ment Cooperation Indonesian-German Development ... - Gtz

Decentralization and Local GovernanceA Key to Sustainable DevelopmentThe German government views the empowermentof local government and civil societyinstitutions through a process of decentralizationas an essential precondition for stablepolitical, economic and social developmentand thus for sustainable poverty alleviation.It regards the successful implementation ofIndonesia’s challenging decentralization programas an important requirement for achievingsustainable impact in its developmentcooperation with Indonesia. Both countrieshave therefore agreed to jointly support decentralizationand local governance as an importantcross-cutting issue of their bilateraldevelopment cooperation. This includes supportfor national policy formulation as wellas for regional and local level policy implementationthrough appropriate capacitybuilding measures. The combination of initiativescovering all levels of government isexpected to ensure coherence between supportto national policy formulation and subnationalcooperation, drawing on regionaland local experiences, needs andaspirations, to enhance the enabling impact of thenew decentralization framework on regionaland local actors, to improve the effectiveness of institutionsand mechanisms to facilitate theparticipation of regional and local actorsin national policy formulation processes.Establishing systematic and intensivelinkages between project activities atall levels of government calls for the concentrationof efforts on selected regions.Initiatives towards local governance capacitybuilding are therefore primarilydirected at the priority regions of Indonesian-GermanTechnical Cooperation,East and West Nusa Tenggara, EastKalimantan and central Java.At national level, three major projectsof Indonesian-German Technical Cooperationare involved in policy developmentfor decentralization and local governance:The project Support for Decentraliza-tion Measures assists the Ministry ofHome Affairs as well as other relevantgovernment agencies and the respectiveinter-ministerial teams to refine thelegal framework for decentralization andlocal governance. It provides advice forstrengthening the management of thedecentralization process at central level,as well as for the development andimplementation of a national capacitybuilding program for regional and localgovernments, parliaments and civil societyorganizations. With its close link-12 Indonesian – German Development Cooperation