Assemblies - Women's Assembly: Co-creating gender-transformative strategies for adequate housing for all women and girls - Closing session (WUF13)

Okay, you see some final priorities being added to the boards, thank you to everyone for the amazing work that you've done.
We've been walking by and seeing how engaged people have been in the discussions.
A big thank you for all of you for that amazing work and for sharing.
We're going to close the conversations at the tables.
We're going to do one of these.
Good afternoon.
That means I want you to say it back to me.
Good afternoon.
You're started it.
We need everyone to just shift attention now up to the front where we're going to be able to hear all about the rich discussions in the different groups.
One final time.
Good afternoon.
There.
Thank you so much for that.
We're going to hear the report back first from group number one.
Yeah, you can come on up here.
Group number one was led by Ana Christina de Santana Ingles and Capara Visena and the conversation was on leaving no one behind.
Anna, you can come up here.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone.
My partner left me with this mission to report back to you all.
I hope I do good justice to our group discussion.
When we talk about our three key messages, the discussions came back over and over about political will.
So yes, we acknowledge that there has been improvements and acknowledgment of the needs of the communities and women in particular, but we need more political will to make a bigger difference.
The second key message is that we need women at the table at all key levels of government.
This is a way of putting the message across and make sure that all issues are heard.
The third key message is to focus on the most vulnerable groups.
This is the other topic that came up over and over on our discussions.
Look at the three recommendations, the group came up with more financing for housing for women, be that through banks or through the private sector and communities.
We even raised the fact that religious communities are doing their job helping women as well.
The third recommendation has to do with land acquisition for the most vulnerable.
And we spoke about land acquisition for people living in slums and informal settlements.
And the third recommendation is the improvement of all infrastructure through strengthen housing.
And this recommendation comes from the fact that women can build their homes, but they're usually building on land that is not infrastructured.
And, um, We have then problems with floods and housing collapsing.
It is really important that we look at the improvement of all urban infrastructure.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much and what a great job from group number one.
We are going to have to move quite quickly through this part of the agenda.
Apologies for that.
We're going to move on now to group number two.
Thank you, which is on women transforming cities.
If I can have Penny, Kerrigan, and Shaft done, please come up.
Thank you.
Oh, wait.
There was a group merger announcement also with group number five.
Let me just find that.
Apologies.
The merger has happened between two teams, which part of our conversation so far today have been about the need to bring different agendas together, so well done to put that in action.
Group number five was on housing systems with Miriam and ISA.
Who's reporting for your team? If you could please come up to report in from your group two and group five together.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody.
We have merged two groups, both on the housing and safe and urbanization and neighborhoods.
We have three main messages here.
The first would be meaningful participation of women, especially grassroots organizations and professional unions because we don't need just a check for participation, but the real deep down participation where all the needs are taken into consideration and where different women in all their diversities are also taken into consideration.
Then the second is empowerment of younger generation as well as architects and urbanists who are working with investors.
Unfortunately, sometimes their voices are not heard and a lot of the cases are left untaken into consideration, especially for vulnerable groups.
And the other last but not least message would be here, needs based housing, a needs assessment of what people need, especially those who are going to live in the houses which are built.
Sometimes we say that, but men already mentioned what is needed and we don't need women on the table.
But unfortunately, men feel, cannot experience the same things as women do.
That's why having women on board and on the decision making table is crucial and non negotiable.
Thank you.
I will add some elements that was discussed from group two, which is women transforming cities.
One of the most important thing that we want to say here is that invest in organized groups of women, particularly organized, women's in the community, poor community.
I and partner with them and institutionalize the partnership for a longer term and that women must be a part of the decision making.
We are not menu, we are sitting and deciding on the menu.
Governance system must include women leadership and that women as a organized group can also hold accountable the power holders.
Thank you.
Thank you so much and another big round of applause for groups number two and five for working together.
Perfect.
So we're going to move on now to group number three and reporting in from group number three on financing adequate housing.
We have Marina Munez Garcia and Dorothy Baziwe.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Our group was very interesting and from different parts of the globe.
We have three messages, key messages, and then Dorothy will share the three final recommendations.
Women face compounding structural barriers to housing finance, collateral requirements tied to land ownership, fragmented titles, lack of formal documentation, and cultural norms that exclude them from the system.
Also, gender desegregated geolocated data is largely absent, making it impossible to design or evaluate gender responsive financing.
Finally, financing innovation exists, gender bonds, alternative scoring, rent to own, core housing, but it lacks the policy frameworks and institutional mandates to a scale.
Our recommendations are, we need to deploy gender sensitive data platforms.
This should include geolocated and disaggregated data within the baseline requirements for housing finance policies.
We need to introduce gender bonds and alternative credit scoring methods.
We need to think outside the box beyond what we currently have.
This would recognize informal incomes and all that paid care work that women do.
Lastly, we need to create gender compliance certification within government frameworks that are backed by direct government incentives, including tax reductions for women and packages that ensure improvement schemes.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, group number three, and everyone should give them a thank you for the extra minute that they negotiated for you on the end as well.
Thanks.
We'll now invite group number four on climate resilient and sustainable housing, represented by Mate Rodriguez and Josslyn Inau to please come up here.
Thank you.
Okay, thank you.
I'm going to speak in Spanish, so please can you use your headsets because it's about having different languages here.
So Okay.
We were debating about the different processes and the messages that we were giving, mainly the fact that we need to revise the feminist political framework because we have witnessed how women are invisible are still invisible in every governmental plan, territorial arrangement plan, and this has several consequences regarding a city where different climate events can happen so that it's a more resilient city.
Women need are more vulnerable to different types of violence, and we need to work far regarding our caregiving facilities in a sustainable way in a sustainable city.
And my colleague will mention this key statement and We need to revise this in ten years in the following ten years and we need to integrate these topics in the new urban agenda and this new revision that will be key.
Now it's your turn.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
We have five main recommendation and the first one is to institutionalize gender responsive urban governance.
This means mandatory gender expertise within municipal planning structures.
Recommendation to create direct access climate and housing finance for women.
This means simplified climate finance access mechanisms and recommendation three, integrate housing, climate adaptation, and social protection into one urban resilience framework.
We have seen most of the urban frameworks are now outdated.
They are not keeping up with the challenges that we are facing today.
Recommendation four, elevate indigenous and locally led knowledge into formal urban planning and recommendation five, align global urban agendas with climate justice and gender equity.
Thank you.
Thank you so much to group number four.
Again, a big round of applause for them.
Group number five is already passed.
We're moving on now to group number six on housing rights and crisis and post crisis conflicts.
So I'll invite Anasim Majdi and Janea AQisto to please join me here.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you very much.
We're the last group and on our key messages, we had representation from Ethiopia, India, Afghanistan, Brazil, Azerbijan, Indonesia.
We had many examples and what we could all converge on discussing crisis and post crisis settings is that first of all, women are often not aware of their own human rights and services that are available.
They might not be able to access it.
The information might be withheld from them, or they might not trust the channels through which they can get the information.
That's the first message.
The second is that oftentimes in post crisis contexts, women's challenges are related to their legal security of tenure, property ownership, equal access to inheritance, control over land, access to housing and property.
We also discussed in many cases, the specific constraints around having to return to specific areas of origin that they might be disconnected from or no longer have information on.
And the third key message which we all agree to, but which is a challenge is avoiding segregating women in reception centers, shelters, or camps, and planning instead for integrating them into the urban environment.
There again comes the importance of the issue of data.
You were mentioning spatial imagery, digital databases related to land, How can we include women using the data that we have into planning and policies and that's critical.
Then we move to recommendations.
One of our recommendations is around unpacking what women mean in these inclusive urban solutions, whether we're talking about widow women, pregnant women and their specific needs.
We need more nuanced gender deggregated data and not treat women as a single homogeneous category.
That's essential for them to be able to access documentation and free legal aid.
Nia was mentioning the importance of ensuring local governments take on the accountability and responsibility to provide free legal aid services, not just NGOs, but really specifically legal local governments.
Maybe I can turn to you for the other recommendations.
Thank you.
Besides legal aid provided at the local level, local governments can also establish accountability mechanisms, for example, a local Human Rights Commission or a local anti discrimination body to address housing land related issues.
I We mentioned that local governments or national governments as well should create safe and meaningful participatory urban planning to identify and address blind spots and barriers that women and girls experience in their daily lives and also take their views into consideration for future plans.
Did I miss anything? That local government capacity should also be built in.
Right, inclusion of women within the local government, political leadership, and within the civil servants as well.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much to group number six.
We do have one final group.
It is group number seven on informal settlements and gender equality.
I'll invite Shamsva, Mustafava, and Kalsa Save Dva to please join me here to deliver the key recommendations and takeaways from your group.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hi everyone.
Our group discussed informal resettlement and the gender equality.
We mainly focused.
It was exclusive for Azbijan speaking group and we discussed the topic considered in the Azbijan context and our key messages are the women have a low level of legal literacy.
It needs to be raised that how to uh, precede their rights on the access to land and their formal housing and the other property issue.
As the state should adopt specific action plan to redevelopment of the urban area.
This is informal satellites and they also implement faster registration of the properties that woman ture, they can exercise their property rights and the inheritance rights later on.
Then second, our key messenger is that women should included exclusively in the meaningful participation on urban planning and the inclusive action plan designing and those planning should be more safely for women and accessible in terms of the transport.
The accessibility of the roads and also the availability of the parks and the other facilities that they can, especially the mothers, who have kids, they can go and have a good time in there.
Also regarding the resource where those resources can be mobilized, state can get those resources from their own budget as action plan.
Later on, they can use it as the back using their taxation or the fees that they are introducing and they're also using the other IFIs donors financial institution loans to redevelop and regenerate this informal settlements.
Thank you.
Thank you so much from group number seven as well.
I want to thank all of the group leads and rappereurs for leading these what is apparently very rich discussions that you all managed to have in a relatively short period of time.
On a personal note, I also want to thank you for keeping to time and reporting back.
It definitely makes my job easier.
And I want to commend all of you for coming up with not just regurgitating things that we have said in the past, but really forward thinking solutions and innovations and reflecting on what hasn't worked and how we could do differently and how we could do better.
So really great and excellent recommendations that we're going to take not just today but for all of us to take carry with us throughout the rest of the week so that we can continue advocating for cities that work for women and girls.
So with that, we will close the session on the breakout group parts.
I move on to our final closing remark panel of the day.
Before we do a big round for all of you, please.
Thanks.
So to begin our closing remarks, I'm honored to welcome Honorable Clara Bgata, who is Chief of Mexico City up to the podium to please deliver remarks.
The floor is yours.
Thank you.
Ola amigas.
Hello, dear friends.
I come from Mexico.
I am a governor there, the city of Mexico, and it is a great pleasure to be here with all of you today and this Women Assembly from the World Urban Forum in a moment that is profoundly significant, profoundly meaningful.
Ana Balum, thank you so much.
Ana Balum you have been inspiring all of us.
You have inspired women throughout many, many years, especially regarding urban development.
Here we are standing women that come from different parts of the world, different continents, different cities, and different fightings and we share struggles, and we're convinced that the future of urbanism cannot be built without women.
Feminist urbanism that we are boosting here from Mexico is profoundly transformative We are building cities for the first time in centuries, and we are taking into account the women, the day to day lives of women while they go to different cities, while they take care of their loved ones, and the time they give to their loved ones, and we want to respect and honor the right to live in fearlessly.
Um, housing is the first place where rights are constituted.
This is where we discover life.
This is where we grow and creator paths.
But it must be said as well that housing is often the place where We can witness inequalities happening.
The inequalities that are profoundly marked in the memories of girls, little girls and women.
In Mexico, 80% of sexual harassments happen in the place that should be the safest for women.
I'm speaking about their homes, of course.
In their homes, little girls understand whether the world is going to be a safe place or not.
These are the places where women can sleep peacefully, or maybe they sleep with fear, where millions of women are sustaining livelihoods for their families and are not getting an income.
So these women are invisible.
They are taking care of people, they are taking care of the house, they are cleaning, they are accompanying their loved ones and healing.
Throughout history, cities have been built.
We have built airports, supermarkets, and great buildings that have been moving economy and that have transformed the urban landscape.
We have forgotten, we have left behind public infrastructure.
Regarding caring.
This is fundamental.
This is crucial for a common livelihood and we need to free women.
We need to free them from slavery, from modern slavery, from housework, that is, unpaid housework.
This unpaid carving and work that is done by women is equivalent to millions and millions of the economy.
But it's not reflected in Indicators and productivity indicators.
However, without this livelihood, without this work that they do, life wouldn't be possible.
We have been living while different women are sustaining the world, women that get up very early, women that go to bed very late.
How is it possible that the world hasn't acknowledged what women do? This is an invisible burden that we are facing.
This is the question that we are asking today.
Therefore the city of Mexico, we will wait for you over there with open arms.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for those inspiring words and for showing us what it looks like when a city government takes an interest in women's daily lives and how transformative that can be even when you look at something like a care system, what does it mean for our government to look and take an interest in that, to value it, and to take an effort and a political will to transform it.
Please let me now welcome Anna Falu from Siska and the University of Cordoba to deliver some summary remarks for this women's Assembly.
Anna, floor is yours.
Hello, everybody.
What a huge responsibility to speak after Clara Bgada.
Really what a responsibility.
I'm asking everybody to please give me 3 minutes of attention and wear your earphones so we can connect in all the languages.
By I will be speaking in Spanish to honor this feminine leadership of our region of our Latin America.
We are in the time of women.
This is a time for women in human habitat with undiscussed leadership of our Executive Director Claudia Rasbin.
This is the time for women with leadership such as Clara Bgades extraordinary leader.
The city of Mexico is under her.
Can you hear me correctly? Yes.
Can you hear the translation? We hope to continue being in the time of women with the United Nations with the new election of the general Secretariat of the UN, who we hope will be also a woman and a Latin American woman.
But this is also times for poly crisis.
This is a time for a world of uncertainties, where we can see that the multilateralism rules are being broken, rules that we've built for decades.
It and I believe that closing this women's assembly without recognizing these issues that are so central to our daily life in the global world would be impossible.
That is why I would like to bring what a good friend of mine, Teresa Bota spoke of to me before coming here, remembering that in the Women's Assembly of Katovice we had the manifest of women for peace.
Maybe this is a good time to go back to that.
Paying and incorporate this last armed conflicts like genocides around the world.
There is no doubt, no doubt whatsoever that women's agenda is always a po.
It's always the fulcrum that puts the main issues and gets back to what Mat Rodrigo Blandon pointed out during this ten years of the new urban agenda, that agenda that we need to review, to get back to, and to give sense to.
We're closing this agenda with the amazing speech of Clara Bravada, who has appealed to feminist urbanism.
To what? Through concepts developed by feminist urbanism, local governments, leaders be those men as women can change on the daily lives of people, but in particularly to women.
Thank you.
I believe that all over the world, all over the world and not only on the global South, women and girls in their different intersections of race, ethnicity, age, sexual identity, suffer, endless ways of discrimination, and they experience a disproportionate amount of barriers with difficulties daily.
Having access to inadequate housing, to infrastructures, to services, to transport, this all becomes a challenge of the citizens' rights.
Those citizen rights that when there's no safety, when there is no health centers, when there's no integral care centers such as the three Rs of Mexico City, they become the absence of citizens' rights.
We We need to yes, review from a feminist and political framework, which is our urban agenda.
We already know that the lack of gender and the inclusion of gender in the housing policies in urban planning create inequalities, and we need to recognize that most of the policies specific for housing for urban planning are not yet integrating the concept of gender and recognizing women as different from men.
Therefore, we can see the division of sexual labor and different demands for their daily lives.
And there's no recognition of the fact that women have diversities.
We are not all the same.
We have diverse differences, Black women, indigenous women, young women, elder women.
Migrant women, poor women, and it is not the same.
In my region in Latin America and the Caribbean, it is not the same to be a white, rich woman who lives in a privileged territory.
We need to accept that there are differences and that these differences increase given their social demographics that take us to have a growing number of women who are the only one responsible for livelihood, the only ones responsible for those who depend on them, the elder, the children, people with disabilities.
And this is something that is not correctly integrated within the policies.
As other things not well integrated are the gaps in social economy, and we need to understand that most of the women in the world are below the poverty line.
Most poor people in the world are women, and they are also part of the informal labor work.
They do not have access to the same jobs as men.
So economic conditions, social demographic conditions are the ones that can mark these different routes in daily life.
These are the ones that, as our Chief of Mexico City said, are showing the division in labor and that is what we need to transform.
Very quickly, then I would like to share with you that we need to promote, changes in all of that regulatory legal system that is obsolete.
It is necessary to review that and change it and We have to increase the understanding that we cannot only focus on housing and talk about housing as the central focus, but housing in cities, housing and settlement, housing and neighborhoods because we need that scale that is marked by the access to services, the access to transport, the access to infrastructures of care.
We need to have policies that incorporate and have a plural vision, a multicultural vision, a vision that can respect this rich diversity we have in the world and also affirm that housing and improvement in urban services are a huge economic activator that doesn't only generate work, but it also moves big sectors of the economy, and we want women incorporated into that world of labor that can then move the whole world of housing.
The huge difficulty, the amazing difficulty that was being expressed about having access and the obstacles that women have to have access to credit, to financing for their housing and due to those economic gaps that I'm mentioning and also because women living in poverty have debt nowadays in front of the world crisis everywhere, but I can speak particularly about the data we have in Latin America.
It's women the one who get degraded? That to support their livelihoods.
We need to rethink about that publicly because those are the women who support the daily life and support the productive world from their work, the reproductive work that they have together with the work that generates income.
It is that the work which is empathy itself, the empathy we need to foster and develop, also in men.
That is why we need for integral care systems and also recognize community work.
In our world, filled with crisis.
What cares for the most are the communities.
In Latin America, when the houses are not looked after, it's the communities that are looked after and in those same lives to recognize the social production of the habitat.
In our world, the great production is done by people in each neighborhood from their needs, and they are the ones who have been building most of the housings and communities.
Recognizing the social production of habitat, recognizing it, and generating policies in that regard, we have very good examples of that like Uruguayan cooperatives and then recognizing the double and triple load of women.
Who cannot work at the same level of men in the social production of habitat because they need to look after the reproductive work and look after them and also give value to time.
That scars value in the lives of women have access to security.
It doesn't mean being an owner.
It means having the safety of a tenure, the tenure of land, the tenure of the house.
The tenure in many ways, we need to be more creative.
Not only property, cooperatives, housing that are occupied informal sectors, the houses for rent.
Women know, we know because we're facing these greater barriers.
Allow me to conclude by saying that the most important thing is localization, localization, localization.
When we speak about women regarding housing in cities, localization, localization, localization.
A.
As Kawari Ishikawa said, housing is safety is dignity, it's protection, and that is why we need housing.
We need housing that can ensure this protection and this security.
Understanding that city and housing cannot be divided.
We cannot think about housing without thinking about cities and vice versa.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Anna, for those rich and inspiring words and for summarizing everything and even taking it further than what we had already discussed here.
Thanks also for recalling that there's no such thing as one woman, that there's a plurality of us and that we each have our differences, and we each come from different places, and that needs to be named, that needs to be reflected on, that needs to be counted, and that needs to be reflected in the policies and the plans that we make in order to truly be inclusive.
I will now turn to our final closing speaker of the day.
We'll invite from UN Habitat Tony Shea Fckleton, who's Director of the UN Habitat New York Liaison Office from the Office of the Executive Director.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Catherine, and having heard that very powerful or those two very powerful statements from Honorable Clara Bogado and from Anna Fallo, my responsibility on behalf of the Executive Director of UN Habitat is to tell you all a big thank you.
It has really been an inspiring moment listening to the conversations, seeing you excitedly working through the working group discussions and to hear the messages that you brought back to all of us here.
The richness of your exchanges reflects not only the urgency of the challenges before us, but also the strength, the expertise, and the leadership that you bring to the future of our cities and communities.
We've heard from this important assembly, three very clear messages certainly that have emerged from everything I've heard.
First, adequate housing for women and girls cannot be achieved unless we address the structural inequalities that continue to exclude women from decision making, from financing, land, and services.
As you highlighted in your discussions, women are too often forced to fight for access to what should already be guaranteed rights, and we must therefore redesign housing systems so they are shaped by and for women.
Leaving no woman behind.
Secondly, women's leadership is not optional.
It is essential and across every single point that you articulated here, whether on climate resilience, on informal settlements, displacement, safety, economic empowerment, finance, land tenure, infrastructure, community development, across your seven workstreams.
So many of these issues, we heard one common thread.
When women lead, communities become more inclusive, more resilient, and more sustainable.
The experiences and the solutions that you shared today demonstrate that women are already transforming neighborhoods and cities around the world and you are critical because you are bringing solutions to the table.
Third and finally, this assembly has made clear that dialogue must now translate into action.
The Baku call to action must therefore, for all of us, be more than just a statement, but it must guide the commitments, the partnerships, and the investments that advance adequate housing and gender equality in concrete ways.
All of what you said today complements what we heard in the ministerial meetings earlier this morning.
Now, as we move forward and as you continue through Wolf 13, I encourage you all to keep building that bridge from Baku to New York.
Particularly as we are going to engage in the high level meeting on the midterm review of the new urban agenda on 16th to 17th of July and certainly we look forward to seeing all of you in New York to take these conversations forward so that they resonate in the global conversations.
Your voices, your recommendations, your leadership are essential to ensuring that gender equality and adequate housing remain at the center of the urban agenda now up to the 2036 horizon.
As we heard from honorable Bragado.
We want to see these transformations also turn into concrete actions that we can report at Wolf 14 in Mexico.
On behalf of all of us, the staff here from UN Habitat, we remain committed to supporting you and knowing that women and girls are at the center of our strategic plan for 2026 to 2029.
So looking forward again and thanking you for your energy, your honesty, and your determination.
Have a good evening.
Thank you so much and for reminding us as well that in addition to the work that we're doing to advocate for gender equality at the center of this agenda this week, it is important that those efforts carry forward when we go back to our homes and communities and also in the normative reviews of important agendas like the new Urban agenda and the sustainable development goals.
Excellencies, distinguished guests, friends, colleagues, partners, we have made it to the end of the women's assembly.
We made it through floods and rain and thank you for all of that and for coming here and for staying to the end with really amazing and inspiring energy.
To leave with energy like we started this assembly, I have a few final questions for you.
As you might remember earlier today, when we asked some questions, we asked you to stand up.
We will do the same now.
One of the challenges that I gave you earlier in the assembly was to make a new friend, meet someone new and find common ground.
Please stand if you met someone new today.
Excellent.
Thank you so much and great to hear.
I want you now to stand if you feel that through this assembly, you had the chance to share an idea, a thought, a reflection, a recommendation.
If you had the chance to speak and to share today, please stand up.
Excellent.
Thank you so much.
And if you are leaving like I am, really feeling inspired and energized by these discussions, please stand up.
Okay.
Welcome.
I will ask one final thing of all of you, and that is that you commit to take this with you when you leave this room.
You take it back, you share these lessons, you share this learning, you share these recommendations with people in your cities, your communities, your organizations, and you keep fighting for the change that we know is possible.
We have identified so many pathways to get there, and together, we know that with our voices, we can amplify these messages throughout this week and beyond.
Thank you all for being here for your participation.
Thank you for the translators, the communications people and everyone, and to each other.
Thank you.
Sorry, two announcements.
Two announcements quickly.
One is that the closing of the assemblies is tomorrow morning, nine to 10:00 A.M.
In dialogue room B.
And then every morning from 8:00 to 9:00 A.M.
For people who want to continue to engage in this space, there is a women's caucus in Room one U A from Tuesday to Friday.
So we will continue this conversation together.
Thank you again.