This Facilitator’s Guide prepared by UN-Habitat and Cities Alliance accompanies the Quick Guides for Policy Makers: Housing the Poor in African Cities series. The Facilitator’s Guide comes with a USB flash drive containing the Quick Guides series, PowerPoint presentations on each Quick Guide, and videos that can be used in training activities. The training pack is intended for the use of training institutions in Africa and other interested institutions. The training pack focuses on experiential training, which draws on the experience of the workshop participants and emphasizes the sharing of ideas and opinions.

De modo general, la existencia de una política de vivienda se fundamenta en la identificación de un determinado conjunto de situaciones concretas que afectan a individuos, grupos y poblaciones y que pueden ser descritas, en un sentido específico, como expresión o indicador de la presencia de necesidades habitacionales insatisfechas. Por supuesto, la observación de tales necesidades se relaciona con distintos tipos de diagnósticos, entre los que se incluye la carencia absoluta de vivienda, pero también diferentes modalidades inadecuadas o deficitarias de acceso a vivienda, entre las que se cuenta la disponibilidad insegura o no exclusiva de vivienda, así como también el acceso a viviendas que no cumplen con estándares mínimos o socialmente deseados de calidad. Reconociendo esta pluralidad de situaciones, es correcto señalar que la problemática habitacional no se reduce exclusivamente a un asunto de cantidad de viviendas, sino que implica aportar al desarrollo de condiciones que habiliten el acceso seguro, oportuno, exclusivo y equitativo a viviendas adecuadas para todos aquellos grupos e individuos que manifiestan algún tipo de necesidad.

The UN-Habitat Global Activities Report formally the Operational Activities Report is an historical progress report to the Governing Council that takes into account the development made in addressing the UN-Habitat’s project portfolio at the national, regional and global levels. The Agency’s work has been more focused on promoting national urban policy reforms alongside building institutional and human capacities, and including helping and supporting the governments with the implementation of the national urban plans. UN-Habitat activities and programmes at the global, regional and national levels are crucial in increasing synergy for greater national ownership of the various sustainable urban development tools and best practices being promoted by the UN and the Habitat Agenda partners around the world. This report of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the world’s leading authority on urban matters, demonstrates through some of its selected activities delivered by the thematic Branches and the Regional Offices in the last two years how working together as Habitat Agenda partners at different levels can achieve for the urban resident and more specially the urban poor and the most vulnerable members of the urban society being the youth, omen and the elderly who are always at the receiving end of the urban threats and challenges.