UN-Habitat Regional Office for Arab State’s Overview sheds the light on the interventions and achievements of UN-Habitat in the Arab region in the year 2021. The interventions include contribution to urban development, ensuring access to adequate housing and providing safe and inclusive public spaces, as well as COVID-19 response.

Launched in 2012, UN-Habitat’s Global Public Space Programme supports cities to take actions for safe, inclusive, and accessible public space for all. As a Programme, we promote the crucial role of green and quality public spaces in cities, acting as an enabler for social justice, prosperity, and environmental change. The Global Public Space Programme adopts an integrated and iterative approach for sustainable public space development and management.

This handbook aims to raise the number and quality of built interventions that have been co-designed with children affected by displacement in the urban context: ultimately advancing their wellbeing. It provides practical insights regarding interventions that put children’s wellbeing first, and at the intersection of participatory design, forced displacement, and the urban context.

In Kakuma-Kalobeyei, northern Kenya, streets, public spaces and shared public facilities have played a critical role in supporting host and refugee communities in their day-to-day activities. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted several gaps in public spaces in Kakuma-Kalobeyei which need to be addressed in the short-, medium- and long-term.

The purpose of this playbook is to outline UN-Habitat’s approach to using Minecraft as an enabler to encourage community participation in urban design and governance.

The UN-Habitat’s report - Cities and Pandemics: Towards a more just, green and healthy future – evidences how cities can reduce the impact of future pandemics and become more prosperous, fair and environmentally friendly. The Report calls for the response and recovery to pandemics to be based on human rights principles. It outlines how cities should lead the move towards a New Social Contract between governments, the public, civil society and the private sector.

Her City supports urban development from a girl’s perspective. It guides urban actors to implement projects through a step-by-step methodology providing an open and digitally accessible platform for all.

UN-Habitat’s Global Public Space Programme was launched in 2012 with the objective to support local governments in creating and promoting socially inclusive, integrated, connected, environmentally sustainable and safe streets and public spaces, especially for the most vulnerable, promoting a better quality of life for all. The programme has developed an integrated, multi-sectoral and iterative approach to support local governments to create vibrant and inclusive public space networks.

In 2019, as part of Afghanistan Urban Safety and Security Programme (AUSSP) the first Public Space Safety Audit was undertaken in the country to enable better consideration of safety and security issues through more evidence-based policy planning and implementations. The Audit was done to understand gaps in distribution, quality, safety, accessibility, inclusivity of public spaces, to celebrate and support ongoing initiatives and programmes of the National Government and UN-Habitat.