ONE UN - Catalytic funding and support for building safe, resilient and inclusive cities (WUF13)

Good afternoon, everyone.
Welcome to this high level side event titled A Funding and support for building safe, resilient, and inclusive cities.
This event is hosted by the UN Global Disability Fund, and it's co sponsored by the government of Germany through the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMST and the United Kingdom through the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office FCDO.
My name is Maris Oza.
I'm the Strategic Partnership Specialist at the Global Disability Fund, and I will be moderating today's session on behalf of the GDF.
For accessibility purposes, I have brown hair.
I'm wearing a navy suit and a striped shirt.
I'm standing behind the podium with a large projection screen directly behind me.
We have 90 minutes together, and we will begin with opening remarks.
Then we will hear a short presentation on the reach initiative.
After that, we will move into the panel discussion, Q and A, and closing remarks.
A few practical notes before we begin, we have card captioning, international sign interpretation, and live interpretation in the six UN official languages as well as Azerbaijani.
Please use the microphone at all times when speaking.
If you have any accessibility needs, our team is here to help.
Let me begin briefly with what the global Disability Fund is.
The fund is a pool funding mechanism in the UN system.
Its purpose is simple to support disability inclusion at the country level.
We work with governments, UN entities, organizations of persons with disabilities, and other partners, and we help turn commitments under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities into practical action.
In simple terms, GDF helps countries make disability inclusion part of how systems work.
That means looking at how services are delivered, how policies are developed, how public investments are planned, and how persons with disabilities participate in decision making.
Colleagues, today's discussion is grounded in one reality.
There are 1.3 billion persons with disabilities in the world.
The majority of them live in cities.
Yet, urban planning, infrastructure, and disaster response are still too often designed without persons with disabilities in mind.
The resilient and inclusive Cities Hub reach was created to help change that.
Today, we'll hear from governments, cities, UN partners, and organizations of persons with disabilities who are making that work possible.
Let me now invite our first speaker, Her Excellency, Brigitte Pickle, Director of General for Sustainable Development and Climate at Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, BMCT.
Your Excellency.
Excellency is present.
Colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the warm welcome and the introductory words and for organizing this important discussion today.
It's a real pleasure to be here on behalf of the German government, representing the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Bien T.
It's important to reflect together on the important issue on catalytic funding for inclusion in cities and also for building safe and resilient environments in cities.
As you all know and it's been said already, persons with disabilities are a large part of our societies, and that is often not recognized.
It's often not visible, in a consequence, too often ignored.
Also organizations for on behalf of people with disabilities are often less visible and maybe also less loud.
Also in that sense, it's really good to have this conversation here today to put a spotlight on the important issue of inclusion in the context of cities.
Inclusive cities, having mentioned cities already, they're not about charity.
They are about human rights and the right to participate fully in society.
Inclusive cities are not only in the interest of persons with disabilities, they improve the quality of life for everyone.
Anyone who moves through a city, for example, with a stroller, with elderly people, with heavy luggage, or reduced mobility, knows exactly what this means.
Today, about 45% worldwide of persons live in cities, and we know the numbers are rising.
Cities are the central arenas where we must find answers to poverty and inequality, to climate change, to conflict, and to social inclusion.
Cities are also the places where innovation happens and where new alliances are formed and where much of our social progress is driven, not exclusively, but cities are certainly an important place.
Cities face very complex sets of challenges, rapid growth without adequate planning, informal settlements as a consequence, funding shortfalls, also often deep inequalities in cities in the way they've grown over the years when they were founded, a lack of adequate affordable housing, and many more issues I could mention here.
These challenges, again, they affect many, but they hit those who are already in vulnerable situations the hardest and in particular persons with disabilities.
More than half of the world's 1.3 billion persons with disabilities live in cities.
Inaccessible built environments, social exclusion, and weak representation in urban governments mean that these persons are still far too often left behind, also in urban development and it really starts also at the planning stage to take that into consideration.
This is precisely where catalytic funding and then also funds like the one we are discussing here today and really targeted support that really looks at the issues can close critical gaps and is badly needed.
These catalytic funding approaches, they help us address market failures.
For example, where risks are perceived to be too high or where social returns are not recognized or prized by markets.
For example, when you look at housing to pick up the topic of this World Urban Forum.
There are many models.
One particularly promising instrument is the resilient inclusive cities Hub with a nice acronym, Rich.
Rich is a multi stakeholder initiative that we launched last year at the Global Disability Summit in Berlin, with an initial contribution of 10 million euros by the German government.
The initiative is hosted by the United Nations Global Disability Fund and the fund is the only UN funding mechanism dedicated to supporting countries on disability inclusion, and it has already implemented over 100 programs across the globe, building unique expertise and knowledge on inclusive development.
That progress and these examples, I think are very important to encourage all of us to continue this important work.
I'm very grateful that we are able to co host this event together today with the UN and here and today.
Leveraging the fund's multi stakeholder model, which brings together a wide range of actors, governments, UN agencies, organizations of persons with disabilities, international financial institutions, city networks, and also private sector partners.
Its goal is to make resilience approaches in and for cities genuinely inclusive.
I believe rich has a strong potential to catalyze greater investment in disability inclusive cities at a time when this is more urgent than ever.
Cities face growing pressures from climate change, from rapid urbanization, from conflict, from displacement, and also disaster risk.
Rich can help to ensure that inclusion is early on embedded from the outset in infrastructure development, transport, in housing, and in planning systems as already mentioned.
By strengthening co decisions and co creation with persons with disabilities, Rich helps drive lasting, inclusive and accessible urban change worldwide.
One example, Bago City in the Philippines, together with UND UN DRR and local organizations of persons with disabilities, Rich supported the city in its first ever accessibility assessment of its disaster warning systems.
While the findings showed severe gaps, the city is now able to make evidence based adaptations.
You can put funding that is available into place in a targeted manner that is very, very important.
Moreover, persons with disabilities and organizations of persons with disabilities co lead the response when the next disaster strikes.
Another example in Mali, very different region, very different setting from the Philippines, rich partners with UNICEF, with GIS and organizations of persons with disability.
And they embed disability inclusion into major resilience programs.
An overall $1.4 million catalytic investment is shaping a 128 million Euro program, so more than 200 municipalities across five Sahel countries plan, govern, and respond to crisis in an inclusive manner.
I think that is very, very good news.
The aim is to make this approach from Mopti in Mali the standard across the entire Sahel program and in that way really move to scale.
This is really what catalytic funding can do, use a targeted investment to change how a much larger system operates.
That is why we are committed to ensuring that rich continues to grow, that we get more stakeholders in place, maybe also more funding partners to support.
I invite all of you here to collectively work together on expanding this collective effort.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'm really delighted that we have come together here today to discuss how we can make our cities safer, more resilient, and more inclusive and how rich and other initiatives can contribute to this shared goal.
I think this information sharing, knowledge sharing, and good approaches is really, really important because many solutions are out there.
So let's work together to really putting them into practice with people that in the end are supposed to benefit from these improved systems in cities.
Thank you so much.
Thank you very much, Your Excellency, for those opening remarks and saying those points so clearly and thank you for Germany's leadership in helping launching Rich.
Really appreciate it.
I now invite our speaker, miss Francine Peacock, Deputy Director of UNDP's Bureau for Policy and Program Support, and a member of the GDF steering committee.
Speak up.
The floor is yours.
Thank you very much and good morning to all of you.
Excellencies, colleagues, partners, friends.
It's really good to be here with you today.
Let me begin by thanking the government of Germany and BMS for your leadership and for your partnership in making this catalytic initiative possible.
Cities are where inclusion is won or lost.
Transport, housing, public space, water and sanitation, schools, digital services, early warning systems.
These are not abstract policy issues.
They are the systems that shape our everyday lives.
For persons with disabilities, they can either enable independence, safety, and participation, or they can reinforce exclusion.
More than half of the world's 1.3 billion persons with disabilities live in urban areas.
Yet too often urban planning, infrastructure, services, and disaster response are still designed without them in mind.
As cities continue to grow, As climate risks intensify, the choices that we make today, the choices that we make now will shape inclusion for generations to come.
This is why UNDP is very proud to host the Global Disability Fund and to serve on its steering committee.
From the UN perspective, the global Disability fund matters because it responds to a problem we know very well, and that problem is fragmentation.
Too often we see good initiatives operate in parallel across agencies, sectors, financing streams, and geographies.
GDF Global Disability Fund really offers us a very different model from that.
It provides a shared platform for coordinated action, bringing together UN agencies, local governments, organizations of persons with disabilities, donors, development banks, and civil society all around one common agenda.
In that sense, the global Disability Fund is UN reform in action.
It's flagship rich, resilient and inclusive cities hub that was launched last year shows what this can look like at the city level.
Rich is not a standalone disability project.
It is a funding and a technical assistance initiative that helps cities embed accessibility, universal design, climate resilience, and disaster risk reduction into the systems that shape urban development.
And that distinction matters.
It's about mainstreaming, not about focusing on a disability project.
Catalytic financing is not only about funding individual projects.
It's about changing how cities plan, how they govern and deliver services over time.
Through Rich, cities are now being supported to test practical solutions, strengthen local systems, and generate models that can be scaled and adapted elsewhere.
We are already seeing what this means in practice.
In Peru and in the Sahel, Rich is helping embed disability inclusion into larger urban regeneration and resilience investments.
In India, AI and GIS tools are helping city planners combine disability, climate risk, and infrastructure data.
In Cambodia and the Philippines, partners are strengthening inclusive disaster preparedness and accessible evacuation planning.
These are the practical innovations, but their ambition is systemic to make inclusion part of how cities function.
The last point I want to mention is about local ownership.
UNDP's experience across countries and communities is very clear.
Sustainable development doesn't happen to people, it happens with people and reach is grounded in that principle.
Organizations of persons with disabilities are not consulted as an afterthought.
They are co designers, decision makers, and implementers.
That really changes the quality of the solutions.
It also changes the legitimacy of urban decision making itself.
This is the model we need to scale, coordinated UN action, catalytic financing, strong local leadership, and with the leadership of persons with disabilities at the center.
UNDP stands ready as the host of the global Disability Fund and as a steering committee member and as an implementing partner to really support that ambition.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, miss Pickup, and you highlighted a very important point.
GDF offers a way to move from fragmentation to more coordinated action, bringing different actors around one common agenda.
This is also the logic behind RICH and Achmed Ganm technical Hub coordinator and Rich leader at the Global Disability Fund will now walk us through this model and how it's being applied in cities.
AcmeT the floor is yours We can start the presentation.
Thank you.
Thank you all for being and thank you for the support that we are having here in resilience and inclusive City Hub and the global stability Fund.
I think that starting from what we have here until now about the importance of working together to ensure that we are taking city as a unit of changing is the main line of work that we are hoping to achieve and reach.
The resilience and inclusive City Hub is part of the work that we are doing in global stability Fund.
As our colleagues have been discussing, actually the UN Global disability Fund is collective action accelerator of disability rights and inclusive commitment at country level.
We have been established 20 2012 and we have been working in more than 100 country until now in different places all over the world.
Actually, we have been trying to work in city and working in city for a long time because we see that city is one of the fastest route to disability inclusive system.
Usually city is where the inclusive happen.
We can have much more efficient investment if we are working instead of retrofitting as that is happening now, OBD engagement at city level and local level is much easier and also urban area concentrate infrastructure, services, and governance making it ideal for making this a change.
But the most important thing is usually city pilot generate proof of concepts that we can replicate elsewhere.
The idea of the RIC, which have been a global multi partner initiative hosted by Global stability Fund and funded by Germany Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, PBM have been launched in the last global disability summit and it's try to embed disability inclusion into the design and delivery of city system, trying to shifting from byte and to policy, budget, and infrastructure practice.
So what does reach do exactly? Reach is trying to accelerate the transformation of urban system for everyone including persons with disability.
It's very important that RC is not trying to find a solution only for personal stability.
It's trying to ensure that the current solution for better urban development and better city is including persons with disability.
We are working in foster multi stakeholder collooration, as we have here, that fragmentation is our main problem.
In our way of working.
I'm sorry.
I think I have lost here the presentation.
Then we also try to pilot inclusive urban resilience solution to address accessibility issue, gaps in infrastructure, but also meaningful participation of personity on all that.
Lastly, we try to generate and disseminate general knowledge and the global knowledge about that.
We understand that one of the big problems that the public goods of knowledge and understanding of inclusive urban system and inclusive and resilient city is the most difficult to fund, and we hope that we are generating these public goods of knowledge that we can make a change worldwide.
So what is our main framework of action is actually to making inclusion tangible in city.
We have been working in main action, first, inclusive and resilience and infrastructure, city governance and data and digital inclusion, health care and social support system, including and city level, and essential urban service and economic and inclusion.
All that we try to do it under four main action.
First, the climate and data.
Secondly, We have lost the presentation.
So, the climate and data, participation of organization of person's ability and the ability or our ability to make a change as we are moving forward.
Could we solve the problem of presentation? Would it be possible to include the presentation? Thank you.
I'm sorry for this problem.
If we think about it and think about what we have heard on this today and what we keep hearing in the Wall Urban Forum until now, we see that how initiative matter more than ever now.
Not only because inclusiveness and ensure resilience at worldwide truly work for all, but also to ensure that we have a global impact.
So it's needed as a scalable project directly benefit millions of people that we could work with, but also we need the catalytic change as we are moving forward.
How we can design a fund and design a workout program that can make more change with the current investment that is happening usually at city level.
But also measurable results, and this is very important because we need a data driven approach demonstrate for the city and for the national actor that they need to invest on that.
We need to move from official development fund, philanthropic fund to national budgeting funding for all this action as we are moving forward.
But also alignment with SCDG which is now having a big hit, and we hope that all the work that is happening in SEDG 11, sustainable city communicate, SEDG ten, reduced inequality are being covered by reach and the work that we are doing.
So when we are talking about catalytic fund, we have a very specific way we do it in global disability fund.
Reach is one of the best example that we have until now on this cathalytic fund.
First, we have a stage one that we are now is representing, which we call influencing funding, where we are trying to invest and leverage large scale mini streaming development project in infrastructure, in health, urban development at city level, achieving leverage ratio where sometime we are putting one to 91 on the fund where for example, as we have here, in Mali, we are funding 1.5 million, which is influencing nearly 30 million of urban investment and we have in Bureau, for example, 1.5 million which influence more than 40 million infrastructure and so on.
This is a stage one and we hope by that to have a proof of concept that the funder of this development infrastructure will use more catalytic funding crystalzes where GDF present technical assistance to reduce partner risk and trigger additional dedicated funding from mainstreaming investor toward disability.
We hope by having the influence fund at first stage, that in second stage, the development investor themselves will put this fund as a part of their fund.
But this is not the end, we think, and we are working with our partner to ensure that the government and city in every city we are working is part of the program because we are actually hoping to have a domestic integration to move, as I said, from the official development assistance and philanthropic fund to the domestic integration of government progression, where we are taking the financing 20-40 to 60 cost share later on as we are working in.
We hope to do that.
We are building our work in four Bellar, the practice design and Bot scale where we are testing co design with OBD organizational resibility and test inclusion in real project on the ground.
Taking that through a partnership and delivery Alliance, as you will see, most of our program until now and AllRch initiative is multi partner initiative, working through a different actor, including the government and city itself, trying to capture the knowledge and learning, and we are doing that through our inclusive catalyst hub that is part of our global stability fund hoping that we will change policy and financing as our way to move forward.
This is not sequel.
It's actually four of this is happening in the same time.
So in our first round of inclusion city networks that have been announced directly after the global disability summit through the seed Fund from Germany is that we have worked in six city and that now is working in Kenya, in Beiru, in Philippines, in Jordan, in Mali, and Ethiopia in partnership with main partner, UNICEF UNDRR, International Inter American Development Bank, Global Disability Innovation Hub, UCLG and Main municipality.
In all this initiative in first round, it was an accelerator program where we have investment in main streaming infrastructure investment in this city that is covering several topic.
Last part of it is already existing in the sheet that you have or the flyers that you have, and we hope by that to make this mini streaming work more inclusive and have a proof of concept that giving the data enough data for the actor to work toward inclusion.
In the first round of innovative solution, we have another round that have been working with partner from India, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Egypt, and Cambodia.
We will hear today from them an innovation solution, which is more towards fixing one of the problem that we are facing in inclusion city.
Through innovative solution in coordination with organization of Psiity and city.
This innovation solution is usually targeting to find a solution and ensure that this solution can be replicated, scaled up and out of there as we are working, and also we will hear from them today in our panelists.
So until now, how we are performing, we have until now 11 program across four region.
We have invested until now 8 million investment until to date.
We have 1 million direct and indirect beneficiary and more than 8 million point reach across the Sahel, for example, one of our program where you have this influencing fund.
So the journey, how we are moving forward, how we are hoping to achieve in 2025, 2026, it was the establishment phase where we launched through the Germany support in the global Disability Summit.
We have launched our first 11 bailout city across four continents, as we have said.
We are trying to build our technical capacity, building our partnership, inviting our partner to join us on this hub and document real time learning as we are moving forward.
Starting from this year and in the next year, we are trying to generating evidence at scale where we can have a comparative analysis across city, identifying what work, what not work, having a systemic change notes where we understanding how small bailout initiative or good practice could be transferred to systemic change and expand the community of practice where a different partner will join us as we are moving.
But as we have started in Global Disability Summit in Germany last year, we are hoping also to have a milestone in the coming global Disability Summit in Doha into 2028, where we will present the evidence that we have until now and reach we will expand our network of city to more city to join us, and also we will integrate reach learning into the Global Disability Summit commitment to ensure that it's not only the partner that we are working with us in global stability fund but also all the partners working in inclusive city.
But also, we hope that we position disability, inclusive urban development as a way forward.
Beyond 2028, we hope that rich evidence inform national urban policies, regional investment framework, and creating lasting system of a change.
I will join the voices that we have heard from Germany and U NEB and I will ask the partner to join us in technical perspective, in funding perspective, but also in local experience that they have and we will hear today from panel, I'm sure that we will have a lot of opportunity as we are moving forward.
Last, I will just hope that resilience and inclusive city hub, we are trying to shift the focus from creating a special project for persons with disability to transforming how all urban and climate system operate.
We want to ensure that inclusion is built in in the design from day one or even before, and we want to ensure that person with disability have been part of this change as we are moving forward.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ahmed.
Colleagues, the three remarks we just heard from the issue from the perspective of donor governments, the UN system, and the global disability Fund.
Now, I want to bring the discussion to the ground.
We will move to our panel discussion and I invite the panelists to join the table, please.
I am hello.
I am delighted to introduce five practitioners working at the front lines of inclusive urban development, Mr.
Arnuf Rickvi, Director of Construction and infrastructure at the City of Dormu, Germany, Professor Peter A Yang Yango, Governor of Kisumu County, Kenya, Mr.
Chris Cons, Senior Advisor on Water and environment at UNICEF Global Wash Practice, Mr.
Avi Gujo Executive Director of the Federal Federation of Ethiopia Associations of Persons with Disabilities, and Mr.
Sanjai Set, Senior Director for the Sustainable Infrastructure Program at Terry, India.
I welcome all of you and the format is quite simple.
I will pose two questions to the panel.
Each panelist will respond from their own CD or program experience.
You will have each approximately 3 minutes and I will give you a signal around the 2.5 minute mark.
I will appreciate if colleagues, you can stick to the allotted time so we can hear the presentations from everyone in the table and here is our first question.
I invite the panelists to respond in sequence.
In your context, what is the exclusion or systems gap that you are most directly trying to change for persons with disabilities and why has that gap been so difficult to shift? Sir, we're going to start with you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I think to talk from the perspective of inclusion, we must first understand what is disability and who we are going to include.
From my perspective, as one of persons with disability.
My name is actually Abya Gjo.
I from Ethiopia.
I'm the Executive Director for the Ethiopian Federation of Persons with Disabilities, which is the Umbrella Federation for Persons with Disabilities, having all specific organizations of persons with disability as a member in the nationwide, and I served with this position for last more than nine years.
By saying this, maybe from my perspective, inclusion means to see people with disabilities to be included in every aspect.
When we talk about people with disability agenda, we talk about inclusion together.
I learned from opening remark that a Personal disability inclusion is not an optional, but it's human rights request.
We must include during the designing time.
We must include and respect also universal design as well, and we must think inclusion in perspective of specifically an infrastructure perspective.
We must think what is needed to be included for personal disability per their disability type.
By considering the following points one, their participation in designing and everything should be included.
I mean insured, so that they will let you what is needed to be insure inclusion of personal disabilities.
When we talk inclusion, proper financing, proper designing, respecting persons with disability organizations, or PDs, and ensuring their participation should come on board.
For me personally and also from my Federation side, really happy that I learned it just last year, working with GDI H.
They really give us impression and they really open our eye to see what's going on in urban development area and what is missing in inclusion of person with disabilities.
And I think by trusting this work also FCDO is funding for them.
So we really appreciate that.
Besides that, what I'm talking now with this stage well organized by GDF, with a support by the German government as well.
We really appreciate such this kind of sessions will give us a chance to tell you what is needed for us.
For now, I can select it.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Gj.
We really appreciate having you here and hearing your perspectives.
Now, let's shift to Mr.
Rid, please.
Thank you for the form, Mr.
Chairman and thank you for being here.
Thank you for the invitation.
Yeah, we as Dartmon, we are a big city in Germany, we have about 600,000 citizens and we have a very practical point of view to the day to day problems.
Since the 1980s, we've been developing standards for accessible buildings in Germany.
While the initial focus was primarily on door width and elevators for wheelchair users, we now have regulations designed to make life easier for people with all types of disabilities.
But our building stock is very old.
Much of it dates back to the postwar period or even earlier and was built at the time without any consideration for accessibility.
There remains our problem today.
Only one, two, 3% of buildings are renew renovated, are newly constructed each year.
The rest often remain in their old condition.
Retrofitting is expensive and often not worth the cost for older buildings.
That's a gap.
We are not really ended, and that's our problem today.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Riddik for bringing the perspective from Dorm, Mr.
Set.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I think to my mind, the biggest gap that we are trying to address is the inclusion of persons with disabilities from urban climate resilience planning and decision making processes.
The cities that we are working in in our country, we have the Smart City program which is currently being implemented by the government of India.
Many cities the concepts of smart cities where you know, new kind of initiatives are embedded with the planning processes.
I think that's a huge opportunity in terms of making sure that it is, you know, these issues are addressed.
However, there is a major accessibility gap in the built environment, footpaths and even the other services that are provided for the citizens at large.
They are encroached upon public buildings and toilets, often lack ramps or tactical guidance and public transport system remains largely inaccessible.
For many persons with disabilities, this directly affects mobility, independence, and access to livelihoods.
Climate vulnerability compounds the existing inequalities, and some of the cities that we as an organization are working, we find that that the early warning systems, the evacuation shelters and response mechanisms are rarely designed with diverse disability needs in mind.
Many people struggle to evacuate safely, access cooling centers, or receive assistive support during these crisises.
Lastly, most importantly, the persons with disabilities are often excluded from the planning itself.
Urban planning committees and disaster management processes largely engage organizations or persons with disabilities in meaningful ways.
As a result, accessibility and inclusion are treated as an afterthought instead of being integrated right at the planning stages.
There is also a major information and digital divide.
Emergency alerts, government platforms and feedback systems frequently lack screen reader compatibility, captioning sign language integration or easy read formats.
This means many persons with disabilities cannot access critical public information or participate fully in the governance systems.
So there is a need for this shift to happen.
Fortunately, we are still putting in a lot of infrastructure being developing country.
I think that gives us the biggest opportunity to make sure that we don't rely on retrofits, as my other panelists also echoed the same sentiments.
And this, I think, data availability, governance, I think all need to be integrated within the planning processes.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Seth, and next we have Mr.
Kormse.
Hi everyone.
I'm Chris Kormansy from UNICEF.
I'm speaking on behalf of colleagues in Mali in the city of Moti, we're working with I d.
How do you say it? What we're doing in Moti is not different from what we've heard other speakers talk about.
We're trying to integrate people with disabilities into the planning process, making sure that infrastructure is set up right, trying to make sure they have a voice.
But the context is different.
I think that's maybe one thing to just highlight on this panel.
Moti is in Central Mali.
It's a city of about It's a third city in Mali, it's about 200,000 people.
You may have heard of it recently for bad reasons.
There's been some fighting in the past couple of weeks in Moti town itself around Moti and over the course of the first part of this year, we've had more than 15,000 refugees come in from Burkina Faso fighting.
On top of that, you have a very climate risk town.
You have periodic flooding.
You have certain parts of the city that are very low lying.
There's a lot of risks there.
It's a very fragile setting.
In some ways, it's a very ambitious city to select as part of the rich initiative, but very relevant too because this isn't that infrequent in some context.
This is where we see the most vulnerability.
You can imagine if you're a person living with disability and you're displaced, how hard it is to make sure that you're displaced with your assistive devices, for example.
When you get to a new place, how hard it is to set up in that new place.
If you're in a refugee camp, for example, how hard it is to have the services that are adequate for you and your needs.
So this is the context that UNICEF is working in.
So it's a challenging context, but it's also what we hope to use as the model to then replicate at the national level within Mali.
So the learning and institutionalization of what we're doing in Mali, we hope to then expand throughout the country.
The systems gap, I think that we're addressing to answer the question from the beginning, I think it's the same, right? We're just trying to make sure that people with disabilities are not excluded from urban resilience planning.
And local governance.
Right now we see very infrequent participation of people with disabilities and OPDs within the planning structures.
There's been a lot of work in Mali to date.
Of course, there's been a lot of good work to date, but for reducing barriers for people living with disabilities.
But what's happened is that there have been rather isolated.
I think what we're trying to do with the Rich Initiative is trying to make sure from the beginning we're thinking about replicating.
It's not a pilot because pilots, I think we always hate that word pilot, but it is in fact a pilot in some ways and so much that we want to replicate it.
That's the goal.
We want to take the learning and then move to the national level.
I I would say, I don't want to repeat what other people have said because I know my time is up because, in fact, it's the same challenges.
It's just the context is different and that's the biggest challenge is working in that context.
Maybe my last comment is, and this is a perfect example, Molly, we have a community or a metropolitan, let's say budget.
There is a line item for responding to the needs of people with disability.
That doesn't happen that often in this type of a context.
Are we have something to build on.
But that budget line is $3,500 for a city of over 200,000 people.
The fiscal space in a country like Mali is so limited, we have to figure out how we can leverage other resources to make sure we can make an impact.
That's part of the challenge of this initiative there.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Coerci.
Last but not least, Professor Rango, Governor.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Speaker.
I like the statement that had just been made by my colleague here that we face the same challenges, except our contexts are different.
We face the same challenges, except our contexts are different.
I want to speak about such a context.
In a city in Kenya, one of the four major cities in Kenya called Kisumu.
That city is in a county.
Counties like states in the US, in the first that the country is divided into countries, counties, about 47 of them, and each county has its own government responsible for providing certain services.
One of those services is transport, another one is housing.
The third one is health.
Just mention three.
In Kisumu County, inclusivity is not a choice.
The demographic and moral necessity.
According to our recent data from the National Council for Persons with Disabilities, Kisumu is home to approximately 98,000 persons with disabilities, accounting for about 4% of our population.
From that figure, you can work out what the population really is.
It's about 1.5 million.
These citizens represent a significant portion of our human capital, yet they often face systemic barriers to mobility, digital access, and economic participation.
Hence, the resilient and inclusive cities hub rich project is a catalyst we need to dismantle these barriers and achieve our vision of Kisumu all.
It allows us to move beyond accommodation toward universal design, ensuring that our country's resilience is measured by how well it serves its most vulnerable members during climate shocks, for example, and economic shifts.
Through the RICH project, we anticipate several high impact outcomes.
One, retrofitting public spaces and transport hubs in Kisumu to meet international accessibility standards.
Two establishing a robust database of PWDs to ensure county planning and emergency response systems are inclusive by design.
And three, training our county engineers, planners, and administrators to view urban development through a deability inclusive lens by building a rich county.
We are fostering a more productive society where PWDs are active contributors to the bunioning economy.
By which we mean resilient and inclusive.
H.
We are creating a county where resilience means no one is left behind when the rains fall or when the drought hits us with vengeance.
In conclusion, catalytic funding like the Rich Project proves that when local governments are paired with global visionaries and technical experts, you can turn inclusivity from a policy aspiration into a lived experience.
Thank you so much, Governor, for bringing the perspective from Kisumu and all the current efforts going.
Thank you to the five panelists for those interventions.
We have heard about different systemic gaps, and that actually brings us to our second question, what needs to change now, whether in policy, financing, institutions, or partnerships for this work to move beyond individual efforts and become standard practice in how cities work.
Mr.
Gugio, should we begin with you again? Yeah, thank you.
I think from my perspective, as I come from Ethiopia, maybe I can specifically talk about our urban development system, how it's inclusive, especially when we talk about Adis Ababa, we talk about the capital of Ethiopia as well as the headquarter base of African Union and Is as well.
So when we talk also about Adis Ababa, we talk also about people with disabilities, and a while number of people with disabilities have been living there.
In Ethiopia, we count 23 million people with disabilities are living there.
So this is a big number, and we really understand how to ensure a resilient and inclusive city.
How do we build resilient and inclusive city.
From our perspective, as we already agreed earlier and we talked that inclusive planning is very important.
But for inclusive planning, the participation of personal disability, especially meaningful participation is really needed.
That financing for the cause should be because most of the time when we talk about disability inclusion and the finance for that, most of the people count it as an extra cost, but it's not It's really inclusiveness agenda is really human rights agenda because everybody have its own limitation.
As a Federation of Personal Disabilities in Ethiopia, we divide people into two people with disabilities who have been there and those who have a guarantee not to join them is there.
The only we have two peoples like you divide people in men and woman.
We divide people, people with disabilities are here, and those have no guarantee not to join them are here.
So we need to work for both of them.
So financing and strategically thinking and coordination mechanism is very important, like what global disability fund is doing now is like coordinating all efforts together is very important.
So we need to think in this perspective so that from our perspective nowadays, As is under rapid development and also working on a corridor developments and many more things, but still from the designing and from everything what we are learning is like many things.
For instance, when we talk about road construction, we must ensure inclusion in every aspect, not only for the wheelchair users, but also for instance, for the hazard sounds for the blind people to cross the Doubs should be on installed.
Also for the blind, I mean, for the deaf people like hand things stop and go, things will be very important.
But when we talk about inclusion aspect, we should have to be underlined that every disable type should be under consider and I think from time constraint I can say this one.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Gjo.
Now, can we hear from Mr.
Vivek? Okay.
Mr.
Chairman, you asked after closing the gap and endorsement, As a big town, we are confronted with the day to day problems from disabled people and old people that have mostly the same problems.
And yeah, I'm talking about, small stair houses.
I'm talking about thresholds and on the pavement.
I'm talking about orientation in the city and the signs and all these problems, we're trying to work and to engage and money is endment two, the key.
Two things would be helpful in the regard I mentioned in the building standards.
First was subsidy programs for the renovation and retrofitting of buildings.
Would remove some existing financial barriers.
And secondly, while our standards are very good, they're also extremely demanding.
Public buildings have to be accessible by law, and so we have two classes of buildings.
One complete accessible, and the others are not.
And lowering some of these standards would allow small improvements without having completely renovate buildings, what would not happen.
So this would help.
And while I'm talking about construction and buildings, I have a I have a One thing we have in the A is especially after World War two, we have a lot of dead shots in the ground.
Thousands of dead shots and every time we have to search for these dead shots, and if we found one, there has to be diffused and all people in around 500 meters or so have been evacuated.
This is a problem if you are disabled or old.
So I Darton, you call the fire brigade.
They come, they help you out.
They have ambulance, they carry all your needings, special beds, breathing apparatus and medicine, bring you to a safe place, and after all is safe, you bring you back.
They look after you and give you the full service.
This is very expensive.
But we do it because we have a lot of such things in the ground.
If you have the bad luck to live near a great construction site, you may be evacuated two or three times a year since the building is ready.
We work day to day on these problems and try to help the disabled people in Dom.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Riddigi.
Can we follow with Mr.
Sets? Thank you.
I'm going to be speaking about coastal city in India, which is called Vishakpatam and what we have done there and how we have made it inclusive right in the planning processes.
This is a city which is being battered over a period of time.
Every year on year, we see cyclonic activities and people get displaced because of that.
Then we have used what you call a there has been a shift in the policy from compliance based accessibility to an inclusion by design, and this is what we have done.
In the process, what we have done is that we have made the disability inclusion a more core metric of urban resilience, climate adaptation, and infrastructure planning right from the beginning.
Secondly, we've also used the concept of the urban living lab models where communities, municipal officials, researchers, OPDs work together on real time urban problems.
This is how we have been able to, the top down and bottom up approach.
Third, financing mechanisms have also been made more, uh, uh, you know, evolving.
I mean, there have been evolving financial mechanisms that have been thought about.
Inclusive infrastructure and resilience measures are often seen as additional costs when in reality, they are investments that benefit everyone.
So this is, again, something where, you know, climate resilient infrastructure, which is inclusive of public spaces, accessible early and lu systems, they all become an integral part of the planning process.
Funding should not only support low cost and community driven innovations, not only for large infrastructure projects.
And lastly, of course, is that we need planning systems that integrate citizen generated data, accessible digital platforms, and real time vulnerability mapping into the mainstream rben governance.
And this is what we are trying to do, which has helped us.
What has worked in the city is bringing together local governments, disability organizations, academia, civil society, and technology partners into the entire ecosystem.
Cities, I think, need cross sectoral collaboration where lived experiences, technical expertise, and governance systems need to work together rather than in silos.
Fundamentally, we need a mindset shift.
Inclusion should not be seen as a welfare or a charity.
It is fundamentally about better urban governance and building cities that are safer, more resilient, and more navigable for everyone.
We have to look at partnerships that have worked.
No one institute can really come up with any solutions.
I think when cities work for the most vulnerable residents, they ultimately work better for all residents.
I'll stop there.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Seth and Mr.
Cory.
Yeah, thank you.
Again, I'm talking about Moti, of course, in the context of Moti.
UNICEF and GI Zed are taking, like I mentioned before, Moti as an intentional pilot, for lack of a better word, that can be replicated at the national level.
We see four main priorities in moving from that project at Moti level to the national scale, which is the intent of the initiative.
I think these will resonate because they resonate with the original speakers today, resonates with this panel as well, that this very similar issues.
Again, just the context is different.
Number one is we need to make sure disability inclusion is part of the planning process.
For budgets, for planning, for procurement systems, for infrastructure design and standards in schools and healthcare facilities, and so on, and as part of preparedness and response strategies as well, which is so relevant for the MT context.
Number two, we need to make sure that we work closely with the central level from the beginning.
Now, this slows things down.
You can imagine trying to get a meeting of all relevant stakeholders in Moti itself where you have huge infrastructure challenges.
But then when you try and extend that to a tobacco and the transport issues there and making sure you have everyone in the room, it's just going to take longer, and it has to be more directed and more intentional from the beginning.
But it's critical.
We won't get skilled unless we somehow merge what's going on at the national level with what's going on at the decentralized level.
A good example of this is we're trying to take the training that happened in Moti for the mayor, who's now a champion and then replicate, integrate that training into the training for all mayors that happens when new mayors are elected in Mali.
Um, so that's sort of an example of how we can leverage what we're doing in the learning there and integrate into real life experiences that then will from the beginning impact new political leaders within Mali.
Number three, I think we've talked about it already or several people have, and that's integrating OPDs, organizations with people with disabilities into the discussion.
They're the experts, They have to be part of it.
In Moti, they're conducting participatory assessments, for example, they're helping us deliver trainings.
They're, of course, contributing their technical expertise.
They're helping us establish accountability mechanisms.
This is a critical aspect.
The fourth part, in the context of Mali, which I mentioned already, is there is extremely limited fiscal space.
That means it's really hard to get any budgets from the central government, which means it's really hard to have something sustainable.
ODA is critical in a country like Mali, and it fluctuates, as we all know in the past couple of years, it fluctuates quite extremely.
How can we leverage other initiatives? For example, the wider Sahel Resilience Partnership is already working in numerous municipalities in Mali, so we're trying to then take the learning from the Rich Initiative into that project to give us a step up already.
It allows us to replicate peer learning, for example, institutional capacity building and gives us access to financing that we wouldn't have otherwise.
I think my time is up.
My last comment is the mayor of Moti on his own recommended to the ministry or the decentralized representative of the Ministry of Health to have a training for community health workers, staff in Moti on his own.
The issue I mean, it's easy to trigger that.
What's hard is to take that individual action and then make it something that can be a sustainable system.
That's really the challenge of the rich initiative, and that's what we're moving forward on in May.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Comerci and finally, we have Governor Oango.
The floor is yours.
I think my colleagues have covered almost all that you can say about disability, but I just want to add about two or three things.
One is defining the rules of the game.
If you are talking about disability, who is identified as disabled? And how do we meet the problems and provide solutions? For example, it is obvious to see a disabled person who is a cripple or something, but some people are disabled in mind, mental disability and quite often more difficult thing to deal with because also the issue of denial.
Somebody may be disabled, they don't recognize and they deny it, yet we might provide services for them.
First, this is very important in education.
Where there's a tendency to over courses of a spaces for teaching, which does not or do not take into account disability.
So discussion on how the problem is conceived first and foremost is important.
I know in Kenya, for example, when you're writing the new constitution, there's fierce debates on what to include in the constitution in terms of disability because of this so many aspects of disability in society, that problem must be confronted and solved.
And then comes the issue of making choices, what is to be done.
What is to be done in schools, in providing people ability, what is to be done in transport to cater for disability, what is to be done in attainment places to cater for disability.
In making those choices on what is to be done, risk presentation from people with disability, either themselves or their spokespersons is important.
And finally, once you do that, then making resolutions or solutions to the problem will reflect the faith, the input, and the aspirations of people with a disability.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Thank you so much, Governor, for those remarks.
Unfortunately, we are a bit tired of time, so we will not have space for Q&A, but I really encourage the audience to reach out to the panelists once the segment is over and to the GDF team as well.
With that, I invite the speakers for the closing segment of the afternoon.
First I invite Mr.
Simon Stevens, Head of Cities and infrastructure in the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Thank you to the Global Disability Fund and partners, including Germany and UNDP for convening the discussion today.
I'm really honored to be asked to give a closing address.
It's been a really rich discussion.
I think I found it both sobering and really inspiring.
The discussion sits at the heart of why we're here at the World Urban Forum, which is about how we turn global commitments into locally delivered outcomes.
In the UK, we're really proud to support the vital and inspiring work of the GDI Hub.
I also really commend the Rich initiative that I've learned about since I got here.
For focusing on building systems to ensure inclusive cities rather than focusing on isolated interventions.
We've heard today a clear and consistent message that exclusion is systemic and embedded at the local level across various sectors.
We've seen the exclusion is not due to lack of intent, but lack of implementation, coordination, and financing.
We've heard examples from the panel, from cities in Europe, Africa and Asia that show some commonalities, but enormous amount of differences, and we've heard how context is really important.
Organizations of persons with disabilities must be at the center as co designers and implementers of solutions.
It is a human right, as we've heard, and consultation must be meaningful.
We've heard the evidence emerging from rich programs demonstrates that when cities combine local leadership, partnerships, and targeted support, change is possible at scale.
Urbanization and climate pressures are intensifying.
Cities are facing disastrous with significant economic losses every year, and a substantial share of future urban infrastructure is yet to be built, which creates a critical window for action and creates a stark choice whether to continue building systems that exclude or embed accessibility, resilience, and inclusion from the outset.
I think we all know which side of that we think we should be supporting.
So today's discussion has underlined the importance of catalytic funding models, not just financing projects, but unlocking systems for change at city level.
The value of approaches such as rich is that they bring together local government, organizations of people with disabilities, UN agencies, development banks, and the private sector, and they align financing with local leadership and practical delivery.
So inclusion is not only about rights, but about effective and efficient urban development and the failure to integrate inclusion leads to higher costs, delays, and reduced resilience.
Conversely, inclusive design strengthens project quality and investment viability and supports long term economic and social outcomes.
In the UK, I'd like to reaffirm our commitment to disability inclusive development and catalytic financing approaches that support local action and highlight alignment with initiatives like RIC, which demonstrate how technical assistance, partnerships, and financing come together effectively.
The next phase has to be about scaling what works, moving from pilots to systems, from isolated projects to embedded practice across city planning and investment.
I call for sustained collaboration between city leaders, civil society development partners, and investors.
As has been set out, cities do not lack ideas on inclusion.
They need the support to make these ideas work to last and to scale.
Our shared task is to ensure that inclusive, resilient urban development becomes the standard approach, not the exception.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Stevens, for those remarks and our second set of closing remarks comes from Mr.
Santos Kumar Runta, president of the World Blind Union.
Could you please approach the podium? Thank you.
His Excellency, distinguished panelists, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, I am deeply honored to have been given this opportunity of giving closing remarks at the outset, as a president of World Blind Union and representative of OPD global OPDs, I would like to express our gratitude to the German federal government, UNDP, and other partners, and Global Disability Fund for taking this very opportune initiative in the form of.
This initiative demonstrates and highlights the need for national action to translate into reality the object of UN Convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities, as well as new urban agenda.
Any international commitment in any form, be it a convention, be it a declaration, cannot be converted into reality and cannot change the lives for whom the groups whose lives have to be changed without a national election and ultimately local election.
Which demonstrates that model, which promotes the action at national and local level to translate into the translate into reality the objects and the mandates of UN Convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities.
The approach is inclusive itself to achieve inclusion.
When I say that the approach is inclusive itself to achieve real inclusion, I mean that we are keeping in the rich model persons with disabilities and their organizations at the center.
And at the center, right from the planning to the implementation and, I believe, to the monitoring as well.
As we implement this approach, I'm confident that we will see real impact on the lives of millions of persons with disabilities, and this approach also assumes greater importance in the sense that today we are seeing a shift from social financing to economic viability considerations.
And during that shift in policies at national level, the Rich Initiative supported by German federal government in the form of catalystic funding is a real welcome step.
I would call upon all the private sector, other partners, and donors across the globe to join this initiative, strengthen global disability Fund to see that what we invest today through this initiative, we would secure the future of generations to come.
Today's investment would secure our future.
Today's investment will ultimately result into economic growth and achievement.
Let us work together and create more strong partnerships with OPDs.
I would like to conclude by urging GDF, UNDP, and other partners to consider build Better coordination and partnership with global OPDs which have presence at national level, and let us do it together and make it successful to change the lives of millions of persons with disabilities and to achieve the ultimate goal of real inclusion, full participation, and equality for persons with disabilities.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much, Mr.
Rama, for that very powerful closing.
With these colleagues, the discussion comes to an end.
We would really like to have more time as this has been a very productive discussion with many useful reflections from different perspectives.
On behalf of the UN Global Disability Fund, I want to thank our co sponsors Germany and the United Kingdom.
I also want to thank all of our speakers and the audience for joining us in person and online.
Recordings, materials, and next steps will be shared through GDF channels.
Please reach out to our team.
If you would like to explore partnerships or learn more about the RICH Initiative, this event is now closed.
Thank you.