Office at the United Nations, New York

The United Nations University Office at the UN, New York in cooperation with the Government of Catalonia and the United Nations University - Comparative Regional Integration Studies, is organizing a multi-part panel discussion entitled "Decentralized Governments and the New Multilateralism". It will feature experts in decentralized cooperation, including representatives from the Government of Catalonia, the UNU Programme on Comparative Regional Integration Studies and the United Nations Development Programme.


The panel discussion will provide insights on various approaches towards multilateral cooperation and on potential avenues for decentralized governments to establish relations with bodies such as the United Nations and the European Union. The panel will include a presentation and discussion of the Multilateral Development Cooperation Strategy prepared by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia.


Among other objectives, the strategy aims to promote greater participation by autonomous governments, as well as non-state actors, in cooperation for development. The strategy was prepared by the Catalonian government in an effort to better align its cooperation policies with multilateral cooperation bodies, in addition to widening the policy space for and promoting the value of decentralized and non-government participation in cooperation for development. The conference should be of great interest for scholars and practitioners in the fields of cooperation for development, multilevel governance and federalism.

Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira is the Vice-President of the Government of Catalonia.

He participated actively in the struggle against the Franco regime and was arrested and imprisoned as one of the 113 members of the Standing Committee of the Assembly of Catalonia (1973). Before joining Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) in 1987, he had been a militant of the Partit Socialista d'Alliberament Nacional (PSAN) (1970-1977) and Nacionalistes d'Esquerra (1980-1986).

He was elected General Secretary of ERC at the 21st National Congress of the party, held in Vilafranca del Penedès in November 1996, and was re-elected to the same post at the 22nd National Congress, held in Girona in July 1998, and the 23rd National Congress, held in Tarragona in March 2001. In April 2002 he was chosen as ERC's candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat of Catalonia for the 2003 elections. He headed his party's ticket for both the Catalan parliamentary elections (2003) and the elections to the Spanish Congress (2004) and he obtained ERC's best results since the return of democracy. He was elected President of Esquerra at the 24th National Congress of the party, held in Lleida in July 2004. On 2 November 2004 he defended the text of the 30 September Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia at the Spanish Parliament, on behalf of the Catalan Parliament. Carod-Rovira has been Vice-President of the Government of Catalonia since 29 November 2006.

Mrs. Rosa Clavell is the Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Government of Catalonia. She had previously been British consul (2004-2007) at the British Consulate-General in Barcelona, where she was responsible for consular services in Catalonia, Aragon and the Principality of Andorra. Between 2001 and 2003 she had held the post of vice-consul.

Between 1997 and 2000 she was in charge of promoting English at the British Council in Barcelona. She ran a nursery school and in the period 1983-1993 she was Marketing Manager at the VITRUBIO - LEO BURNETT advertising agency and the TBWA agency.

She was appointed Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Co-operation of the Government of Catalonia in December 2008, after serving as Secretary for Foreign Affairs since June 2007. She has combined these duties with those of Secretary General of the trust Patronat Catalunya Món since July 2008.

Her academic record includes studying English literature at the University of California, Berkeley; courses on International Relations and Protocol at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London; the Personnel Management course at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Oxford; and Diplomacy, a Tool for Dialogue, at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Prague.

Mr. Bruce Jenks is currently Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau for Partnerships, UNDP. The Bureau is responsible for developing and strengthening relationships with UNDP's key constituencies and development partners, including the Executive Board, member states, the United Nations system, the International Financial Institutions, civil society, the private sector and foundations. The Bureau has responsibility for the resource mobilization function of UNDP. The Bureau also includes UNDP's Communications Office.

Mr. Jenks joined UNDP in 1981 and was assigned to a variety of headquarters and field tasks. In 1990 he was appointed Director of Budget. In 1993, Mr. Jenks was assigned to work as Director, Office of the Administrator. In 1995, the Secretary-General appointed him as the first Director of the United Nations Office as well as being UNDP Representative in Brussels. During the course of 2006 Mr. Jenks concurrently served as Director of the Bureau of Management. Mr. Jenks is currently responsible for UNDP's participation in and engagement with the UN Reform Agenda.

Mr. Jenks holds a Ph.D in International Relations from Oxford University, and MA's from Cambridge University and Johns Hopkins SAIS. Mr. Jenks has published a wide variety of articles.

Ms. Elisa Peter is Officer-in-Charge and Chief of the New York Office of the United Nations Non Governmental Liaison Service (UN-NGLS). The Service aims to promote constructive relations between the United Nations and civil society, including through dynamic partnerships to foster greater coherence around cross-cutting and emerging issues on the UN's agenda and by facilitating meaningful civil society engagement in UN processes. Drawing on its inter-agency nature and UN system-wide perspective, NGLS provides strategic information, analysis and support to a wide range of constituencies, using its unique convening and networking capacity to strengthen multistakeholder dialogue and alliance-building on core UN issues.

Prior to working at NGLS, Ms. Peter spent more than ten years working as a policy expert and campaign director in a range of international non-profit advocacy organizations in the fields of environmental conservation and human rights in Latin America, Asia and Europe. She also worked as a Consultant on International forest policy for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Ms. Peter holds a Masters in Applied Environmental Sciences from Imperial College, University of London -U.K., and a Masters in Agronomy from the National Superior Agronomy School - France.

Mr. Philippe De Lombaerde is Associate Director of the United Nations University Research and Training Programme on Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS), located in Bruges (Belgium). The mission of UNU-CRIS is to contribute towards achieving the universal goals of the UN and the UNU through comparative and interdisciplinary research and training for a better understanding of the processes and impact of intra- and inter-regional integration. Mr. De Lombaerde has been involved in research projects on the interaction between micro- and macro-regions, the future of the Benelux, external policies of the Flemish region, and on cross-border micro-regions in Southeast Asia, Southern Africa and the Andean region, among other topics

Mr. Josep Xercavins is currently a Titular Professor at UPC (Polytechnic University of Catalonia).

Mr. Xercavins was appointed as Director of the EUETIT (University School of Industrial Engineering at Terrassa) at the UPC from 1992 to 1995. He was the Rector's Delegate for the UPC's Campus in Terrassa from 1995 to 1998.

He organised and coordinated the International Congress on Technology, Sustainable Development and Imbalances held in Terrassa in December 1995. From that context came the UPC's UNESCO Chair in Technology, Sustainable Development, Imbalances and Global Change, for which he was the coordinating lecturer until June 2002. He was the first academic director of the MASTER's DEGREE IN SUSTAINABILITY at the UPC, one of the key work areas of the UNESCO Chair, the director of the Journal "SOSTENIBLE?" ('Sustainable?'), the Director of the Catalan edition of the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and served on the Catalan Committee for the "Earth Charter" and on the "Agenda 21" initiatives. He also fostered the new INTERDEPARTMENTAL DOCTORATE PROGRAMME: SUSTAINABILITY, TECHNOLOGY AND HUMANISM.

In 2000, as coordinator of its Ad Hoc Secretariat, Mr. Xercavins became the main organizer of the UBUNTU initiative (WORLD FORUM OF CIVIL SOCIETY NETWORKS), headed by Federico Mayor Zaragoza, and he was also a founding participant and moderator at the Founding Meetings (Barcelona 2001 and 2002) for that Forum. He worked in particular on what is now the main project of the Forum: the "WORLD CAMPAIGN FOR IN-DEPTH REFORM OF THE SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS". He left Ubuntu in February 2009.

Prominent among the international congresses and conferences on those issues in which he took part were: the UNESCO's "World Conference on Higher Education", held in Paris in October 1998; the United Nations' Millennium Forum, held in May 2000 at the UN's headquarters in New York; the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in September 2002; the Fifth Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), held in Cancun in September 2003; the United Nations' World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva in 2003 and in Tunis in 2005; the first UN General Assembly Hearings with representatives of Civil Society in June 2005 -therefore was nominated to take part in representation of the Civil Society Internationally organized; the Sixth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Meeting, held in December 2005 in Hong Kong: and the ECOSOC Spring Meetings with the IBWs and the WTO, held in April 2006, 2007 and 2008; the Follow-up on Financing for Development to Review de Implementation of Monterrey Consensus that concluded in Doha (Qatar) in December 2008 and was nominated in several occasions to take part in representation of the Civil Society Internationally organized. In the framework of this latest process he promoted the CTT (Currency Transaction Tax) for FfD (Financing for Development Campaign.)

Mr. Noé Cornago is Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao (Spain), where he is also in charge of the Masters Degree in International Decentralized Cooperation: Peace and Development. He has widely published on development theory, decentralized cooperation and the international relations of constituent units. He has held diverse short visiting positions at Ohio State University and University of Idaho in United States, Université Laval in Quebec, Canada, Institute for Political Studies/Sciences Po Bordeaux, and the Free University of Colombia, and has promoted a number of decentralized partnerships with various UN institutions.

Mr. Juan López-Dóriga is Director General of Planning and Evaluation of Cooperation to Development of the Spanish Government.

In this capacity, Mr. López-Dóriga is responsible for the planning and evaluation of the Spanish government's policies towards cooperation to development. As part of his professional career, Mr. López-Dóriga held various positions within the Spanish Government. He served as a Deputy Consul at the Consulate General of Spain in Paris, the Deputy Head of the Embassy of Spain in Costa Rica and an advisor in the Cabinet of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation and Iberoamerica. Prior to his current position, Mr. López-Dóriga was an ambassador of Spain to Belize, with residence in Guatemala 2004 through 2008. Mr. López-Dóriga holds a degree in law.

David Minoves i Llucià was born in Barcelona in 1969. He presently lives in Barcelona. He studied Fine Arts and Political Sciences. He started his political engagement when he was a student, fighting against militarism and rejecting to join the military service. He is a member of the leftist independentist party since 1987. He was appointed Secretary General of the JERC (the Youth sector of the Republican Left of Catalonia), President of this party in Barcelona and member of the executive board, as the person responsible to deal with social movements.

He has been an activist in several campaigns; was a member of the Stop the War platform and has actively participated in several World Social Forums, the European Social forum and the Mediterranean Social Forum. He worked as an officer at the Josep Irla's Foundation and as a consultant at the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona.

Since Februrary 2004 and until 2006, he was the Director of the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation. In 2007, he was appointed Director General for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid.

Rigoberto González is a Member of the Council of the North Atlantic Autonomous Region, in Nicaragua, Mr. González will contribute to the discussion by giving his territorial approach to cooperation to development, as well as offering his extensive experience of working with other decentralised governments (such as the case of Catalonia), together with multilateral organisations. Mr. Gonzalez has erved as a Consultant to the Autonomous Regional Government of RAAN (Autonomous Region of the North Atlantic), the Regional Delegate of the Nicaraguan Institute of Agrarian Reform (INRA) and Secretary to the Civil Appeals Court of the Autonomous Region of the North Atlantic, Nicaragua. Prior to his current position, Mr. Gonzalez served as a Regional Councilor, presiding over the Exterior Commission and the Planning, Economy, and Heritage Commission in Nicaragua.

Dr. Jean-Marc Coicaud is the Director of the United Nations University (UNU) Office at the United Nations in New York. He was Senior Academic Officer at the UNU in Tokyo from 1996 to 2003. Before joining UNU, he served in the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General as a speechwriter for Dr. Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996). A former fellow at Harvard University (Center for International Affairs, Department of Philosophy and Harvard Law School, from 1986 to 1992), Coicaud has held appointments such as Cultural Attaché with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Legislative Aide with the European Parliament (Financial Committee), Associate Professor at the University of Paris, Visiting Professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure-Ulm in Paris and Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University School of Public Policy and Management. He has also taught at the New School for Social Research (New York). He has been a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace (Washington, D.C.) and a Global Research Fellow at New York University School of Law. Coicaud holds a Ph.D. in political science-law from the Sorbonne and a Doctorat d'Etat in philosophy from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques of Paris. In addition, he holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in literature and linguistics. Jean-Marc Coicaud is a member of the Advisory Board of Carnegie Council's Global Policy Innovations (New York). He also serves as an adviser for the Fondation pour l'Innovation Politique (Paris).

Jean-Marc Coicaud has published 14 books in the fields of comparative politics, political and legal theory, international relations and international law. They are available in English, French, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic, and include the following single-authored books: Politics and Legitimacy: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 2002), Beyond the National Interest (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007), Kokuren no Genkai/Kokuren no Mirai (Future of the UN/Limits of the UN - Fujiwara Shoten, 2007), Mai Xiang Guo Ji Fa Zhi (Towards the International Rule of Law - Sanlian Shudian, 2008). His latest book, co-edited with Hilary Charlesworth, is Fault Lines of International Legitimacy (Cambridge University Press, 2009).