Nariño’s Department five-year experience shows how through strong local ownership and the coordinated efforts of all national and international development actors, the driving forces of SHD can be consolidated to increase cohesion and achieve peacebuilding at the local level. 

With the commitment and involvement of Nariño’s department and Pasto’s municipality, the participation of local social, ethnic and community actors, and the support of multiple development partners such as UNDP trough the ART Initiative and the REDES programme, and decentralized and bilateral cooperation partners, Nariño has adopted and localized the proposed frameworks of multilevel governance and territorial development. These systems and their mechanisms (such as the Working Groups) are promoting dialogue, articulating actors and to making their strategies converge towards local needs and priorities. This experience has become even more relevant in 2013, as the peace process has gained momentum and reached a turning point. They have allowed Nariño —together with many social and economic stakeholders—, to formulate and implement an integral and transformative political, social, economic, cultural and peacebuilding agenda at the local level, therefore also achieving a more effective and targeted response to local challenges. Processes of LGLD and territorial development elements have been crucial to implementing a territorial approach that articulates the local, national and international dimensions to enhance development planning, facilitate dialogue and cohesion among territories; they also generate mechanisms to boost local economic development. 

The process has resulted in the promotion of innovative and transforming synergies that combine elements of territorial development, LGLD and peacebuilding. Nariño is now endowed with a number of local development and peacebuilding processes that generate more structured, coherent and strategic dynamics for change. Owing to the concrete results obtained, local and national actors have acknowledged this experience as a good practice, making Nariño an example for the rest of Colombia. What is more, ART REDES has been instrumental in managing programmes and resources, achieving a significant multiplier effect. In 2013, this unique experience was documented in a thorough systematization.

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¹ the document will be published soon on https://issuu.com/artpublications