Youth empowerment is mainstreamed across all programmatic work of UN-Habitat. As such, all programmes, country-level work and topics engage with youth. This page summarizes and displays some key work, but youth empowerment is integrated across all work of UN-Habitat. The primary aim of mainstreaming is to provide support and technical guidance to project managers. Youth experts are consulted during the project design phase, whereby they will provide input and guidance into project proposals. This is made mandatory at the project approval stage, where feedback is provided at the Project Advisory Group (PAG) based on the Youth Marker.

This Marker serves as both a capacity-building tool and a quality assurance measure. It requires that every proposal must meet minimum requirements for mainstreaming each issue before it can be approved by the Project Advisory Group (PAG). The Marker is one of the key accountability tools UN-Habitat uses to ensure inclusive and sustainable cities.

Since the introduction of the Marker, there has been a steady improvement in the percentage of UN-Habitat projects to which the Marker system is applied – now 100% - and that are meeting the requirements of the Marker.  In 2015, only 30% of projects met all requirements at the first attempt. This has risen to 58% in 2016, and 69% in 2017, 74% in 2018 and with a goal of 85% by the end of 2019.