Nairobi, 17 July 2018 - With support from UN-Habitat’s Global Urban Observatory and the Africa Center for Statistics at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), two cities in Tunisia are developing frameworks for monitoring and reporting on SDG 11. Specialized training workshops conducted in the cities of Monastir and Tozeur were attended by high level government officials, demonstrating commitment and goodwill.

The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in collaboration with the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) through its Global Urban Observatory unit organized the Asia-Pacific Regional Training Workshop on Human Settlement Indicators of the SDGs (SDG 11 and other urban related SDGs) at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC) in Bangkok, Thailand from 26 to 29 March 2018.

Nairobi, 12 January 2018-- At the close of 2017, Botswana and Tunisia were getting prepared to monitor and report on SDG 11, with the support of the UN-Habitat’s Global Urban Observatory team and the UNECA to monitor and report on SDG 11.

30 November 2017, Bellagio Italy - Despite an estimated one billion people around the world living in slums, many global data collection exercises including censuses do not track spatial distinctions of populations living in places identified as slums. Today, slums are often invisible in official statistics, generally hidden within urban averages. Yet the spaces people occupy are important; it is for this reason that rural and urban statistics are collected.

Gaborone, 05 October 2017 – The Government of Botswana in partnership with UN-Habitat and UNECA held an inception workshop to kick-start the process of monitoring and reporting on Sustainable Development Goal 11. Botswana is one of the four selected countries in Africa (Botswana, Tunisia) and Latin America (Ecuador, Colombia) under the project “Monitoring and Reporting on Human Settlement Indicators in Africa and Latin America”.

Washington 13 June 2017--  A group of statisticians and land property rights experts recently met at the World Bank offices in Washington D.C., with the objective of developing the preparatory requirements for supporting the reclassification of the Sustainable Development Goal Indicator 1.4.2 from Tier III to Tier II status.

A MODEL APPROACH TO MONITORING AND REPORTING PERFORMANCE OF CITIES AT NATIONAL LEVELS

Brussels 27 April 2017-- The “Expert Group Meeting on Geospatial Definitions for Human Settlements Indicators of the SDGs” organized by UN-Habitat brings together leading experts on the detection of built-up areas and on the identification and classification of what is urban and what is rural. A standard definition of the city for purposes of global reporting is a requirement for monitoring the SDGs and will assist to explore implications of the urban extents on land indicators including those based on rural definitions.

Naivasha, 14 February 2017 - UN-Habitat’s first technical meeting on human settlements indicators for SDGs opened today with more than 50 participants from the Kenya national government, national statistics agency, the private sector, academic institutions, non-profit organizations and other UN agencies.

Urban indicators are regularly collected in a sample of cities worldwide in order to report on progress in the twenty key areas of the Habitat Agenda at the city level. Data collection is conducted through local and national urban observatories as well as through selected regional institutions.

The global urban indicators database 2 contains policy-oriented indicators for more than 200 cities worldwide. Its results have been analyzed and incorporated in the State of the World's Cities Report 2001.