Deadline: 7-Mar-23
The Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Lebanese Ministry of the Interior but also the French Embassy in Lebanon, the Committee of Lebanese Mayors and United Cities Lebanon/Technical Office of Lebanese Cities, opened the 2nd phase of the three-year call for projects 2022-2024 within the framework of the specific support mechanism for Franco-Lebanese decentralized cooperation, in order to support the projects of French and Lebanese communities aimed at strengthening capacities in territorial governance.
France supports the development and strengthening of decentralized cooperation projects between French and Lebanese communities. It considers these partnerships to be necessary for the development of friendship, solidarity and economic ties between local public actors in the two countries. In addition, France is keen to support Lebanese municipalities, which are on the front line in responding to development challenges in an increasingly difficult economic and social context.
The initiative is carried out within the framework of the objectives of supporting development and good governance included in France’s foreign policy.
Themes
- This system is dedicated to strengthening the project management capacities of Lebanese local authorities or their groupings in compliance with the attributions and skills granted to them by law. This strengthening will be carried out in particular through the training of its elected officials and local agents, making it possible to improve the efficiency and quality of the public services concerned. Requests from partner communities must correspond to real development projects.
- Four themes have been selected:
- Local economic development, particularly agriculture;
- The social link (including the themes of solidarity, youth, professional training);
- heritage and culture;
- Sustainable development (water, sanitation, renewable energies, biodiversity, climate change, environment and urban management, risk management).
Priority Partnerships
- Preference will be given to projects that:
- Will bear concrete benefits in terms of local economic development in Lebanon;
- Will bring synergies with the other development projects carried out by France in Lebanon, which focus in particular on food security, civic education and health;
- Will strengthen the French response capacity to the strong demands of the Lebanese territorial authorities through a training offer for Lebanese executives and elected officials and the know-how of French local authorities;
- Unite local authorities and other French and Lebanese actors working to strengthen the capacities of Lebanese local authorities, in order to facilitate access to new funding, including multilateral funding;
- Will allow French communities wishing to act in Lebanon without engaging in a permanent partnership to be able to contribute to usefully strengthening Lebanese communities;
- Will encourage partnerships enabling projects to play a unifying role in the mobilization of local communities and to provide consistency on the scale of a larger territory. In this perspective, the regional decentralized cooperation platforms could constitute a coordination body;
- Will be carried by several French and/or Lebanese local authorities, aiming to pool their means of intervention and give more coherence and efficiency to their actions.
- In addition, good practices aimed at consolidating decentralized cooperation partnerships over the long term will be favored, in particular those which provide for:
- the establishment of a steering committee ensuring the regular administrative, political and technical monitoring of the partnership;
- the conditions for the sustainability of the project;
- information and communication actions on the actions carried out, associating the DAECT and the French Embassy on the French side, the Lebanese Committee of Mayors and Cités Unies Liban/BTVL on the Lebanese side, in the direction of the media, through production and dissemination of joint brochures, the creation of web pages, etc.
Duration
The duration of the projects will be, as soon as they are accepted by the selection committee:
- 24 months maximum for projects submitted between mid-December 2022 and March 2024;
- 12 months for projects submitted between mid-December 2023 and mid-March 2024.
Eligibility Criteria
- The call for projects is aimed at French and Lebanese local authorities and groupings of local authorities in order to receive projects, which may be co-financed if they are selected, within the framework of a decentralized cooperation partnership.
- In all cases, project management must be provided by one or more French local authorities or groups. Project management can be delegated, for example, to an association or a company. However, the project must directly involve the local authorities in their competences or their capacities to mobilize the actors of their territories in partnership with another local authority. A project cannot be selected if the community submitting it only plays the role of donor.
For more information, visit MEAE.