PLATFORMA brings the voice of decentralised cooperation to the World Humanitarian Summit
23 May 2016
The first World Humanitarian Summit just kicked off today in Istanbul (Turkey) with high expectations. The Summit was opened by United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who called on the different actors to work more closely together to meet the rising humanitarian needs.
PLATFORMA is a signatory of the Charter on Urban Crises, which will be presented by the Global Alliance for Urban Crises today (23 May). Through this Charter, PLATFORMA and the other signatories call for greater collaboration between city, humanitarian and development actors to prioritise local municipal leadership in determining the response to urban crises.
Moreover, PLATFORMA is present at the Summit through Andreas Wolter, Vice-Mayor of the City of Cologne in Germany, and its members Cités Unies France, the Dutch Association of Netherlands Municipalities (VNG International), and United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG).
They will be organizing a number of events, including “Perspectives from cities in crisis – the role of local actors” on 23 May. The goal is to contribute to a better understanding of how emergency response can be better tailored to the nature, scale and complexity of cities. On 24 May, they will also organise the event “Future scenarios for Za’atari Refugee Camp and its environment in Jordan”. Za’atari refugee camp hosts around 80,000 Syrians who have been forced to flee the war in Syria. More than half of these refugees are children. The size of the camp, now Jordan’s fourth biggest city, is presenting huge challenges for infrastructure.
