Highlights

Context and Rationale

Producing reliable data on social cohesion often presents a challenge to municipalities hosting large numbers of refugees. This is not only due to the complexity of the topic, but also to capacity constraints and a fragile and rapidly changing environment. Social cohesion plays however an important role in urban settings, and allows to mitigate potential conflicts and to create a livable environment between different communities. It can contribute to decrease the vulnerability of refugees, and ensures equitable and shared access to urban amenities and economic opportunities. Producing data on social cohesion at the municipal level allows to measure the degree of social cohesion in a community and to better understand the drivers and impacts of social tensions. Based on such data, municipalities can therefore better assess the needs of their inhabitants including refugees, and better develop social cohesion measures in order to create an endurable and peaceful environment. Moreover, data needs to be collected and analyzed over time in order for host municipalities to identify changing needs and adjust their social cohesion programs accordingly. 

Following the Peer-to-Peer Learning Workshop: Strengthening Social Cohesion in Municipalities Hosting Refugees co-organized by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Center for Mediterranean Integration (CMI) on November 11-12, 2016 in Sanliurfa and Gaziantep, Turkey, local government representatives from Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey acknowledged that acknowledged that collaboration and experience-sharing on how to improve social cohesion as highly valuable. A detailed summary of the discussion, together with more documentation, presentations and photos of the event can be found here. 

Objectives

Following the outcomes of the CMI-GIZ workshop, this webinar will discuss municipalities’ strategies in data collection and analysis for strengthening social cohesion in contexts of high refugee influx. 

The webinar will have three main objectives: 
1.    Discuss the importance and relevance of data for strengthening social cohesion;
2.    Identify the main challenges for municipalities hosting large numbers of refugees related to   data gathering and analysis;
3.    Identify best practices in data gathering for strengthening social cohesion and explore their possible replication in other contexts.

Participants

Mediterranean and European local governments hosting high numbers of refugees and public and private waste management stakeholders. Please confirm you interest to participate here.

Participation in the virtual workshop

The webinar will consist of a virtual exchange allowing participants to interact by connecting to the webinar directly from their computer (links to access the Webex will be sent in the invitation email; please note that this will require high-speed internet connection). Arabic-English translation will be provided.

Resources

Agenda and Guiding Questions 

Summary 

Partcipants' Presentations 

The importance of data production for strengthening social cohesion

Farah Choucair, UNDP, Regional Bureau for Arab States, Beirut, Lebanon, The Importance of Data Production for Strengthening Social Cohesion

Best practices in data production for strengthening social cohesion

Theodora Manolakos, Vienna Municipality, Austria, Monitoring Integration & Diversity

Imad Issa, Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Jordan, Data Collection and Analysis