaction of these central actors with the electoral situation.
Because the state of national interaction is not just a numerical sum of local interaction, it had to be studied independently. Therefore, the previous 15 reports were collected, studied and analyzed with a group of experts and academics in the (economic and social) sectors, attended by activists, human rights activists and journalists, and then came out with the "National Report on the State of Local Elections in Syria for the Year 2022."
Preparing the national report:
In the presence of a group of experts and journalists, the Nation Building Movement launched today its report on the local administrative council elections that took place on September 18, during an event it organized today at its headquarters in Damascus.
The Nation Building Movement held two focused sessions within the “Your Role” campaign to discuss the roles played by development actors at the central and local levels during the recent local administration elections, and how to benefit from the experience to envision possible approaches to activate decentralization towards launching local development that works to build peace in the Syrian case. Due to the importance of the media and its role, the first session was dedicated on September 26, 2022, entitled “Local Media, Development and Peacebuilding” with media experts to discuss the reality of local media and the most prominent challenges facing the activation of its role in the local development process at the central and local levels.
The National Report on the Status of Local Elections in Syria for the year 2022 represents the main fruit of the campaign’s work, which mainly aimed to adopt local administration elections as a model in the development process as it is the founding activity that brings together all official and community actors in one process, and to work on following up on central and local interactions with this model, to read the reality of localities on the one hand and follow up on the roles played by development actors in the elections and try to analyze them on the other hand, in order to know the possibility of activating the roles of these actors to become more dynamic to launch the local development process, and to reach an appropriate governance formula between the center and the sides on the one hand and between development actors among themselves on the other hand, achieving the goals of the recovery phase represented by liberating and activating the greatest amount of community energies.
Below is the national report: Local Development Governance in Syria during the Recovery Phase (Local Comparisons)
This report started from the fact that the local administration elections held on September 18, 2022 are a model in the local development process. It followed the local interactions with this model, by reading the reality of the localities on the one hand and following the roles played by the development actors in the elections on the other hand. It then analyzed these follow-ups and reached the possibilities of activating the roles of these actors to become more dynamic in order to launch the local development process and also to contribute to local peace-building efforts during the early recovery phase.
