The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-Habitat, is the United Nations agency for sustainable urban development. It is mandated to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities while advocating adequate shelter for all.

As the lead UN programme on sustainable urban development, UN-Habitat assists governments at the city, regional, and national levels to improve policies, plans, and designs for more compact, socially inclusive, and better integrated and connected cities that foster sustainable urban development and are resilient to climate change and other natural and human-induced shocks.

In this way, the relationship between the goals of the Hyogo Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (HFA), and its successor framework to be adopted in Sendai, and strategic human settlements planning, development and management can be understood across three key areas of work supported by the organisation as explained in this brochure.