The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities. UN-Habitat is the focal point for all urbanization and human settlement matters within the UN system. UN-Habitat also collects data to provide an overview of the progress of sustainable urbanization around the world.
The UN-Habitat’s vision of “a better quality of life for all in an urbanizing world” is bold and ambitious. UN-Habitat works with partners to build inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities and communities. UN-Habitat promotes urbanization as a positive transformative force for people and communities, reducing inequality, discrimination and poverty.
UN-Habitat works in over 90 countries to promote transformative change in cities and human settlements through knowledge, policy advice, technical assistance and collaborative action. UN-Habitat’s new strategic plan 2020-2023 adopts a more strategic and integrated approach to solving the challenges and opportunities of twenty-first century cities and other human settlements. Our mission embodies the four main roles of the organization, which can be summarized as: think, do, share and partner.
UN-Habitat’s normative work, including groundbreaking research and capacity-building, sets standards, proposes norms and principles, shares good practice, monitors global progress and supports formulation of policies related to sustainable cities and human settlements.
UN-Habitat’s operational work takes various forms of technical assistance, drawing on its unique expertise in sustainable urbanization and crisis response. UN-Habitat implements projects to provide value-added and tailored support to countries.
Through advocacy, communication and outreach, UN-Habitat mobilizes public, political and financial support and collaborative action to inspire qualitative change in national development plans, policy frameworks, development practice and investment choices for sustainable urban development at the local, national and global level.
UN-Habitat collaborates with governments, intergovernmental, UN agencies, civil society organizations, foundations, academic institutions and the private sector to achieve enduring results in addressing the challenges of urbanization.
The theory of change required for UN-Habitat to achieve the objectives set out in its Strategic Plan is shown in the visual below. The four goals and their respective outcomes will be regularly tracked using robust indicators (with baselines and targets for each year during the period covered by the Strategic Plan) and milestones in the results framework and performance measurement plan.
