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In accordance with its charter, the governance and
organisational structure of the Cities Alliance
includes the Consultative Group, the Policy Advisory
Board, and the Secretariat.
The Consultative
Group (CG)
The Consultative Group—the Alliance’s board of
directors—is responsible for setting the Alliance’s
long-term strategy, approving its annual work
programme and budget, and reviewing achievements.
The Consultative Group consists of financial
contributors to the Cities Alliance Trust Fund and
the political heads of the global organisation of
local authorities, UCLG, and Metropolis, who have
pledged their commitment to achieving Alliance
goals. The Consultative Group is co-chaired by the
World Bank’s vice president for
Sustainable Development and
UN-HABITAT’s
executive director. Prospective financial
contributors may serve as associate members for two
years.
Membership in the Cities Alliance has continued to
grow, with Nigeria becoming the first African
country and second developing country to join the
Cities Alliance in January 2005. Nigeria is
represented on the Consultative Group by its
Ministry for Housing and Urban Development.
The Consultative Group has also set up the
five-member Steering Committee, made up of a subset
of its members, to provide guidance to the
Secretariat.
Consultative Group Meetings
Consultative Group meetings are held annually in
connection with a global public policy forum
designed to share the lessons learned from
experience and agree on policy orientations and
standards of practice in areas related to the
Alliance’s goals.
Consultative Group
meetings have been held as follows:
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Berlin, December 1999:
inaugural meeting, launch of Cities Without
Slums action plan, and approval of the Cities
Alliance Charter and 2000 work programme.
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Montreal, June 2000:
first Public Policy Forum on the dimensions of
pro-poor urban policies, Consultative Group
review of application guidelines, and approval
of Cities Alliance Vision statement.
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Rome, December 2000:
second Public Policy Forum on Local
Partnerships: Moving to Scale, Consultative
Group approval of amendments to the Cities
Alliance Charter, approval of the 2001 work
programme and procedures to establish the Policy
Advisory Board and Steering Committee.
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Kolkata, December 2001:
third Public Policy Forum on Sustainable
Partnerships for City Development, Consultative
Group review of procedures for the independent
evaluation of the Cities Alliance, and approval
of the 2002 work programme.
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Brussels, October 2002:
panel discussion at the European Commission on
Achieving the Millennium Development Goal of
Cities Without Slums, Consultative Group review
of the independent evaluation of the Cities
Alliance, and approval of the 2003 work programme.
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São Paulo,October 2003:
fourth Public Policy Forum on Financing
Strategies for Cities and the Urban Poor,
Consultative Group approval of the 2004 work
programme and procedures for developing country
membership on the Consultative Group.
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eThekwini/Durban,
November 2004:
fifth Public Policy Forum on Making City
Development Strategies come Alive in South
Africa, Consultative Group approval of new
Policy Advisory Board members and the 2005 work
programme.
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Marrakech, November 2005: sixth Public
Policy Forum on Morocco’s Cities Without Slums Programme,
Consultative Group review of procedures for the
second independent evaluation of the Cities
Alliance, and approval of
the 2006 work programme.
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Washington DC, November 2006: seventh
Public Policy Forum on Environment, Poverty and
Development in an Urbanising World, Consultative
Group approval of the 2007 work programme.
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Manila, November 2007.
Consultative Group Members as of June 2008
The Consultative Group includes representatives of
the following:
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The Policy
Advisory Board (PAB)
The Policy Advisory
Board of the Cities Alliance is composed of eminent
urban experts from each region. They provide
guidance to the Consultative Group on key strategic,
policy, and regional issues and support the
implementation of Alliance activities. The
Consultative Group established the composition,
terms of office, and operating procedures of the
Policy Advisory Board at the December 2000 Second
Public Policy Forum meeting. The board brings
together civic leaders and policy advisers with a
formidable range of public and private sector
expertise that spans the leadership of
community-based organizations, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) and their networks, local
authority organizations, community banks, community
savings and credit schemes, commercial banks, and
public sector financial institutions. What they have
in common is political experience and practical
knowledge from working with poor cities and the
urban poor worldwide.
The board meets twice a year and has eight members:
two from Africa, two from Asia, one from the Arab
States, one from Eastern Europe, one from Latin
America and the Caribbean, and one from the
industrial countries. The members serve on a
rotating basis, typically between two and four
years.
For the Alliance’s November 2005 Public Policy
Forum, held in Marrakech, the board’s representative
from the Arab States, Yousef Hiasat, then Minister
of public works and housing for Jordan, led a
session on regional experiences in urban upgrading.
In May 2006, the board gathered in Amman, Jordan,
for its annual spring meeting, organized by board
member and chief executive officer of Beit Al-Mal
Saving and Investment for housing (Beitna), Yousef
Hiasat, and hosted by the Greater Municipality of
Amman. Board members took advantage of the occasion
to gain direct exposure to the strategic development
planning and urban upgrading policies of the
municipality and to learn of the innovative
financing scheme that Beitna had introduced for
ground-breaking private development projects in the
city.
The board meeting in Amman marked the second
rotation of the Policy Advisory Board members, as
incoming members, José Forjaz, of Mozambique, and
Clare Short, of the United Kingdom, filled the
regional representative positions of exiting members
Akin Mabogunje and Mary Houghton, respectively.
Cities Alliance partners hope to continue drawing on
the wealth of experience and knowledge its two
exiting members have offered since the board’s
formation:
Akin Mabogunje
is an internationally renowned African development
scholar who has published and lectured widely on
urban management and spatial perspectives in the
development process. He is chair of the Presidential
Technical Board of the Federal Mortgage Bank of
Nigeria and former executive chair of the
Development Policy Centre.
Mary Houghton is
the president and director of ShoreBank Corporation,
in Chicago, a commercial bank holding company with
$1.7 billion in assets, organized to implement
community development strategies in targeted urban
neighbourhoods and rural areas. She is also an
adviser to private banks and microcredit lending
institutions in developing and transition countries.
Policy Advisory Board members as of June 2006: (Former members)
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Ana Vasilache
is founding Director of the Partners Romania
Foundation for Local Development, a
Bucharest-based NGO that supports democratic
processes of governance and decentralisation,
and works to strengthen the managerial
capacities of local governments; former Head of
the Settlements Management Office in the
Ministry of Public Works and Regional Planning
in Bucharest; and has extensive experience with
planning legislation and design of participatory
strategic planning processes.
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Clare Short
is the United Kingdom's former Secretary of
State for International Development. A Member of
Parliament for more than 20 years, she continues
to represent the constituency of Birmingham
Ladywood. Former Director of Youthaid and the
Unemployment Unit, she also worked at the Home
Office and as Director of All Faiths for One
Race, a community-based organization promoting
racial equality in Birmingham. A former
Opposition spokesperson on overseas development,
Shadow Minister for Women, and Shadow Secretary
of State for Transport, she is a member of the
Helsinki Process on Globalisation and Democracy
and an Associate of the Oxford Research Group.
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Jean Pierre Elong
Mbassi is Secretary General of the
Municipal Development Partnership for Africa,
based in Cotonou, Benin; Secretary General of
United Cities and Local Governments of Africa;
and an experienced practitioner in urban
management and slum upgrading.
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José Forjaz
is the CEO and Founder of José Forjaz
Arquitectos in Maputo, Mozambique. He holds a
Master of Science in Architecture from Columbia
University (1968). From 1975-1977, Professor
Forjaz was the senior adviser for the Mozambican
Minister for Public Works and Housing, dealing
with housing policy, human settlements,
planning, training and institution building.
From 1977-1983, he was National Director of
Housing, responsible for regional and urban
planning, housing and social equipment. He was
also in charge of training programmes for basic
and medium level rural and urban planning
technicians. The National Directorate of Housing
covered the entire country through a network of
ten provincial offices. Between 1983 and 1986,
he was the Secretary of State for Physical
Planning in charge of the National Institute for
Physical Planning, responsible also for
directing the National Directorate for Geography
and Cadastral Registration. He served as a
Member of Parliament from 1977-1986. Widely
published, Professor Forjaz has lectured at
universities around the world and is now in his
fifteenth year as Director of the Faculty of
Architecture and Planning at Universidade
Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo.
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Juanita Amatong
is a former Secretary of Finance of the
Philippines; and a former Executive Director at
the World Bank Group. With an educational
background in business, economics and public
administration, she has worked with
international consultancies, in academia, and as
a tax economist at the International Monetary
Fund. She is a prime mover of strong local
government finance in the Philippines.
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Paulo Teixeira
is a Councillor for the Municipality of São
Paulo, Brazil; former Secretary of Housing and
Urban Development of the Municipality of São
Paulo, responsible for the development of a
large-scale slum upgrading and land tenure
programme; a member of the UN Millennium Task
Force Eight, Improving the Lives of Slum
Dwellers; and a member of the UN-HABITAT
Advisory Group on Forced Evictions.
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Sheela Patel
is founding Director of the Society for the
Promotion of Area Resource Centres in Mumbai,
India, working in alliance with the National
Slum Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan in the
federation of community-based organisations of
the urban poor, facilitating their direct
participation in addressing the problems of
cities and their relationship with informal
settlements; and Chair of Shack Dwellers
International, a global alliance of grassroots
community federations of the urban poor.
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Yousef Hiasat
is the Minister of Public Works and Housing of
Jordan, with responsibility for the country’s
road networks, government buildings, and
construction and housing sectors; former Chief
Executive Officer of Beit Al-Mal Saving and
Investment for Housing, a leading investment and
financial firm in Amman; former Director General
of Jordan’s Housing and Urban Development
Corporation, the public institution responsible
for housing and urban development policies and
housing schemes directed at middle- and
low-income households; former Principal Adviser
to the prime minister of Jordan on housing and
urban development issues; and founding and board
member of the Morocco-based NENA Urban Forum.
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The Secretariat
The Alliance Secretariat, housed at World Bank
headquarters, carries out the Alliance’s mandates
and manages its operations.
Secretariat staff
Manager - William Cobbett
Senior Urban Finance
Specialist
- Thierry Tristan Paulais
Senior Operations Officer -
Kevin Milroy
Senior Urban
Specialist
- Gunter Lorenz Meinert
Urban Specialist
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Jean-Christophe Adrian
Financial Management
Specialist
- Madhavan Balachandran
Programme Officer - Andrea
Merrick
Operations Consultant
- Andrea Haer
Communications Officer -
Chii Akporji
Knowledge Management
Consultant
- Anne E. Carlin
Resource Management
Analyst -
Françoise Aubry-Kendall
Information Consultant - Erika Puspa
Programme Assistants -
Ildiko Csorba
Programme Assistants -
Vorica
Revutchi
Programme Assistants -
Susanna Henderson
Team Assistants -
Neelam Tuteja
Consultant
- Stefan Agersborg
Intern
- Yun Zheng
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