This year-long project on governance capacity-building for Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish municipalities, has resulted in better management of local areas and their respective challenges, with more effective dialogue between Italian and Kurdish Civil Society, and more discussion and shared planning between the various municipalities.

This is the goal of the ‘Support to Kurdish Municipalities in northeast Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan’ project: capacity-building and a better understanding of the various sectors of public sector governance.

From civil protection to education, and including refuse management and sustainable development. These are some of the key themes of training courses and field visits, which will be followed by the creation of micro-projects to strengthen public services in the participating municipalities.

There will be at least 5 meetings in Iraq and another 5 in Syria, and another 2 in Italy, designed to encourage information exchange between representatives of Italian communes with their Kurdish-Syrian and Kurdish-Iraqi municipality counterparts.

In Iraqi Kurdistan, there will be 3 more meetings with sector experts, to write  a detailed work plan for a 3-day training programme.

Governability, decentralisation and local capacity-building are some of the issues that will be discussed during the training sessions.

But also environmental issues and sustainable development, social services and healthcare, gender issues, education, social inclusion and crisis management.