By the Global Platform for the Right to the City
The Global Platform for the Right to the City (GPR2C) Members and Allies will be in Nairobi to actively participate in the second session of the United Nations Habitat Assembly ( 5 to 9 June 2023). Ripess joins the Global Platform for the Right to the City statement and campaign on the occasion of the Second Un-Habitat Assembly, to call on UN Member States and UN-Habitat to accelerate the implementation of the NUA, with the Right to the City as a guide; support civil society organizations and local governments as key actors for the implementation of the NUA and a engage in a truly participatory evaluation of UN-Habitat’s strategic plan.
Walk the talk: a complete realization of the NUA commitments for structural change
As UN-Habitat and member countries gather to agree on strategies to leverage the current and upcoming UN-Habitat strategic plans, we urge them to focus on concrete action paths anchored in the NUA key commitments. We call them to:
- Commit to an accelerated implementation of the New Urban Agenda, leveraging the Right to the City as a driver for its realization, agreeing on concrete mechanisms for enshrining NUA commitments towards the transformation of urban and economic development models, with the central commitment of protecting the social and environmental function of territories, supporting community-led and social and solidarity initiatives and programmes, as well as advancing the democratic management of cities and territories through inclusive participation and collective decision making;
- Recognise and support local governments and civil society and community-based organizations as key stakeholders for NUA monitoring and effective implementation, building upon the transformative initiatives being driven by such actors, considering the city as a not-for-profit common good whose management must include the active involvement of the entire social fabric, promoting direct participation to incorporate the priorities, knowledge and practices of those directly affected by projects and policies, such as in the case of the proposed “Global Action Plan for transforming informal settlements and slums;
- Engage in a truly participatory assessment of the UN-Habitat strategic plan, supporting the participation of civil society, local and regional governments, and other stakeholders through a democratic, inclusive and self-organized Stakeholder Engagement Mechanism consistent with best practices across the UN System. This envisions UN Habitat, governing bodies and all relevant stakeholders advancing policies that lead to actions that support the transformative initiatives being led by those actors, under the principles of decentralization and democratic management of territories. This includes enhancing the people-centered approach by operationalizing the NUA principles and commitments with a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation framework, in stark contrast with the current reality of limited channels for participation in the monitoring framework. These measures would enable concrete action toward realizing the preventing and remedial purposes of human rights in the territories, considering the intersectional aspects of urban inequalities and the disaggregated and qualitative monitoring indicators to better address just and sustainable development of human settlements across the human habitat.
