Leveraging Partnerships to Strengthen Cities' Resilience through Peace, Justice, Inclusion, and Adaptive Governance

As the world rapidly urbanizes, cities have become the primary arenas where the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda are either realized or fall short. The intersection of SDG11 (cities) and SDG16 (peaceful, just and inclusive societies) highlights that fostering inclusive, safe and resilient cities not only requires infrastructure, but accountable institutions, networks and governance structures inherently focused on peace, justice, inclusion and equitable access. Strengthening governance and financing at municipal levels is critical to enabling local actors to (re)build trust with their communities and effectively respond to today’s challenges, from housing and digital inclusion to environmental crimes and climate resilience.

With four years remaining, multi-sector and multilevel partnerships are needed to accelerate progress on the SDGs. By bringing together diverse actors and practitioners, these partnerships can foster trust, build shared purpose, and deliver results while leveraging comparative advantages, resources, and links between local, national and global levels. Specifically, focusing the partnership on the city level, and combining it with local financing as development financing (as highlighted during FFD4), is a powerful approach that can bypass bottlenecks and produce and sustain results at the speed required.

Grounded in evidence-based policymaking, multilevel governance, and networked multilateralism, this virtual side-event will showcase real-time, concrete examples and good practices. It will highlight partnerships that have strengthened cities’ capacity to meet the needs and expectations of their residents through inclusive, adaptive and democratic processes.

This event is hosted on the sidelines of the 2026 ECOSOC Partnership Forum.