On March 2, 2019, the Nation Building Movement held a dialogue session at its headquarters in Damascus entitled “Partnership as a way to Local Development” in the presence of representatives from the Ministry of Local Administration, regional planning, national reconciliation and investment bodies, a number of media professionals, members of local councils, specialists and activists in public affairs.​

Lawyer Anas Joudeh, head of the Building Movement, explained that today’s meeting aims to enhance the concept of participatory local development as a necessary approach and way of thinking to embark on the path of Syrian advancement.

Collaborative efforts

Regarding the movement’s vision for the local administration and development project during 2019, Joudeh explained that the local administration and development project was launched in 2017 in an attempt to make efforts participatory to form a set of proposals and recommendations for the path of the next stage.

Regarding the goal of creating fertile spaces for interaction and dialogue between local communities and their elected councils, Joudeh said: “The goal is to formulate local development visions based on available community capital, taking into account the dimensions of development (social, political, economic) to move from the theoretical framework to implementation on the ground.”

Joudeh pointed out that the movement, despite the complex Syrian scene with all its political, economic and social challenges, was able to achieve important steps in terms of partnership with local agencies and local communities.

Regarding the plans and programs that the government is working on, in which it is trying to formulate a vision for Syria after the war, Joudeh explained that the Syrian renaissance project is not based on administrative procedures alone, even if the entire government is involved in them. He attributed the matter to a decisive political decision to move to a new formula for the administrative, economic, and social system, which establishes administrative decentralization and community participation, in addition to a legal and legislative environment that encourages community capital with all its components to return and participate in building the nation.

The necessity of local development

Human rights activist Bashar Mubarak, coordinator of the “Local Administration and Development Project” in the movement, pointed out that the movement’s vision for the future of Syria is based on the fact that any national renaissance project for the Syrian state must be based on the intersection between the concepts of administrative decentralization, participation, reconciliation, and local development.

Mubarak stressed that development must be based on integrated efforts between the three development carriers: local councils, the local community, and the private sector, because working to understand all of these carriers, their development, dimensions, and their role in the work of local councils and the decision-making and decision-making mechanism will provide a comprehensive vision for an effective local administration system that establishes the foundation for reaching participatory local development and ensures its sustainability.

Local development production

Research supervisor Mazen Bilal explained that it is difficult to research a way out of the results of the Syrian crisis without new relationships that reproduce development and make it part of the social structure, stressing that the issue of development is essentially national and central, but its carriers are ultimately social and local, meaning that it must move from being a mere technical administrative term to become a state that regulates the productive rhythm of society in general.

Bilal pointed out that development, with its social concerns, can form a path that can reach consensus at the national level by controlling the pace of political work in productive forms capable of taming economic and political difficulties through different relationships that take us out of hardline positions and make social-developmental programs the basis for the work of forces, starting with the smallest units. Perhaps this path will form the beginning of getting out of all the problems.

Raising awareness

Ms. Arej Bilal, Director of Administrative Development at the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment, stated that the Ministry worked to raise awareness and build the capacities of administrative units according to available capabilities, noting that after implementing the elections in 2018, the Ministry began a special program to qualify members of local administrative councils in their role and service and development specializations.

Bilal added: “The focus was on the administrative and leadership skills of the council heads, as well as the skills of collaborative work with the local council, and training on developing the financial resources of the units, in addition to the responsibility for cultural and social development.”

The session included the following topics:

1-  The role of local councils in the development process.

2-  The role of the local community in the development process.

3-  Towards a participatory development vision for local communities.