| Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons: Implementing the Pinheiro Principles in the Middle East and North Africa (Arabic) | 2025 | This handbook is designed to provide practical guidance to national and international actors, institutions, and organizations working to protect the housing, land, and property rights of refugees and displaced persons. It contributes to achieving sustainable solutions by applying the Pinheiro Principles to displacement situations across the Middle East and North Africa region. |
| Korea National Urban Policy Programme at the World Urban Forum 12 | 2025 | This report summarizes a pivotal knowledge-sharing event, focused on Korea National Urban Policy Programme and its impact on people-centered smart cities, held in Cairo, Egypt, during the twelfth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF12). This event was a key activity within the Korea National Urban Policy Programme (K-NUPP), highlighting the crucial intersection of people-centered smart cities and their effective integration into National Urban Policies (NUPs). This focus aligns perfectly with the broader goals of the Korea National Urban Policy Programme in fostering sustainable urban development. |
| A Road Map Towards a Socioeconomic Development Plan for the Union of Municipalities of Chamal Baalbek, Baalbek – Hermel Governorate | 2024 | |
| Waste Management and Resource Utilization in China and Africa: Practices in Shanghai and Lagos | 2024 | The SDG, Agenda 2063: Africa we want and the New Urban Agenda underscores the need for international cooperation, knowledge sharing, and technology transfer to address the global solid waste challenge. They call for increased investment in waste management infrastructure and capacity building, particularly in developing countries. As representative cities at distinct stages of development, Shanghai, China and Lagos, Nigeria have amassed unique experiences in waste management. These experiences not only provides invaluable insights for their respective futures but also serve as beneficial references for other cities seeking to optimize waste management strategies amidst globalization. This publication aims to encourage regions, countries and cities to prioritize investment in and the financing of sustainable long-term waste management initiatives, which are often treated as an afterthought in the context of the rapidly urbanizing world and thus impede the achievement of SDG targets. |
| Building Bridges: Executive Director's Report (2018-2023) | 2024 | In the past six years, UN-Habitat has grown from strength to strength. The World Urban Forum is now the world’s premier United Nations platform for sustainable urbanization. UN-Habitat is present in all global platforms including at the UN General Assembly where we were selected on the high impact pillar on localization. It is very clear that shelter, housing, and sustainable urbanization cut across all political divides. |
| Local Action for Global Goals: An Opportunity for Enhancing Nationally Determined Contributions | 2024 | As countries prepare to revise their NDCs ahead of COP30, the analysis summarized in this technical brief shows: which countries have the biggest potential to work towards stronger integration of urban content in their NDCs; how they can reap co-benefits of sustainable urban development, effective local adaptation measures, and reducing emissions by stronger collaboration with local governments. |
| CiCoSA Action Toolkit | 2024 | The CiCoSA Action Toolkit includes a CiCoSA Handbook and a CiCoSA Implementation Guide with a focus on Kenya and Namibia. The CiCoSA Handbook examines benefits and risks of circular economy approaches to a sustainable building and construction sector from the waste management perspective, providing practical case studies that could be scaled up in the region as part of a sustainable urbanization strategy. The CiCoSA Implementation Guide serves as a roadmap to navigate challenges on circular construction. It is specifically tailored to policymakers in Sub-Saharan Africa, considering the region's unique social, economic, and environmental context. It outlines the various stages of a circular construction life cycle, from product manufacture and design to construction, operation, and ultimately, building deconstruction. Recommendations emphasize the crucial role of empowering local communities and fostering collaboration across sectors. |
| Synthesis Paper 4: Identifying universal measures of quality of life: A Technical Process, a Human Story | 2024 | This fourth synthesis paper of the Quality of Life Initiative highlights its journey from concept to the creation of a global index to measure quality of life in cities. The Initiative views quality of life as a dynamic assessment of how well cities offer opportunities for individuals and communities to thrive. This paper explores the collaborative, people-centered approach used to develop a universal set of indicators, balancing technical rigor with human dimensions, to capture factors like housing adequacy, job satisfaction, and well-being. |
| Multilayered Vulnerability Assessment Handbook - Resilience planning for urban, biodiversity and climate action | 2024 | The Multilayered Vulnerability Assessment (MVA) tool, developed under UN-Habitat's RISE-UP flaghip programme, helps communities and cities assess vulnerabilities by mapping and assessing the intersection of climate risks, urbanization trends, biodiversity loss, and land degradation. It identifies and appraises vulnerability hotspots from spatial overlaps and areas of concentrated vulnerability which helps to better inform planning, resource mobilization and investment for systemic urban climate resilient infrastructure in cities. |
| Evaluating the Impacts of Urban Policies A Guide for Urban Policy Leaders | 2024 | More people live in cities than ever before. The urban population more than doubled from 1.5 billion in 1975 to 3.5 billion in 2015 and is estimated to reach more than 50% by 2050. This affirms the role of cities in sustainable development and the importance of National Urban Policies in as coordinating frameworks, to manage the urbanization process in an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable way. National governments are encouraged to develop and implement New Generation Urban Policies (NUPs), which are considered vital tools to support implementation of the New Urban Agenda. These policies should be evidence based, set realistic policy expectations, and guide effective spending of public resources. This can only be achieved when countries have a thorough understanding of the urban policy making process. |