With less than two weeks to go until the opening of the World Summit of Local and Regional Leaders and its World Congress, UCLG are intensifying preparations for the highlight of this year´s centennial celebration: a large-scale temporary exhibition that will retrace achievements of the last one hundred years and an official ceremony to pay homage to those who have played a key role in the recent history of the international municipal movement.  

Over the last few months, UCLG has been publishing samples of content that will feature in the timeline and now, as the event approaches and to give you a fuller taste of the activities waiting for you in Rabat, we have created a highlights video: “100 years, 100 photos”.

On the congress website, we have also compiled testimonies from many of the key figures who have worked for the movement over the last two decades and who offer us their insight into municipal movement that resulted in the creation of UCLG.

For this exciting project, the World Secretariat, and especially Craig Laird, has been working with a number of key partners, among whom special thanks are extended to Jeremy Smith, Selahattin Yildirim, Alain Le Saux, Jean Pierre E. Mbassi, Elisabeth Gateau, Paolo Morello, Margarita Obiols, Peter Woods, Antonia Sabartes and Jean-Marie Tétart, and the Dutch (VNG) and Finish (AFLRA) associations of local and regional authorities and the Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR). The world secretariat would also like to acknowledge the special contributions of Pierre-Yves Saunier and Renaud Payre for their academic guidance and Mae Molina for her archive work.

UCLG, as direct inheritor of this movement, is counting on the support of all its members, partners and fellow militants of the “local cause” and call upon all those who wish to bring forward their contribution to the international municipal movement, to come to Rabat to celebrate this historic moment.

Follow the centenary celebrations live via twitter using the hashtag: #uclg100 and by registering for the UCLG congress in Rabat to help “Imagine Society, Build Democracy”.