COVID-19, a global pandemic declared by the World Health Organization (WHO), is crippling the global economy and upending people’s lives thereby threatening sustainable development across all its dimensions. Africa is also facing the dire consequences of the crisis, necessitating timely response, recovery and rebuilding policies and strategies. Globally, urban areas are the epicenters of the epidemic accounting for most of the confirmed COVID-19 cases.

UN-Habitat has been active in the Somalia urban sector for more than 30 years to promote sustainable and participatory urban development. Responding to the implementation of Somalia National Development Plan 9 and Somaliland National Development Plan II, UN-Habitat’s interventions in Somalia focuses on durable solutions for IDP’s, strengthening urban planning and municipal finance to address urbanization challenges and at the same time enhance service delivery capacity; and to improve…

Caribbean Strategy for Informal Settlements Upgrading (CSISU) recognizes that informal settlements are a product of failures in the shelter, land and housing systems, evident in the lack of capacity to adequately meet shelter needs and provide employment and services in step with urbanization in the Caribbean. While these factors affect households across the socio-economic spectrum, informal settlements are disproportionately burdened, as they are home to a significant proportion of lower…

This report highlights UN-Habitat’s 2019 work with the federal government, and its Member States in responding to the Somalia National Development Plan priorities and contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals (particularly SDG 11) and the implementation of the New Urban Agenda (NUA). Working as a member of the UN County team, UN-Habitat’s interventions are underpinned by the agency’s core normative programming on inclusive and sustainable development of cities.

Global commitment to the inclusive right to adequate housing was renewed at the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development – Habitat III. Housing will hence prove central to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 11: ‘Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’.

Across the Arab region, around 18 % of residents live under each country’s national poverty line and significant disparities continue to exist…

The Housing Rights Index is developed to support training and capacity building activities and is intended for the use of policy makers and urban practitioners to be able to analyse the realisation of the right to adequate housing adequacy in their city. This guide is accompanied by an excel workbook that helps the user to assess the achievement of the seven dimensions of housing adequacy in their city in a dynamic and visual manner.

The Housing Barometer draws on the Practical Guide for Conducting Housing Profiles by UN-Habitat. The tool was created with the dual goal to support the realization of the housing profiles and to support the housing sector analysis, stimulating holistic and integrated thinking, and strengthening the users’ understanding about the complexity of the housing sector and the interlinkages between the various attributes and sub-sectors of housing.

The Global Urban Competitiveness Report（GUCR） is a cooperative research conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and UN-Habitat focusing on sustainable urban competitiveness, urban land and urban finance. Led by Mr. Marco Kamiya and Prof. Ni Pengfei, the project is participated by experts from CASS, UNHabitat and well-known scholars in relevant fields.