As we enter the second year of this United Nations’ Decade of Action, the Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reminds us that we need to ‘turbo-charge’ our efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. More importantly, we need to deliver the goals as One United Nations and strive to pass the finishing line with no one and no place left behind.

Our world is changing rapidly. Technology and information are moving at breathtaking rates. Populations are expanding, political forces are in flux and the climate crisis threatens the planet’s future. A pandemic has swept across the world, claiming millions of lives.

Over the last decade, UN-Habitat has utilised participatory approaches in urban planning processes to support the creation of Kalobeyei Settlement, the regeneration of Kakuma Camps, and the development of a socio-economic corridor, in alignment to KISEDP, Kenya. Throughout these experiences, practitioners have recognized the importance of the design and integration of participatory approaches to elevate the role of every participant.

UN-Habitat Regional Office for Arab State’s Building Gender-Inclusive Cities report highlights the mainstreaming and programmatic prioritization of gender in UN-Habitat’s work. This is done through showcasing numerous gender-responsive interventions and projects that were done across countries of the Arab region in 2021. In these projects, UN-Habitat focused on ensuring urban settings, including public spaces and transportation, are safe and empowering for all girls and women.

This publication provides the basis for a much-needed Urban Resilience Framework, including an examination of urban disaster risk and resilience in the SADC region, vulnerability profiles for each country, city level analyses of vulnerability, and measures to foster institutional and policy discussions.

In 2021, conflict, pandemic and climate emergencies continued to shape the challenges faced by human settlements. UN-Habitat was able to strengthen its efforts to help Member States to respond to new vulnerabilities and risks. Our normative guidance combined with demonstrated projects succeeded in creating conducive conditions for sustainable and inclusive recovery and resilience at the local level.

Based on a spatially focused and cross-sectoral situational analysis of urban settlements hosting displaced populations, this multi-level profile allows locals, stakeholders, and readers to develop a comprehensive spatial understanding of the existing situation as a basis for evidence-based decision making for long-term urban development strategies and infrastructure investment planning.

Based on a spatially focused and cross-sectoral situational analysis of urban settlements hosting displaced populations, this multi-level profile allows locals, stakeholders, and readers to develop a comprehensive spatial understanding of the existing situation as a basis for evidence-based decision making for long-term urban development strategies and infrastructure investment planning.

UN-Habitat - FAO policy paper on Land Tenure and Sustainable Agri-Food Systems highlights the need for securing land rights beyond the farming community and for the array of actors, including micro, small and medium sized agri-food enterprises.
It also notes that secure access to land and tenure rights needs to be considered part of a broader investment and enabling policy environment to support the sustainability of agri-food systems in the long term.