The Commonwealth Peoples Forum held in Malta on 23-26 November brought forward the views of civil society across a range of Commonwealth countries on building resilient societies. The Forum led to the Malta Declaration on Governance for Resilience featured below.

The Declaration asserts that resilience is not a technocratic process but an inclusive one in which the voices of disadvantaged groups are taken into account. This is a humanistic approach to resilience that has much in common with PASCAL work on inclusive learning cities developed through the Learning Cities Networks (LCN) Addressing Disadvantage to Build Inclusive Learning Cities network, and UNESCO work on education and culture, including the recent UNESCO report on Rethinking Education with its call for transformative humanistic education for sustainable development. Both the UNESCO Rethinking Education and the Commonwealth Malta Declaration merit close attention in developing our thinking about the role of sustainable learning cities in a just sustainable society.