12 The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat)

Jessica Lawrence

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Introduction

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is a UN specialized agency charged with promoting socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities, adequate shelter for all, and the coordination of urbanization and human settlement policy within the UN system.

UN-Habitat’s current agenda is set by its 2014-2019 strategic plan. This plan has set seven focus areas for the organization’s work:

Urban legislation, land, and governance;

Urban planning and design;

Urban economy;

Urban basic services;

Housing and slum upgrading;

Risk reduction and rehabilitation; and Research and capacity development.

The first four areas have been emphasized as points of greater focus, due to past neglect of these important issues. UN-Habitat has further identified gender equality, youth, partnership, climate change, capacity building, and human rights as cross-cutting issues throughout all of these strategic goals.

Other important goals for UN-Habitat are Millennium Development Goal 7, Target 11: improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, and Target 10: halving the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

From a practical perspective, UN-Habitat acts as a project coordinator and broker of information on urbanization and global housing, water, and sanitation. In particular, it designs, implements and manages urban initiatives and human settlements development projects; carries out research and facilitates the exchange of information, knowledge and best practices; and acts as the focal point for human settlement matters within the UN system.

Learning Outcomes

  • After completing this chapter, readers should know and understand:
  • The nature of UN-Habitat, including its institutional structure.
  • The role of UN-Habitat as a mechanism for the protection of human rights.

History

The challenges of urbanization are of relatively recent concern among the international community. It is only in the past 50 years that countries began to recognize the need for sustainability in human settlements, as processes of rapid urbanization (particularly in the developing world) led to unprecedented growth, and cities struggled to provide expanded infrastructure that could meet the needs of these new inhabitants. Slums and poor living conditions are today a reality of daily life for vast numbers of people.

Serious UN action on housing and urbanization issues only began in the 1970s. On January 1, 1975, the UN General Assembly established the first UN body to deal with the topic of urbanization: the United Nations Habitat and Human Settlements Foundation (UNHHSF). UNHHSF functioned under the umbrella of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Its mandate was to assist UN Member States by providing capital and technical assistance for their national programmes relating to urbanization and human settlement. UNHHSF’s budget, however, was quite low, and its ability to take action was limited.

In 1976, the UN organized its first conference on the issue of urbanization. The conference (known as Habitat I) was held in Vancouver, Canada. Habitat I led to the formation of two new bodies: The United Nations Commission on Human Settlements, and intergovernmental body, and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (known as ‘Habitat’), to serve as the executive secretariat of the Commission. Habitat was also charged with managing UNHHSF’s funds. Habitat—the precursor to today’s UN-Habitat—began operations in 1978.

Habitat struggled during its initial decades of operation due to lack of funding and a dearth of political support within the UN system. Indeed, it was not until 1996 that the organization experienced a revitalization that brought renewed attention and resources. In that year, the UN held its ‘Habitat II’ conference in Istanbul, Turkey, with the objective of setting new goals for the new millennium. The Habitat II conference resulted in the production of the ‘Habitat Agenda’, a document adopted by 171 countries, which contained over 100 new commitments on housing, urbanization, and cities.

This revitalization process continued in 2002, with the adoption by the General Assembly of Resolution A/56/206, which strengthened Habitat’s mandate, and elevated its status within the UN system to that of a specialized agency. This promotion also came with a name change, and the organization has from then on been known as ‘UN-Habitat’. Resolution A/56/206 also streamlined the governance system with regard to urbanization and housing issues, merging UNHHSF, the Commission on Human Settlements, and Habitat into the single agency UN-Habitat.

Since this revitalization and streamlining, UN-Habitat has expanded its reach and influence. It is currently in the process of planning a third UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development—“Habitat III”—which will take place in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016. The objective of Habitat III will be to chart new pathways for urban development in light of the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

The Institution

UN-Habitat is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. However, it also maintains regional offices for Africa, Arab States, Latin America and Asia that work to implement UN-Habitat plans and programmes at the regional level, as well as country and project offices in a number of countries throughout the world.

UN-Habitat is composed of three primary organs: The Governing Council, the Committee of Permanent Representatives, and the Secretariat.

UN-Habitat’s Governing Council is the new incarnation of the old Commission on Human Settlements, the intergovernmental decision-making body that existed between 1978 and 2002. The Governing Council directs UN-Habitat’s activities. It meets every two years to approve the organization’s budget and determine its programme goals. The Governing Council is composed of 58 members, elected by the UN’s Economic and Social Council to four-year terms. The members are regionally balanced according to the UN norm, with 16 from African States, 13 from Asian and Pacific States, 6 from Eastern European States, 10 from Latin American and Caribbean States, and 13 from Western European and other States.

The Committee of Permanent Representatives represents the General Council at the UN-Habitat Secretariat in Nairobi. It plays a supervisory role, managing the Secretariat’s activities between the biennial Governing Council meetings.

The Secretariat replaces the old Habitat organization. The Secretariat acts as UN-Habitat’s executive organ, implementing the General Council’s programmes, carrying out research activities, and liaising with other UN agencies in order to facilitate urbanization and human settlement work. The Secretariat is made up of seven ‘branches’, each of which is dedicated to the fulfillment of one of the seven focus areas of UN-Habitat work as listed above.

The Secretariat is led by an Executive Director, who is also an Under Secretary General of the United Nations. Since 2010, UN-Habitat’s Executive Director is Dr. Joan Clos.

UN-Habitat’s funding comes primarily from voluntary contributions by governmental and intergovernmental donors, though a portion of the regular budget is provided by the UN General Assembly. UN bodies, local authorities, private sector actors and multilateral organizations also provide funding for specific UN-Habitat projects.

Role as a Forum for Human Rights

The human right to housing is one of the most basic human rights, and is contained in a number of international and regional human rights treaties. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in Article 25 that:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), more expansively, attests that:

The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. States will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international co-operation based on free consent.

Additional protections are included in many international and regional instruments, including, for example, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (ICRMW); the European Social Charter and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, to name a few.

Not only the right to housing, but also the rights to water and sanitation are fundamentally entangled with urbanization, housing, and development issues. Though the rights to water and sanitation are not explicitly included in the ICESCR, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has interpreted Articles 11 and 12, securing the right to an adequate standard of living and the right to health, as including these rights within its scope. Several of the newer international human rights treaties do include explicit references to the rights to water and sanitation, for example CEDAW, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the CRPD, among others.

Approaching urbanization through the lens of the rights to housing, water and sanitation is important, because it frames the need for accessible, available and adequate shelter, water and sanitation as a legal entitlement, rather than as aid or charity. It emphasizes the obligation of states (rather than the good will of governments or private donors) to ensure that individuals and communities can access shelter, water and sanitation sufficient for their needs. It justifies a focus on the needs of the most vulnerable, such as those living in extreme poverty, those who suffer social marginalization, persons with disabilities, and members of minority groups. Furthermore, the ‘right to housing, water, and sanitation’ approach envisions adequate housing as inseparable from other human rights principles, such as non-discrimination, equality, and accountability, and thus promotes a more holistic approach to these issues.

Because of its status as a UN specialized agency with a focus on attaining adequate shelter for all, UN-Habitat is a central agency for human rights work with respect to the rights to housing, water and sanitation. All UN entities must abide by the UN Charter, which establishes human rights as a major institutional goal:

We the peoples of the United Nations, determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small…

In this context, UN-Habitat’s work on issues such as improving the conditions of slum dwellers, ensuring adequate shelter, promoting sustainable human settlements, and working for gender equality in human settlements development contributes directly to the fulfillment of every person’s rights to housing, water, and sanitation.

What’s more, human rights forms an integral part of UN-Habitat’s agenda. Paragraph 61 of the Istanbul Agreement, the programmatic document that issued from the Habitat II conference in 1996, identified the steps that governments must take to “promote, protect and ensure the full and progressive realization of the right to adequate housing.” The Habitat Agenda, which set UN-Habitat’s goals following that conference, affirms that:

We, the States participating in the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) are committed to a political, economic, environmental, ethical and spiritual vision of human settlements based on the principles of equality, solidarity, partnership, human dignity, respect and cooperation.

We adopt the goals and principles of adequate shelter for all and sustainable human settlements development in an urbanizing world. We believe that attaining these goals will promote a more stable and equitable world that is free from injustice and conflict and will contribute to a just, comprehensive and lasting peace. … [W]e reaffirm our commitment to ensuring the full realization of the human rights set out in international instruments and in particular, in this context, the right to adequate housing as set forth in … the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights … taking into account that the right to adequate housing, as included in the above-mentioned instruments, shall be realized progressively. We reaffirm that all human rights civil, cultural, economic, political and social—are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated.

In addition to including human rights principles in its governing documents, UN-Habitat has also taken specific steps to promote and protect human rights as part of its mandate. In 2002, UN-Habitat began cooperating with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the issue of promoting the progressive realization of housing rights under the joint United Nations Housing Rights Programme. It also collaborates with the UN Development Group Human Rights Mainstreaming Mechanism, as well as the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Adequate Housing and the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation.

In 2013, the Governing Council established the mainstreaming of human rights in UN-Habitat’s work as a priority issue and included it in the 2014-2019 Strategic Plan. As UN-Habitat explains, a human rights-based approach is useful to its work because:

The challenges of urbanization, such as rising inequality and the prevalence of slums, are symptoms of a larger deficit to respect human rights in cities, particularly the right t adequate housing and to safe drinking water and sanitation. Only when all dimensions of human rights are respected will urbanization realize itself as the transformative force that it is.

From an internal institutional perspective, UN-Habitat has taken several measures in pursuing its human rights mainstreaming agenda. For example, it has finalized a Programmatic Guidance Note on Human Rights in Cities that has been distributed to all UN-Habitat Staff, and is intended to provide guidance throughout its activities. In addition, UN-Habitat has taken steps to ensure that its Project Cycle has a human rights basis by, inter alia, including a Human Rights focal point at the meeting of the Project Advisory Group to give specific advice and guidance on human rights issues raised by particular projects.

UN-Habitat has also made strides to ensure that its programmes have strong positive human rights impacts. Examples of human rights-based UN-Habitat projects include:

A gender focused micro-credit sanitation programme in the Africa region that provides small loans to poor households for the purpose of constructing improved latrines;

The integration of human rights into the Global Land Tool Network, which works on access to land, tenure security, and land rights, by provides technical assistance and policy advice;

The application of the Human Rights Based Approach to Development methodology in the Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme, which requires its 35 participating countries to review their regulatory frameworks relating to water, sanitation, and housing in light of human rights principles; and

The promotion of a human-rights based approach to land readjustment through the pilot project Participatory and Inclusive Land Readjustment, which seeks to protect the basic right to adequate housing beyond the framework of orthodox property and tenure rights.

UN-Habitat has been particularly keen to promote gender-inclusiveness and gender-sensitivity in its activities as well as those of country governments. To that end, it has developed a number of guides and informational materials on the subject, such as the manuals on Gender Responsive Urban Legislation, Land and Governance, Gender Responsive Risk Reduction and Rehabilitation, and Women in Post-Conflict Settlement Planning, among many others.

Summary

Despite these efforts to expand its role and mainstream human rights throughout its activities, some questions and criticism of UN-Habitat’s approach remain. In 2011, for example, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) dealt a blow to the organization when it decided to cease funding UN-Habitat, along with several other UN agencies, after a review in which it claimed to find serious problems with UN-Habitat’s working methods. In particular, although it found that UN-Habitat has “strong partnerships and has a satisfactory gender policy in place,” DFID found that it “has a number of organizational weaknesses such as poor cost consciousness, transparency and results reporting.” As the report put it:

There is little evidence to suggest that UN-HABITAT has been critical in delivering against

[UK] development priorities due to the small scale and limited scope of its operations. …

There is no evidence that UN-HABITAT is controlling administrative costs or focusing on where it can add the greatest value.

UN-HABITAT’s strategic plan is weak; it has remained resistant to embedding results-based management and evaluation. …

UN-HABITAT does not operate under a presumption of disclosure. It provides some information on projects to the governing body, but does not publish full details on project performance. …

While some reform efforts are underway the organization’s track record on improvements is not strong.

UN-Habitat responded to this blow by issuing a statement attesting that it “welcomes any

constructive criticism,” but was “seriously concerned about some critical omissions” in the report and warned that “[w]ithdrawing the funding of UN-HABITAT of about 7 percent of the agency’s core budget is in danger of sending a signal that well planned and managed cities do not matter.” UN-Habitat further emphasized that its new Executive Director, Joan Clos, had embarked on an internal review process that would address some of these concerns.

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Reference

  • UN-Habitat, “2014-2019 Strategic Plan,” available at http://unhabitat.org/goals-and-strategies-of-un-habitat/
    • UN General Assembly Resolution 3327 (XXIX).
    • UN General Assembly Resolution 32/162.
    • UN General Assembly Resolution A/56/206.
    • For more on the goals of Habitat III, see UN General Assembly Resolution A/Res/67/216.
  • Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), art. 25.
  • International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966), art. 11(1). See also Committee on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, “General Comment 4 on Adequate Housing,” 1991, UN Doc. E/1992/23.
  • Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (), Arts. 14(2), 15(2). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), arts. 9 (demanding that States adopt measures to eliminate barriers to accessibility, including in housing), 28 (recognizing the right of persons with disabilities to an adequate standard of living, including adequate housing).
  • International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (1990), art. 43(1)(d) (guaranteeing equal treatment in access to housing, social housing schemes, and protection against exploitation in respect of rents).
  • European Social Charter (1996), art. 31. See also European Convention on the Legal Status of Migrant Workers (1977).
  • African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990).
    • See also Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), art. 21 (obliging states to provide refugees with favorable treatment with regard to housing); International Labour Organization Convention No. 117 concerning Basic Aims and Standards of Social Policy (1962), art. 5(2); International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), art. 5(e)(iii); Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), arts. 16(1), 27(3); International Labour Organization Convention No. 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries (1989), arts. 14, 16, 17.
    • See Committee for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, “General Comment No. 15 on the Human Right to Water,” 20 January 2003, UN Doc. E/C.12/2002/11.
  • Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (), art. 14(2)(h).
  • Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), art. 24(2).
  • Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), art. 28(2)(a).
  • The Habitat Agenda: Goals and Principles, Commitments and the Global Plan of Action (1996)
  • UN-Habitat, Global Activities Report 2015: Increasing Synergy for Greater National Ownership 91 (2015).
  • UN-Habitat, “Human Rights,” available at http://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/human-rights/
  • UN-Habitat, Global Activities Report 2015: Increasing Synergy for Greater National Ownership 91 (2015).
  • UN-Habitat, Gender Responsive Urban Legislation, Land and Governance (2015).
  • UN-Habitat, Gender Responsive Risk Reduction and Rehabilitation (2015).
  • UN-Habitat, Women in Post-Conflict Settlement Planning (2014).
  • Department for International Development, Multilateral Aid Review: Ensuring Maximum Value for Money for UK Aid through Multilateral Organizations (March 2011), at 89.