This report provides a baseline inventory of the standard of living, housing and infrastructure services as well as access to urban basic services in Mwanza, Tanzania, focusing on informal settlements. It provides evidence-based guidance on how to improve access to urban basic services in informal settlements as an essential element to achieve healthy, livable and sustainable cities.

The challenges faced by informal settlers in terms of access to urban basic services do not necessarily differ from those faced by many cities in the developing world: lack of access to water, sanitation, unreliable transportation modes, unclean energy, lack of schools, lack of health facilities, unemployment, lack of public lighting, lack of green and public spaces, unhygienic living standards and water-borne diseases are the most common. About 924 million people in the world live in slums and certain patterns related to access to urban basic services emerge as a common element that creates context-based opportunities to meet these challenges.

The report investigates these common elements and analyses the linkage between housing and basic social infrastructure services as a factor largely determined by spatial location, level of development of a place and the associated impact on the living conditions of these variables on informal settlers. Formalising land tenure, clarification of rights to access to basic services, coordinated infrastructure and land use planning, innovative service provision technologies, research, advocacy and citizen engagement and intensified urban basic service infrastructure investment are presented as important conditions for change. Particular emphasis is put on the access to urban basic services as a determining factor to the state of living conditions.

The Global Activities Report 2015, takes into account the progress made in addressing UN-Habitat’s projects portfolio with a view to increasing its impact and facilitating national ownership. An encouraging trend during the current reporting period is that the earmarked portfolio has continued to grow, confirming rising demand for the Agency’s technical expertise.

This upward trend, consistent with UN-Habitat’s strategy to expand its earmarked projects portfolio, has been sustained, from a level of USD 136 million in 2012, to USD 171 million in 2013 – representing a 25 per cent increase, and to USD 172 million by November 2014.

These contributions have enabled UN-Habitat to provide strong support of more than USD 162 million in 2014 alone to 16 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 18 countries in Asia and the Pacific, 9 countries in the Arab States region, and 19 countries in Lati America and the Caribbean, in addition to regional programmes and normative global initiatives.

This book documents the processes, challenges and related successes of a pilot project on slum upgrading in Soweto East villages of Kibera informal settlement, Nairobi. As a post project intervention assessment report, it focuses on distilling lessons learnt and best practices with a view of informing future strategies and policy decisions on slum upgrading interventions for similar urban settlements in any part of the world.

The process of community engagement and their role as an integral part of the Kenya Slum Upgrading Programme structure is a clear manifestation of the importance of public private partnership in forging a common front for the improvement of living standards for the slum populace.

This issue guide focuses attention on urban basic services in order to illuminate the effects of gender on equality of access and inclusion in the areas of urban energy, urban transport and water and sanitation. This issue guide further seeks to broadly outline the where and how of gender responsive interventions in order to strengthen planned and future actions that can go a long way to reduce poverty and overcome obstacles to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Although sanitation has been hailed as “the most important medical advance since 1840”, over 2.5 billion people – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia – lack access to basic sanitation. The world is not on track to meet the 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for sanitation.

For the drinking water MDG, progress is better, but the situation still critical in some regions. Meanwhile in the slums of cities such as Nairobi, Dar - es - Salaam and Mumbai, the daily reality is an extended struggle to find water, a place to defecate and a convenient location to dump or burn one’s rubbish.

Every day we all make choices to improve our lives. And that applies anywhere in the world. So how we do it here in Southern Sudan is important. Think hard of the public services that enable us to live safer, cleaner, healthier and better lives. Maintain them well everyone benefits.

This document is the overall summary and synthesis of the first impact study of initiatives supported by UN-HABITAT’s Water and Sanitation Trust Fund (WSTF).The WSTF, which was established in 2003, aims to leverage new investment and ideas to expand the water and sanitation (WATSAN) service coverage for poor urban dwellers and help build momentum for achieving the MDGs. Its strategic plan for 2008 - 2012 envisions three key outcomes: • Increased institutional capacity in partner countries for pro-poor water and sanitation initiatives and policies with focus on gender equity, renewable energy and efficiency and environmental sustainability;• Increased flow of investment into water and sanitation sector catalysed by WSTF interventions; • Improved MDG monitoring mechanisms in place in partner countries, with improved benchmarking of water and sanitation service providers. The UN-HABITATWater, Sanitation and Infrastructure Branch (WSIB) seeks to maximise the impact of projects funded by the WSTF, and this impact study is the first of a series of impact assessments which will be undertaken over the next five years.