UN-Habitat envisions well-planned, well-governed, resilient and efficient cities and human settlements, with adequate housing, infrastructure, and universal access to employment and basic services. Its programmes and projects are designed to help policy-makers and local communities get to grips with human settlements and urban issues to achieve sustainable urban development to all.
Applying its technical expertise, normative and operational work, UN-Habitat implements the New Urban Agenda and Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals, with a specific focus on SDG 11 – to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. As custodian agency, UN-Habitat plays a coordination role of monitoring and assessing the implementation of SDG 11 indictors. In 2018 UN-Habitat launched an ambitious reform agenda to make the Agency more ‘fit for purpose’. Its new Strategic Plan (2020 - 2023) reflects the new vision of the Agency and responds to emerging global priorities and is centered around four pillars; reduced spatial inequality and poverty; enhanced shared prosperity; strengthened climate action and improved urban environment; and effective urban crisis prevention and response.
UN-Habitat response spans four main drivers of change, namely policy and legislation, planning, governance and financing/implementation. Jordan has been experiencing a steady increase in its urban population exacerbated by the successive waves of forced migrants from surrounding countries. Between 2004 to 2014, the population increased by nearly 87 per cent resulting in a wide range of urban challenges such as informal urban expansions, water deficiencies, shortage of housing and other basic services, increasing rental prices, environmental degradation and pollution and lack of decent job opportunities for all.
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