Event time: 1.00 -2.00 p.m. Vienna Time (GMT +2)
In the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the reduction of crime and violence (under Goal 16) and the creation of safe, inclusive and resilient cities (Goal 11) are at the heart of global efforts to promote sustainable development. At the same time, the New Urban Agenda that was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in 2016 clearly links urbanization to development, including a focus on safety and security of city residents. Against this background, the United Nations, including UN-Habitat and UNODC work with Member States in their efforts to prevent and address crime and violence at the local level, promoting relevant UN standards and norms, including the UN Guidelines on Crime Prevention, and guided by the 2020 UN system-wide Guidelines on Safer Cities and Human Settlements.
Objective of the event
This side event will bring together key actors to reflect on best practices and lessons learned in creating safer cities and reducing crime and violence at the local level. A specific focus will be on ways to engage community actors in the development and implementation of strategies and programmes and to monitor progress. As such, the event will offer insights that may pave the way for the creation of a monitoring tool for the Guidelines on Safer Cities and Human Settlements, including a dashboard with which urban authorities would be able to reflect on their own status, progress made or weaknesses to overcome in the quality and consistency of municipal safety policies. Experts will indicate what areas of crime prevention and urban safety that they are active in and how the urban safety monitor tool could promote good practices and encourage exchanges across cities in the Global Network on Safer Cities. UN-Habitat and UNODC will also present the results of the just concluded evidence-based community safety policies in South Africa, Mexico and Colombia and engage participants in the current safety assessment tools that cities are using or developing at the moment. The report of this event will feed into a report on ‘Safer Cities 2.0” prototype.
For any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to Juma Assiago at juma.assiago@un.org.
We look forward to your participation.