The Forum of Federations is an international governance organization founded by the Government of Canada and supported by nine partner governments.

The Forum is concerned with the contribution federal and devolved forms of governance makes to the maintenance and construction of democratic societies and governments. It pursues this goal by:

-Building international networks and fostering the exchange of experience on federalism and multi-level governance.

-Enhancing mutual learning and understanding among practitioners and

-Disseminating knowledge and technical advice of interest to existing federations and of benefit to countries considering devolved and decrentralized governance options.

 

 

 

WHAT WE DO

 

 

GOVERNANCE

The Forum collaborates with local partners in a host country to run learning events and share information on governance issues ranging from how laws are made and enforced by the central government and the provinces, states or cantons, to how to deliver public services such as health care, environmental protection or public security.

The Forum is active in nearly 20 countries around the globe. Its headquarters are in Ottawa, Canada, and it has field offices in Abuja, Nigeria; Khartoum, Sudan; Kathmandu, Nepal and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

-Thematic Programs. Thematic programs deal with common issues in federal countries. Federal practioners in specific fields come together in Forum programs to learn from each other.

-Conferences. Every three years, the Forum and a federal host country organize a major international conference to bring together hundreds practitioners of federalism, academics and NGOs from dozens of countries to interact and learn from one another.

 -Country-specific Programs. In its country-specific programs, the Forum works in one or several partner countries or in other federations on specific cross-cutting themes such as public security, national capitals, oil and gas, internal markets, environmental assessment, indigenous government and land tenure, and benchmarking. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, India, Italy, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, Spain and Switzerland.

-Global Dialogue Program. The Global Dialogue on Federalism program enables experts in different federal countries to examine structural themes in federalism, starting with a roundtable in their own country and culminating in an international roundtable. The insights they discover are shared in comparative publications: a booklet and a book on each topic.

 

 

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE

The Forum’s development assistance programs strengthen democratic governance among practitioners and experts.

We help practitioners to learn and provide them with relevant tools to apply federal principles and practices. The Forum tailors these tools to make them useful and relevant to specific internal governance challenges.

The growth of the Forum’s development assistance work reflects the strong demand for federalism expertise in many developing countries. In recent years, the Forum has received development assistance funds for work in Sri Lanka, Iraq, Sudan, Nepal, Nigeria and Ethiopia from the Canadian, Swiss, German, Norwegian and US governments.

 

 

PUBLICATIONS

Key publications of the Forum include the Global Dialogue series, which addresses the overarching principles of federal governance; a Thematic series which deals with more policy-oriented sectoral issues in federal systems; occasional papers resulting from programs and events; and concise, reader-friendly introductory books on Federalism and Fiscal Federalism

Federations magazine presents a comparative view of current issues in federal countries and emerging federations. We also send out an electronic newsletter to keep friends of the Forum up to date with our recent events.

In addition to information on the Forum’s programs and activities, our website, www.forumfed.org, provides access to over 1,000 documents on federalism from our online federalism library and streaming video of “The Challenge of Diversity”.

As well as English language publications, learning materials are available in Amharic, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Kurdish, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish and Tamil.