Ramallah 2 August 2017-- UN-Habitat and its s national partner, State of Palestine Ministry of Local Government launched an online dashboard on community-driven outline plans for Palestinian communities in Area C of the West Bank that is effectively controlled by the Israeli authorities.

The online dashboard aims at providing up to date information on the progress of local outline plans prepared with and for Palestinian communities in Area C of the West Bank. The online dashboard provides geographic information on 106 local outline plans including areas, number of beneficiaries, action plans’ estimated budgets and donors. The plans are distributed across Area C which constitutes more than 60 percent of the West Bank territory. The dynamic web based nature of the dashboard will enable humanitarian and development actors to customize the information available and provide fit-for-purpose analysis. The dashboard is linked with the GeoMoLG portal for spatial information in Palestine.

The dashboard shows that there are only 5 plans fully authorized by the Israeli authorities though these plans meet internationally quality standards, as concluded in a report prepared by a group of planning experts who were commissioned by UN-Habitat Palestine country office to examine these plans in 2015. Furthermore, the dashboard shows that there are 88 plans at the technical discussion phase most of them have been pending in the system without any major progress.

Mr. Mohammad Aljabarin, Deputy Minister of Local Government said: ‘We are pleased to launch this dashboard today to provide access to information in real-time to our local implementing partners and the international community on the progress of community-driven outline plans’. ‘We believe that this dashboard will contribute to efforts in advocating for the building and planning rights of Palestinian communities in the West Bank’ he added.

Mr. Zeyad Elshakra, UN-Habitat Head of Office in Palestine said: ‘This dashboard comes in alignment with our solid policy to plan for a better urban future for the State of Palestine, where the rural hinterlands are coherently planned for, and this contributes to our efforts to localize the New Urban Agenda in Palestine by strengthening urban governance, with sound institutions and mechanisms that empower and include stakeholders’ he added.

This dashboard was developed by UN-Habitat with financial support from the EU under the project ‘Fostering Tenure Security and Resilience of Palestinian Communities through Spatial-Economic Planning Interventions in Area C’. The dashboard was developed with technical support from UN OCHA office in Jerusalem.