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Sixth Global Summit: National-Local Cooperation Working Group Launch

Publication Date:

22/01/2026

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National-Local CooperationNational-Local Cooperation Working GroupSixth Global SummitToronto

— 10 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during this session and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Introduction

On 9 – 11 December 2025, the Strong Cities Network held its Sixth Global Summit in Toronto (Canada), bringing together more than 300 representatives of local governments, national governments, civil society organisations, academia, the private sector and international organisations. This included nearly 60 mayors and governors, as well as 110 other local government officials from 100 cities and 42 countries. Under the theme Stronger Together: Forging Safer, Connected, Thriving Cities in a Changing World, the Summit provided a platform for city leaders to share practical and innovative solutions to prevent and respond to hate, extremism and polarisation, and build safer, more resilient and more inclusive communities.

The Summit agenda included the launch of Strong Cities’ new National-Local Cooperation (NLC) Working Group, which is sponsored by the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism (NCTV) of the Government of the Netherlands and seeks to provide a structured platform where national and local actors from select countries in Europe and North America in particular can work together to: 1) share lessons learned and case studies on what works in building and sustaining NLC; 2) develop and test new approaches to joint policymaking, coordination and delivery; 3) provide a space for governments to access guidance and expertise on pressing NLC issues. The Working Group builds on Strong Cities’ global NLC Initiative, which to date has included:

• Supporting the Global Counterterrorism Forum in developing its Memorandum on Good Practices on NLC and an accompanying implementation toolkit;
• Through its Regional Hubs, dedicated support to strengthen NLC in countries such as Iraq, Malawi, Morocco, Tunisia and Uganda;
• Policy briefs to capture NLC-related practice updates, including a recent one on Opportunities and Lessons Learned for Secondary and Tertiary Prevention.

Building on these efforts, and in a dedicated session to mark the launch of the Working Group, select participants from Europe and North America were invited to share their reflections on achievements and challenges on NLC and to inform the Group’s trajectory.

Key Takeaways

1. There is a need for a dedicated platform to explore and better understand what works well and what has not worked in relation to NLC as a foundation for preventing and responding to the evolving hate, extremism and related challenges.
2. The Working Group should extend beyond the terminological limitations of terrorism and extremism to look at the range of threats to community safety and social cohesion that cities are facing, and which can create environments conducive to terrorism and extremism, such as online harms, gender-based violence, rising levels of hate speech and crime and more.
3. The Working Group should also explore how different departments within government at both the national and local levels can better cooperate with each other to reflect the breadth of challenges cities face, given the lack of alignment in some countries between departments focusing on security and those focusing on cohesion.
4. With NLC often limited to cooperation with capital cities and other urban centres, the Working Group should look at NLC with a diversity of local governments and should therefore also include representatives of and perspectives from remote and more rural towns.
5. The Working Group should map out good NLC practices and lessons learned on all aspects of implementation, for example, from designing a prevention programme or framework to its delivery, monitoring and evaluation.
6. The Working Group should also focus on NLC in crisis management and response, responding to concerns about the significant gap in multilevel collaboration and cooperation during and in the immediate aftermath of a hate-motivated or related crisis.
7. The Working Group should also seek to identify and share lessons learned from failed practices as much as it does good practices.

Key Themes 

1. The Working Group should serve as a platform to discuss multilevel collaboration on a range of harms

Nancy Rotering, Mayor of Highland Park (Illinois, United States), observed that cities are at the frontline of response to a range of threats, from online harms to gender-based violence and violent or hate-motivated protests. Participants agreed that the Working Group’s parameters should therefore not be limited to more restrictive concepts such as extremism and terrorism, and that it should look instead at a broader range of threats to social cohesion and community safety.

Not only would a broader focus better reflect realities on the ground, but participants also noted that this would be useful to help identify how different departments within the national government can work together to address this increasingly complex and hybrid threat landscape. For example, Shaida Bibi, Head of Community Cohesion Unit – Midlands and East, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (United Kingdom), noted that her ministry is increasingly taking on social and community cohesion-related work, while the Home Office maintains a focus on the harder edge of countering extremism. However, given the increasing interplay between these two fields, with extremism itself a growing threat to social cohesion, collaboration between the historically distinct stakeholder groups responsible for each area needs to be intensified. Yet, in the UK (and elsewhere), the various ministries are still figuring out how best to do this: it would thus be beneficial for the Working Group to explore how different departments within national government align their safety and security-focused initiatives, and how each then works with local actors.

Participants also agreed that the Working Group should pay particular attention to how NLC can help address online harms, including the harmful (yet legal) content that social media users are exposed to and that threatens social cohesion. Some officials highlighted the need to better integrate the work being done at the national and local levels, as well as by NGOs. A more holistic approach to addressing online harms – and one which requires enhanced NLC – would lead to more effective outcomes. For example, Georgios Sotiriadis, Policy Advisor Prevention of Extremism and Deradicalisation, Berlin Senate Department for the Interior and Sport (Germany), mentioned that in Germany, nearly “every state, every local government… funds its own online project”, but that limited funding means these are often small-scale and therefore have limited impact. He added that Berlin is trying to “persuade the federal government to be more active and fund or initiate bigger projects” to tackle online harms and that it would therefore be helpful to understand what good NLC looks like in the context of addressing online threats.

2. The Working Group should also strive to include a range of local governments, going beyond urban centres to include more remote and small towns

Participants also agreed that the Working Group should include representatives of provincial/state governments, capital cities and other urban centres, as well as remote and more rural towns. Lejdi Dervishi, National Coordinator / Executive Director, National Coordination Centre for Countering Violent Extremism (Albania), provided an example of why an inclusive approach to NLC is so important. She said that one of the challenges with rehabilitation and reintegration (R&R) of returnees from conflict zones to Albania is that, while many of them originated from rural areas, they want to be reintegrated into metropolitan cities to avoid being discriminated against and stigmatised in a place where others are likely to know them. As a result, national R&R support tends to be concentrated in larger cities, leaving rural areas with limited support, despite these often being the contexts in which radicalisation first occurred.

In general, there was consensus that rural towns are neglected in conversations related to safety and security issues, and that the Working Group should strive to identify practices for better including and supporting them.

3. The Working Group should invest in identifying good NLC practices and lessons learned for all aspects of implementing prevention efforts

The session revealed the need for the Working Group to invest in identifying examples of good NLC practices for all aspects of a project’s life cycle: from design to delivery and monitoring and evaluation. For example, participants agreed that national initiatives must be informed by local needs and realities, while locally designed projects may benefit from national insights about what has worked in other contexts versus what hasn’t, including where there are comparable projects and which cities can therefore be connected to learn from one another. For example, Georgios Sotiriadis mentioned that in Germany, the federal government has in the past implemented programmes where they “need the collaboration of city or state agencies” but did not proactively notify or otherwise engage the relevant actors, impeding the successful implementation of such programmes. A concerted effort to co-design programmes in the first place would help ensure relevant parties are aware and prepared to deliver their role.

Participants additionally stressed that the importance of NLC and multilevel co-design and delivery of prevention efforts also lies in the evolving threat landscape, particularly that those exposed to and getting involved in hate- motivated and other violent content are getting younger and younger. This, in turn, requires a broader set of stakeholders – from schools to child services – to be involved in prevention, with participants suggesting the Working Group should identify practices for NLC with such stakeholders as well.

4. The Working Group should also identify good practices for NLC in crisis response and management

Participants identified NLC in crisis management as a gap, requesting that the Working Group make an explicit effort to identify relevant good practices with a focus on how NLC can be adaptable enough to operate in a crisis environment. For example, Charlie Pericleous, Preventing Violent Extremism Officer, City of Portsmouth (United Kingdom), shared that, while NLC in the UK is strong on some aspects, it is particularly weak during and in the immediate aftermath of crises. He pointed to the example of riots and rapid mobilisation and noted that there is often a delay in support to local governments to respond to such unrest, stating that “in a time of acute crisis, there needs to be a more adaptable approach [to NLC]”.

Sean Arbuthnot, Prevent Manager, Birmingham City Council (United Kingdom), added that he recently received a spate of referrals related to niche online subcultures to which traditional support measures (i.e., through the UK’s Prevent programme) don’t apply. He shared that when Birmingham approached the UK’s Home Office for support to manage this influx of cases, they were referred to external written work, further underscoring the need for a more adaptable approach to NLC that is amenable to rapid response. He suggested that, in the interim, the Working Group could provide rapid peer support and serve as a safe space to seek guidance on emerging risks and concerns.

Next Steps

The session allowed participants to inform the trajectory of Strong Cities’ new NLC Working Group, while also demonstrating why the initiative is important in the first place. Key next steps include:

• Building out the Working Group to ensure a variety of perspectives inform its discussions and outputs – paying particular attention to remote and more rural towns.
• Identifying, collating and disseminating good practices and case studies for NLC in crisis management and response, building on the Summit session that was held on this topic to inform a distinct policy brief.
• Identifying good NLC practices and lessons learned for different aspects of a project’s life cycle – looking at how to facilitate NLC in project design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.
• Collating examples, lessons and guidance for how governments can better align and coordinate their prevention efforts – recognising that traditional support measures are no longer sufficient for today’s threat landscape. Such examples should capture horizontal and vertical collaboration.

Additional Resources

See our new policy brief on this topic: 

• National-Local Cooperation: Opportunities and Lessons Learned for Secondary and Tertiary Prevention, Strong Cities Network, 2025

Recent Strong Cities policy briefs and resources:

• City Leadership in Partnering with Local Communities for Social Cohesion: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• National-Local Cooperation: Opportunities and Lessons Learned for Secondary and Tertiary Prevention, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• City Leadership in the Face of Rising Incivility and Polarisation: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• Innovations in Prevention: Piloting Multi-Actor Frameworks in Small and Mid-Sized Cities in the United States, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Cities: Building a Multi-Actor Local Prevention Framework, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Manitoba Municipalities: Addressing Anti-Government Hate and Harassment, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Guide for Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for Mayors: Preventing and Responding to Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for City-Led Response, Strong Cities Network, May 2024
• City Spotlights Library, Strong Cities Network

Further Resources

• The National-Local Cooperation (NLC) Toolkit, Strong Cities Network, September 2023

Donors & Partners

The Sixth Global Summit was co-hosted with the City of Toronto and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and delivered with generous support from the Government of Canada, The Fourth Freedom Forum, The Toronto Foundation and Charities Aid Foundation.

Contact Information 

For more information about the Sixth Global Summit or the Strong Cities Network, please contact [email protected].

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