Dialogue 3 - Housing at the Center of Crisis Recovery and Reconstruction (WUF13)

Good morning, distinguished on housing at the center of Crisis Recovery and Reconstruction.
My name is Nada Tudor, and I'm the Bureau Chief of Eur News here in Baku.
And it is my pleasure to moderate today's session together with His Excellency, Ya Chin Rafv as the Deputy Foreign Minister of the Republic of Azerbijan.
Around the world today, cities and communities are facing crises on an unprecedented scale.
Conflict, climate, shocks, earthquakes, floods, and displacement are affecting millions of people, destroying homes, disrupting livelihoods, and weakening the social fabric that binds communities together.
From Gaza, Sudan, Syria, and Ukraine to Turkey, Myanmar and many other contexts, we are witnessing not only physical destruction, but also the loss of safety, dignity, belonging, and hope.
Yet too often housing remains treated as a secondary issue in recovery efforts, addressed too late, funded too little, and disconnected from broader reconstruction strategies.
Today's dialogue challenges that approach.
This session starts from a simple but powerful premise.
Rebuilding homes is not just about rebuilding structures.
It is about rebuilding lives, restoring communities, enabling return, strengthening resilience, and creating the foundation for long term peace and recovery.
Over the next 2 hours, we will hear from government leaders, international organizations, practitioners, researchers, and recovery experts working directly on the front lines of reconstruction and displacement.
Together, they will explore several urgent questions.
What does it really take to place adequate housing at the center of recovery efforts? How do we rebuild homes and neighborhoods at the scale and speed of today's crisis and what it demands? What policy financing, land, and governance barriers must be overcome and critically, how do we ensure affected communities themselves and not passive recipients, but co leaders of reconstruction from day one? Today's session is designed to be interactive.
Throughout both panels, we will invite your participation through live polling indicated here on this big screen, helping bringing your perspectives directly into our discussions.
We have two panel discussions.
Our first panel will focus on the big picture, the principles, rights, and systemic shifts needed to rethink recovery and reconstruction.
The second panel will move into the practical experiences on the ground, looking at lessons from countries and institutions working to rebuild amid ongoing crises and massive displacement.
We encourage everyone here not only to listen, but to actively engage and take away some of these key messages to your own work and backgrounds to contribute to what we hope will become a stronger global coalition for housing centered recovery.
Now, to begin with, we would like to welcome His Excellency, Mr.
Eminsyov, the special representative of the President of the Republic of Azerbijan in the Agdan Fizi and Kojawan District.
Excellency, the floor is yours.
Distinguished colleagues, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
It's a great honor to join you today at the World Urban Forum and to contribute to this important dialogue on housing and at the center of Crisis Recovery and Reconstruction.
I would first like to thank UN Habitat, State Committee on Urban Planning and architecture of the Republic of Azerbijan All partners for creating a platform where we can openly discuss one of the defining urban challenges of our time, how to rebuild not only cities, but lives, communities, and hope after crisis.
For Azerbijan, this is a personal matter, deeply personal.
For nearly 30 years, internally displaced persons lived with the hope of one day returning to their homes and communities.
Entire cities, villages in the liberated territories were destroyed.
In some districts, the scale of destruction was immense, leaving behind devastated urban landscapes and collapsed housing systems.
But reconstruction is not only about bricks and concrete.
Recovery begins when people can once again imagine a future in their homeland, so called sense of belonging.
Today, Azerbijan is implementing one of the largest reconstruction and return programs in the region.
Significant financial resources have already been allocated for recovery and reconstruction efforts.
In the Agdam, Tzuli and Kojavan districts, which I represent, we are rebuilding cities and villages from the ground up based on a long term vision of sustainability, inclusiveness, and resilience.
Our approach is guided by one central principle.
Housing must come first because housing restores dignity, stability, and trust.
When families return to safe homes, schools reopen, local economies revive, social ties are rebuilt, and communities regain confidence in the future.
Already a significant number of formerly internally displaced persons have returned to newly rebuild communities, while many more are expected to return in the coming years.
New residential areas, schools, healthcare facilities, and public services are becoming operational as part of a broader effort to restore normal life.
At the same time, reconstruction cannot simply recreate the vulnerabilities of the past.
We must build better, smarter and more resilient urban systems.
That is why Azerbijan is integrating modern urban planning, green energy, digital governance, and sustainable infrastructure into the reconstruction process.
Through the smart city, smart Village concepts, we're deploying technology driven and sustainable communities in Agdan Pizzui, and Pjvan districts with Bashkarband and Dbai villages serving as leading examples.
The projects combined renewable energy solutions, high speed digital connectivity, including palm based, fiber optic Internet infrastructure, modern social infrastructure, and environmentally responsible urban planning.
Hybrid energy systems based on solar power and the national grid, as well as two way electricity meters are being introduced for the first time in Azerbaijan.
We're also implementing innovative central heating systems that replace hundreds of individual boilers with safer and more energy efficient solutions.
Residents can independently regulate heating and pay only for actual consumption, significantly reducing energy waste and C two emissions.
These efforts are aimed not only at restoring cities, but at building resilience, future ready communities from the early stages of return.
However, one of the most important lessons we have learned is this, recovery cannot be imposed from above, from above alone.
Communities themselves must be part of shaping the future of their cities and neighborhoods.
The voices of formerly displaced persons, local residents, women, youth, and vulnerable groups must be included from the very beginning of the reconstruction process because successful recovery is not measured only by the number of houses built.
It's measured by whether people truly feel they have returned home.
And this requires partnership.
Governments, international organizations, financial institutions, urban experts, and local communities must work together not in fragmented ways, but through integrated and people centered approaches.
In a world increasingly affected by conflict, climate shocks, and displacement, housing must no longer be treated as a secondary humanitarian issue.
It must be recognized as a strategic foundation for peace, resilience, and long term urban stability.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to conclude with this doubt.
Rebuilding homes means rebuilding belonging.
Rebuilding sustainable, inclusive, economically integrated neighborhoods means rebuilding trust.
Thank you very much for your kind attention.
Thank you very much, Excellency, for this important opening remarks and for reminding us about the human and institutional dimensions of recovery and reconstruction.
Now we continue with a keynote address from a global advocate for peace, recovery and human dignity.
Now it's my pleasure to introduce His Excellency, Mr.
Barham Salih, the new High Commissioner with UNHCR and former president of the Republic of Iraq.
Mr.
Salih is not able to join us in person, but today he has prepared a video message for us and I kindly ask you to direct your attention to the screen.
Excellency, distinguished ministers, colleagues and partners.
For people forced to flee, housing is not just an infrastructure.
It is safety, dignity, stability, and the foundation for rebuilding a future.
Today, nearly 117 million people are forcibly displaced by conflict, violence, and persecution.
With climate shocks exacerbating displacement risks, yet for too many, temporary shelter becomes a prolonged state of uncertainty without a place to rebuild their lives.
Across diverse context, from Chad, Brazil, Jordan, to Colombia, Turkey, and Syria, we see a consistent reality.
Recovery begins with a place to live.
At the same time, host communities continue to show extraordinary solidarity, often sharing their homes, land, and services despite already stretched resources.
The scale of today's displacement demands a different approach.
As cities and towns absorb growing numbers of displaced people, pressure on housing infrastructure and social cohesion intensifies.
Without access to adequate housing recovery, unravels, livelihoods remain precarious, access to education and health care is disrupted and pathways to self reliance becomes far more difficult.
Today's dialogue rightly calls for a decisive shift, placing the right to adequate housing at the center of recovery and reconstruction efforts.
Because a home begins long before walls are built.
It starts with access to land, secure tenure, and documentation that enables displaced people to live, work, and rebuild their lives with dignity.
This shift is already underway.
The human settlement pledge launched at the Global Refugee Forum reframes displacement as an opportunity for inclusive planning, local development, and shared prosperity.
Evidence consistently shows that when refugees have access to housing and freedom of movement, they contribute economically and socially to the communities that host them.
Displaced people are not a burden.
They are part of a solution.
We are already seeing what is possible from the transformation of camps into towns in Kenya and Ethiopia to inclusive approaches in Chad and Mauritania and to strong municipal leaderships across Europe.
Cities are not just managing displacement.
They are places where protection, inclusion, and solutions take root.
But municipalities cannot and should not do this alone.
They need clear mandates, predictable financing, and strong partnerships with governments, development actors, and the private sector and communities.
The message is clear.
We must move from temporary shelter to housing, from short term responses to long term solutions, and from parallel systems to inclusive national frameworks.
The time to act is now, not only to restore what was lost, but to build stronger, more inclusive and more resilient communities for all.
Thank you, Mr.
High Commissioner for this very powerful message.
Now, we move into the first panel discussion of today's dialogue.
This panel will explore what it takes to place housing, land, and community recovery at the very center of reconstruction efforts and why this matters not only for humanitarian response, but for long term urban resilience, peace, and development.
It's now my pleasure to welcome our distinguished panelists on the stage.
First, Professor, Sultan Barakat, Professor in Public Pol and Hamad Bin Khalil University in Doha.
Madam Paula Gabrie Betancourt, United Nations Special Representative, Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of internal displaced persons, doctor Lucy Earl, Director of Research and Strategic Impact at the International Institute for Environment and Development.
Mr.
Juan Caballero, Chief Executive Officer of Build Change, and joining the panel shortly, Madam Anna Claudia Rosbeck'm Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UN Habitat.
Welcome to all of you dear friends and thank you for being with us today.
Before we begin, a quick note to our audience.
We very much want to hear your voices, as I mentioned before, and invite you to participate through Slido.
You can see the QR code and instructions on the screen throughout the session.
I'd also like to remind you that your headsets, please, will be very useful for translation purposes, particularly with the next session as well.
Well, we will offer that translation so that you can understand all the different languages that people are speaking in.
With that, let us begin.
So I believe your microphone.
We will just do that.
We can hear.
Welcome to all my panelists.
Hello.
Thank you for joining us.
I think, first question is going to be to all of you.
I'd like to put this common question to you.
If housing is so central to recovery, why is it still treated as a secondary in many crisis responses? I think the most important what needs to change for that to happen.
I would like to start with you, Professor Barakat, Good morning.
Thank you very much.
The core issue, I think, is political because housing, unlike temporary shelter is loaded with political values, particularly when we're talking about disasters that are generated by manmade.
If it is about conflict, often conflict is about territory, it's about gaining ground.
It may be about systematic displacement of certain people, moving them across border, moving them from one village to the other, and so on.
The political dimension of housing is immense.
This is, I think the main reason why we haven't really made huge progress despite the fact that nothing we're saying today is new.
Almost 25 years ago, I did a paper about this issue, which is still in circulation and we all know that housing is central to the recovery.
It is central to the economy of the country that is processing the recovery process.
We all understand the social value of it and so on.
But how do we actually make it work? I think one way forward is to be as context specific as possible and stop talking about housing globally in generic terms.
Every context, housing and the way you approach it will differ.
For example, if you have a context where there has been a political settlement, a peace agreement, a degree of stability, a government that is willing to sponsor the permanent presence of population in certain areas, and a government that is driven by a will and a vision like what we heard earlier from the minister, then it is relatively easy.
Then it becomes about the strategies, the technical approaches, and so on.
If you are still in a context that's still disputed and or is driven by agenda for ethnic cleansing or gaining somebody else's grounds and so on, then it becomes very hot potato to handle by anyone.
Unfortunately, to play it safe, the international system, including the United Nations system, would rather rely on the humanitarian label.
The humanitarian label allows you to operate, allows you to save lives without being made responsible for the political outcome which in some cases could mean that you will legitimize an injustice that has been caused to certain people or the political outcomes that are even internationally not necessarily 100% within the framework of international law.
And This leaves us in a position where we fall back immediately on the humanitarian label.
I think there we commit our first mistake, almost entirely in partnership with our friends and agencies who are responsible for people's initial emergency displacement.
That is, we weaken people's agency.
For housing to take place, we need two things.
People have to maintain the will and the agency to do it for themselves, with their government, with their municipalities and others, and resources.
Unfortunately, the way our humanitarian system is set up, it focuses too much on saving lives and much less on saving people's will and protecting their ability to organize, to remain motivated, to have the spirit ongoing of rebuilding.
This I think is where the first technical intervention can happen between agencies, between our approaches to make sure that from day one of displacement, the focus should be on how do we rebuild ultimately because that is what is on people's mind.
If you speak to any displaced family, they start probably thinking of reconstruction from day two of displacement.
The moment they achieve any degree of stability, they will start thinking of the future.
We should not allow that gap to develop between them wanting to start thinking of reconstruction and us kicking into motion our planning, our approaches.
Even if it was at the beginning just soft interventions focused on people's ability to organize, to maintain their, their energy, not to be marginalized, not to be treated as victims, then that in itself would really put them in a place where they can move forward.
Thank you.
I'm going to stop you there and I'm obviously going to introduce now miss Anna Claudia Rosbach who has just joined us on stage.
Thank you very much.
I'm the Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Director of UN Habitat to join our discussion.
Thank you very much, Professor Barakat.
Paula, I'm going to move on to you.
Professor Barakat mentioned that the first thing that is thought of is the future.
In that disaster, the future is the first thing they're thinking of, he's suggesting.
What are your thoughts on this? Thank you so much, Naveen, for your question and you and Habitat for the invitation.
Let me just go back to the first message that Professor gave because I wanted to speak about something that we should be speaking more about, which is prevention.
We cannot speak about futures if we don't prevent this from happening and invest in prevention.
This is highly political, and we should first and foremost, be preventing cities from being destroyed and preventing communities from being displaced.
Um, and urban crises are the result, finally, of lack of accountability for human rights violations and the erosion of respect of international humanitarian law and human rights law.
You said it in the beginning.
We see this in Gaza, we saw it in Syria, we see it in Ukraine.
Yesterday, I just wanted to bring up that we heard from Mr.
Annati at the Association of Palestinian local authorities in Gaza and the West Bank that human rights violations continue and I efforts of those municipalities are basically on existential issues on surviving on saving lives.
So I think we have to ask ourselves before we talk about the future, how can reconstruction even begin when violations are still ongoing and not being prevented? This is my topic to the next Human Rights Council on the disregard of international law.
This is not only climate, it is not only conflict, it's also what's happening in Haiti, for example, with gang violence, organized crime, violation of women's rights, et cetera.
Also, as you mentioned at the beginning, respond to disasters.
For example, the earthquakes in Turkey, entire cities were destroyed, largely devastated and the state led rebuilding effort is underway, we all know it and rightly includes earthquake resistant buildings.
But the question is how Not how quickly we rebuild those buildings, is whether we rebuild in a way that reduces future risks and prevents displacement.
We've been talking a lot and speaking of futures, we've been talking about building back better for a long time, but we're still building back with the same vulnerabilities.
So the foundations we are laying in reconstruction efforts are not strong enough, that building is not strong enough to stand up to the drivers of conflict, violence, and disaster.
I would just say that reconstruction should not simply restore what existed before the crisis, but it should create safer, more inclusive, more sustainable communities where they can live in dignity with confidence in their future, as you were asking.
Thank you.
I'm going to pull it back to the question that I asked.
The question is, if housing is so central to recovery, why is it still treated as a secondary in many crisis responses and what would it take to change that? I'm going to come to you, doctor Lucy Earle, about your thoughts on that.
Thank you.
It's great to be here.
Many thanks to you and habitat and the government of Azerijan for hosting us.
I wanted just to quickly reflect on a tension that I've been hearing over the last few days.
The idea of housing as a basic right as a human right, but then housing also recognizing that it's an asset, that it's valuable, it's traded on markets.
This is a tension that we have to get out in the open and recognize.
Now, in context of mass displacement and where people are either moving into cities or between areas of city because of conflict or disaster, The humanitarian response is critical, but they get around that difficulty of this private good that's valuable by not talking about housing, but talking about shelter as has already been mentioned by the professor.
At that moment, shelter really is critical.
You need something over your head to protect you from the elements and it can be really lifesaving.
The shelter becomes lifesaving.
The issue though, is that in a city in a densely populated area, if you have people moving into temporary shelters, living under canvas in public squares or parks, it can be very difficult to find the next steps to get people out of those temporary shelters.
We saw this very critically in Haiti in Port-au-Prince, where people remained intense for many years.
It's something that's happened also in Medguri in Nigeria, where people are living in very poor conditions for long periods of time.
Under temporary shelter.
Now, I wanted to just reflect also on the fact that there's a tendency to think that people will go home.
But if you travel to places like Luanda in Angola, or Maputu Mozambique and you speak to people in now quite consolidated neighborhoods, but not quite in the center of the city, you'll find that many people move there as a result of conflict and civil war in those two countries and they've remained.
But in the interim, those decades, very little was done to provide sanitation or to make sure public space was protected or access for vehicles, emergency vehicles was maintained in the plan because everyone thought these people are going to go home.
But once you establish a life in the city as a refugee or as an internally displaced person, you might not want to get home.
We might not want to go home, you want to live in a house there, but your housing might be very poor standard if we've not switched from this mentality of these are temporary temporary people to these are urban citizens now.
I think one of the issues that we have and what we need to change is for the humanitarian system to do as a friend of mine who's probably here, Maggie Stevenson says people need to do their housing and land homework.
As the professor said, each context is different.
If we're going to put housing at the center of recovery, we have to understand the different land rights and tenure systems in each city that we're working in.
Non habitat has been working on this for ages, for years, really looking at these continuums of land rights and understanding de facto tenure rights.
This is very important.
But unfortunately, there are people who are a little bit risk averse in the humanitarian sector who are very conscious of only really being able to provide housing solutions to people who could prove they had the right to housing and they were living there beforehand with the paper.
Those are not the people who are most vulnerable, the renters or the people who are informally occupying land.
Those people will fall out of a response that's focused so much on the formal title to land and housing.
Just a final point, um, There have been examples of responding to mass displacement with large scale housing production.
I'm afraid here, thinking back to what Emilia Says said on the opening day from UCLG, we've made mistakes about where social housing is located, and I'm afraid there are many mistakes about where IDP housing is located.
There are ghost towns of little box like houses that were constructed far from jobs without proper infrastructure, particularly in the Afghan context, there are examples of IDP settlements that never had access to water.
These places become ghost towns and there's an enormous expenditure on housing in places where it can't work.
I have to say finally, that this point is taken to the extreme in the refugee camp, which are purposefully located as far away as possible from jobs, from arable land, in most cases, from trade routes.
I'm afraid I'm going to be controversial here and contradict the high Commissioner for refugees.
Really don't think in many cases, you can turn a refugee camp into a city.
You might build something that looks like a house in a refugee camp, but unless people have freedom of movement and unless there's something for those people to do to earn a living, that place that might look like a city cannot become one.
I think if we're going to really change things, we have to get over this idea of putting displaced people far away from cities and from livelihoods and life and vitality.
We have to really rethink that and think about how we can include people affected by displacement in existing towns and cities.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We've had some really interesting viewpoints on this initial question and you certainly, doctor Lucy Earl, painted that picture of it indeed being a secondary, if not tertiary response.
I Mr.
Juan Caballero, I'm really interested to hear your view on this now.
Well, thank you.
Bill Change works mostly in providing technical assistance for resilient housing, and in post disaster settings, we are usually involved in natural disasters, not so much in political ones or war related, but there are some things that I think do translate and, You know, I can't stress enough the value of prevention, and in terms of natural disasters, you know, better engineering, better planning, better architecture will go a long way to avoid the problem.
In the other side, I guess, better diplomacy, but that's not my field, so I'll stay out of that for the moment.
Um, In terms of reconstruction, I think housing sometimes is treated as a secondary item.
Yes, I do agree mainly because of the political issues, but also because it's perceived to be hard and expensive and difficult to do.
But I would argue that the temporary solutions or the other intermediate steps before permanent housing are also hard and expensive and difficult to do.
Then what happens is we spend a lot of time bringing shelter and temporary solutions and have to go through all the difficult and expensive moves to do that, and then that's what we do.
And once we finally do that, we do that late and that becomes the only thing we can do because after that, we have to move somewhere else and there's another disaster somewhere else, and then people are left with that temporary incomplete solution.
And our experience shows that if you bypass that as much as possible and move to the permanent solutions when you can because sometimes there's the political reasons that you can't.
But when you can, You mostly have to go through the same moves and expenses, and you might end up with an incomplete permanent solution, but I would rather have an incomplete permanent solution that somebody can then complete on their own continue with than a complete temporary permanent solution.
So Do the words temporary and complete go together? I'm quite interested.
Excuse me.
The words temporary and complete? Yes.
Can they be coupled? They could be coupled, absolutely.
But what I'm saying is try to move as fast as you can into the full solution into the permanent shelter slash housing solution.
Definitely it's a matter of prioritizing and allocating the necessary resources to do that, not just economically, but also in terms of political will.
People can rebuild easily.
So we've seen in disasters, what happens also sometimes is that the most affected people, the housing that gets destroyed first is usually the housing that some segments of society wouldn't have wanted to be there in the first place.
Then it becomes an opportunity to plan better, to relocate to, okay, we had a slum there.
Now we can do this better, we can build back better.
So sometimes we run into a situation where perfect becomes the enemy of good because we want to do this so well, because we want to do this so well planned, because this needs a lot of resources, then people spend years waiting for that perfect solution to come and it rarely does come.
In some cases, it has, but mostly, at least in the context we work in, it comes very late.
As I said, doing something good that's permanent, maybe even incomplete, but on the path to completeness, I think is a better approach.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Now, Executive Director, when I look at this question, it feels a bit obvious, but it's clearly not obvious because we have a situation where housing is not primary, is it? It's not a primary response when it's a crisis situation.
Can you explain your thoughts on this from your experience? Yeah, thank you.
I think the previous speakers they already pointed out two very critical aspects of these discussions.
But I want to dip to dive a little bit deeper and look at how the distribution of funding in labor is oriented.
So I think there's a major mismatch between the humanitarian and development funds, funds that are allocated for these two sectors.
Humanitarian funds received by the UN, by NGOs, international NGOs, et cetera, they haven't been designed to provide housing.
It's life saving, it's immediate assistance, and so on.
Then you have the development funds that some flow through the UN organizations that are in the intersection such as UN Habitat, we work in both humanitarian and development.
Majority of the funds go through the development banks.
Just yesterday we had in connecting the dots among this forum, we had the discussion with the IFIs.
One of the conclusions of this discussion is that really within the portfolio of the development banks, housing is very small, at the end of the day.
Meaning that the whole development sector has also not paid attention to housing and there are studies, I think habitat formanity has one study that looks specifically at international official development assistance and really the portion that's allocated to housing is small.
Countries that have been able to deal with housing in general, they do that with domestic finance.
Um, and those who are not able to orient or to develop a domestic finance system, they don't deal with housing, and then people don't receive support and they spread.
There is a structural issue that I think we need to fix somehow as a society.
The second aspect is, indeed, we need to have focus as Professor was saying at the beginning, if we don't have the focus on certain things, we will never develop these things.
So um, in developing humanitarian plans, even if the funding is not available, the thinking should be there from the beginning.
How we can strengthen the social capital? How can we strengthen communities? Because what Huang was saying, the incomplete permanent can be also called incremental.
And if we have community resources, and they find resources, the communities with a little bit of support, they can start an incremental process that is more permanent, but the focus needs to be there, this assistance, this component.
And I think even the way now the funding is designed, we can do that a little bit.
We can increase even without changing the whole structural issues.
Second focus is on the local governments because we need to have the structure, but we need to have the services, which is a critical issue.
If they are existing, these are the ones who are going to take the leadership and continue and so on.
A shift of the focus right now, even considering these major structural issues that we should be addressing.
The medium and long term.
I think we have been engaging in this forum with many conversations with this objective.
I think we can in the long term connect better and work better on this nexus.
Then finally, I think there is a thinking about housing that we have to embed in our minds, which is housing as an industry.
Housing is an industry that's an industry that has a very long value chain that can leverage big business and small business, all kinds of business, and if there is investment in housing, there will be a multiplier effect in terms of local economic development.
We are going to improve people's income and so on and generate a positive cycle at the community, but also it will have implications in the country's GDPs.
Understanding housing as an industry as an investment in this whole thinking when talking about recovery, I think it's critical because then we benefit out of that and money invested will generate even more money.
So many points to take there, the will, the determination, the restructuring, the reformation.
There's an awful lot to think about.
Indeed, every single situation is different, as we're all well aware of, as you mentioned, Professor Barakat.
I'm going to thank you all for that answer for that initial question.
Miss Gaba Beto, as UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of internally displaced persons, you're currently preparing a report on how reconstruction affects communities and IDPs after conflict or mass devastation.
Which context and if we look at Gaza and Syrian mind, for example, what should we be exploring in this dialogue? Thank you.
Thank you, Nabir this dialogue definitely builds up to the report that I'm preparing and I invite everyone to please contribute for it.
We've said it and definitely in Gaza and Syria.
Reconstruction is not only about rebuilding cities, but about rebuilding rights, rebuilding trust, rebuilding social cohesion.
Too often, what we have seen is that reconstruction can prolong displacement by basically excluding those affected from the decisions, overlooking, as we have been saying, housing, land, and property rights, or sometimes deepening already existing inequalities.
I would say four priorities for this dialogue.
First, it's been already said, I think a human rights centered approach to reconstruction, So we go beyond the technical aspects.
We go and concentrate on protecting the rights of those affected, including adequate housing, documentation, livelihoods, participation, access to services.
And it's already been said, I think, at the beginning from the outset of the process.
And all actors involved in the reconstruction process, including private sector, including contractors, they should adopt a rights based approach.
Um, to the process.
Second, it's been already said, I think, inclusion and participation.
The question is, who is shaping reconstruction? I think the internally displaced persons should be leading this process because they remain citizens and they are agents of change and their meaningful participation is not only useful for legitimacy, but in my a conviction.
It also gives sustainability to any reconstruction effort.
Third, the intangibles.
I think it's already been said here, the dimensions of reconstruction that involve other aspects like dignity, social cohesion, trust between not only communities, but between also the institutions.
It's always that social contract is broken most of the time.
Also cities remaining as spaces of coexistence, and futures, as we were saying, rather than divisions.
Finally, this approach to reconstruction as a transformative opportunity, I would say, not only about restoring what existed before, but addressing those inequalities and exclusions that often precede conflict and displacement and as I said at the beginning, support and create the conditions to prevent future crisis.
At the end, I would say it's not only about rebuilding cities, but whether reconstruction will allow displaced people to fully belong as equal members of society.
I think it's not said enough yet.
There is a pivotal role from municipal authorities.
They are the ones that are at the front lines of reconstruction and must balance always the urgent needs, as we have heard, with the long term recovery and inclusion.
Executive Director, I'd like your response to this.
There's a lot that has been described there, packing prevention, equality, the agents of change.
What's your response there to miss Gavira Butanul Well, I think we are in times of change.
It's an opportunity that we have right now and we are seeing, for example, a reform in the UN and I think this is an opportunity for us also to rethink this nexus and what is the United Nations role on that.
We've seen U and Haptat our own homework with our new strategic plan for 26 29.
Uh, we put housing at the center, but we have three major impact areas.
So we looked at poverty, understanding that, of course, housing is transfer of wealth and a critical condition for overcoming poverty, basically generate prosperity.
As I said, we speak about climate, of course, has been a predominant theme within this forum as well, the urban climate Nx, and we speak about reconstruction and recovery and we put as one of the three major areas of impact because we think that through housing our contribution, we can work also better with the UN system and have clarity of our role and overcome that.
Obviously, there are so many factors there.
I spoke about the banks channeling the development funds.
There are risks involved.
There are more risks involved in these areas than in the normal portfolio or other geographies delaying the banks operate in more stable situations.
I think this is one aspect that we have to look at and see how we can create buffers to minimize or mitigate this risk increase concessional funding for that because at some point, perhaps there's no uh, there's no other way around.
The reform of the international financial architecture that is also happening right now, we had the civil commitment and so on.
This is also a new opportunity because now we see that the financial institutions are mobilized and are also reinventing themselves in several way, reviewing their portfolio and so on.
Then of course, you have the whole humanitarian groups, the humanitarian groups dedicated to the humanitarian groups that have been also have been also underwater overwhelmed because less funding and also more challenges as we speak.
But my perspective is that this is also generating reflections of the role of the limitation of the funding, accessibility and capacity.
So just to say, I don't think we have immediate answers or short, short, short, short kind of for me, vision to overcome the structural issues.
But I do see major shifts or major opportunities for us to rethink and to reflect and to reposition ourselves in a different way.
Thank you very much.
I'd like to come to you to react to that, Professor Barakat, from your respective perspectives, where are we still getting recovery and reconstruction wrong today? So much to change it feels.
Well, I think in context, and I go back to the word context is very important in context where there's a degree of stability and a degree of strengthening of government like what's going on, for example, in Syria today.
Housing can be critical for the success of the government and the society, but very important, as was said earlier, the economy.
Construction is the most multiplier sector in terms of creating opportunities for jobs, skilled unskilled artisans, material, everything.
It really gets the society to move very fast.
The challenge is what also was referred to earlier, is that you will be handing resources to people.
And this is one of the reasons why misses Thatcher in the 1980s dropped housing as a state responsibility.
Why should some people benefit from the tax money made by others? And that collective society responsibility was discarded then.
Unfortunately, until today, a lot of governments see it politically incorrect to provide housing.
Now, I think they need to go back and not just because it's a right and the right agenda is very important, is very strong.
But unfortunately, in today's context, rights have been pushed to one corner and we have seen over the last few years how things have unraveled around the world.
But we need to remind them of the economic possibilities of this housing as an investment.
For the average family, it's probably the only and the main saving they make in their life is what they put in their house.
For the municipality, for the government, if you are providing it on their behalf, there is the added challenge of maintenance and sustainability.
We started this session by talking about creating good environments, housing that is smart into the future and so on.
This requires an immense amount of maintenance.
People have got to be able to provide for their service, for their maintenance.
And I think we need to go back to the very basics of small banks of housing reconstruction that are almost community based, where you can recycle some of these resources within the community so that those who make benefit and profit as a result of property value going up can subsidize those who need other issues, including service and so on.
I don't think we can ask municipalities to provide the infrastructure on their own.
The housing scheme and the beneficiaries of those should be part of this.
We should not forget the very important contribution expatriates can make in support of their own communities who unfortunately at the moment, they don't have avenue to channel the resources.
Ever since 911 and the restrictions that have come in on channeling finance, it's become very difficult for families to support each other.
If we have a legal mechanism that is recognized internationally, such a housing bank arrangement, then you can offer people a way to support, you can offer charities a way to support, we can offer religious endowments and particularly in Muslim countries, Zakat Mai, Wa which maintains the housing investment, we can offer them possibilities to contribute into this.
I think a very important distinction, particularly because of conflict is the role of women in all of this.
More and more women headed households exist.
They need to be able to own the deeds of the house.
They are under the pressure to manage as well.
But they also happen to be the best bankers and the best managers of any budget if you trust them with it.
So I think part of our shift in thinking, we should move away from this particularly in our context and our region, tribal arrangement led by men who are really embedded in the conflict into the head of the household, women who is protecting children.
The moment we start thinking about this as a family, then whatever UNICEF is contributing is important, whatever UNSR is contributing is important.
World Food Program is important.
This thinking out of silos is really the way forward.
I hope and I'm very encouraged by the last couple of years what habitat has been doing of bringing housing at the center of recovery.
It's absolutely critical.
It has been orphaned for many, many years.
But now if we bring it in at the center, we need to find channel to all the others and offer them the possibilities to invest into something that is sustainable, maintainable, and something that does not contribute to further conflict.
And finally, if I will just to remind our colleagues, there is the HDP nexus discussion that has now gone on for a number of years, and I think housing is probably one of those sectors that lends itself very well to the humanitarian development piece, nexus planning, where from day one, you take all these three elements and try and balance them one against the other.
Particularly, again, I go back in context where a conflict has been resolved or a political agreement has been reached, and a degree of stability is in place.
The danger, and if you allow me just to reflect on some experiences in the past, if you go to large imposed government contractor reconstruction, you could risk putting too much resources and then finding out that it doesn't work.
The best way forward is to rely a lot on small contractors, small initiatives, neighborhood by neighborhood, village by village.
It takes a lot more management, but I think the return in the future is much more feasible.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So many good points there.
Did you want to react to that? I think the housing, the safety, the equity, the collective responsibility, empowering women, and Lucy, I'm going to ask you about how you view this actually because you come from this different perspective in many ways.
I'm just going to say we should have a little bit of a clap because our executive director now has to leave before I continue this discussion.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thank you for your contribution.
I know very busy.
We appreciate it.
Yes, Lucy, I'd like to look at you because putting affected communities at the center of those recovery efforts is not simply as beneficiaries, but as active leaders in reconstruction.
Taking up Professor Barkats points there, please give me your thoughts.
I would say that the people who are least able to be part of their own recovery is someone who is in a refugee camp.
In many cases, you're in a refugee camp, it's very hard to leave unless you have connections and resources.
A few years ago, if I talked about a world without refugee camps, people would roll their eyes and look at me and say, Lucy, you don't have any political sense.
This is never going to happen.
Camps are there for political reasons.
There is now a movement of change around this and it is precisely to do with what Anna Claude has mentioned, with the changes in the funding landscape.
There really aren't the resources anymore to maintain people in camps for decades and that is what happens in some parts of the world.
It's incredibly expensive.
It's the permanent tempars that is bad not only for the individuals, for the communities, but also for the hosting country.
These resources going into camps that are ongoing maintenance of tempoarss rather than being invested in towns and cities? I have to say, when a refugee crisis occurs, I don't think that in the negotiation room, people are really honest and say, well, if we put up a camp, it's likely to be here for several decades and it's going to cost hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and you're not going to see the benefit of that.
How about if we turn that conversation around and at the start of a crisis or an existing crisis, rather than fund this camp for another ten years, why don't we find the money upfront? Close the camp, invest in the towns and cities close to those camps so that people can start to move.
You give the agency to the people in those camps, you give them a cash transfer for a number of years so they can really start to recover and build their lives and you support the local authorities who would then be able to think about how they could absorb these additional populations who would be able to pay some rent to begin with.
Hopefully, you would start up a housing market in places where people really want to live.
And what I think is interesting in the Kenya context is that at the governor level, so the subnational level, the governors of the states where the two big camps are located, they really want the refugees to be able to have some freedom of movement around the county so that they can precisely go into the local towns and cities and establish their businesses and their lives there.
So there's a real movement, I think, amongst subnational governments who see refugees and displaced people as an asset, not as a burden, and as people who can potentially build lives and even eventually build homes.
I think we have to get out of this temporary mindset.
As the executive director said, we need to break down these barriers between the humanitarian and development.
I do believe that although it's a very critical time for most of us in this sector, this is actually a moment to start doing things differently and start shifting our mindsets.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I like that refugees as an asset.
Now, Juan, I'm going to come to you.
The challenges, they become even more complex, don't they informal settlements and crisis affected communities.
Bill changing, focusing on disaster resilience.
How does that reality of informality shape your strategy? We deal mostly in informality.
So I don't say I wouldn't say it shapes our strategy.
It's just the reality we have.
It's it's the majority.
It's the majority.
And our strategy has always been we advocate in reconstruction and in preventive home improvement, we advocate for homeowner driven or, you know, very close to the community decision making.
And, um I think it's been said here.
It's about agency.
It's about shifting power to the people who are in the houses.
And by the way, when we work with families, with people in homes, 80% of the people we interact with are the women who lead those households, even if the title or the property is in somebody else's name or they don't have any title or property.
It's usually with women that we have to deal with because they're the ones taking care of the issue.
And I So what we have found, even in the most affected populations, even in people who are in a really difficult situation, trusting them to put money in their hands and put decision power in their hands with the adequate technical assistance information and guidance, but not replacing their decision power works wonders.
And yes, I would much rather have somebody with a monthly stipend contributing to the rent market in the community and enabling people to put a second story on their houses so that they can rent it out to them, then being a SRI tent camp a kilometer away from the city.
It's, I think, economically much better for everyone and it will promote a healthier construction environment that can be seen as an opportunity.
It is opportunity.
I think housing is one of the few things that we can find that everybody can like.
Maybe you don't believe in climate change, maybe you don't think that a Many things, you know, the shifts of energy to electric or you can disagree with many things politically, but housing is something that everybody can agree on.
You can come to it from very different sides and better, more and safer housing is something that everybody wants.
So I think it's a very safe investment.
It's very safe to put money in people's hands so that they can improve the quality of their housing or find their own housing or move to somebody else where they can live happier.
Than having people not making decisions and trying to make decisions for them.
So to us, it's about agency and being able to do things as close as possible to the people who need them.
Well, listen, you won't believe it.
We've run out of time.
It's been an absolutely fascinating discussion.
I want to thank very much all our panelists.
Please join me in a round of applause for a Professor Sultan Barakat, miss Paula Gabri.
I can't even pronounce this.
Betancourt, doctor Lucy El, English, obviously, that was very easy.
Mr.
Juan Caballero, and miss Anna Claudia Rosbach.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
I also want to thank you the audience here in the room and the online participation that we're getting and contributions through Slider that we will be looking a little more closely at.
At this point, I'd like to invite all the panelists to please leave the stage.
Thank you all.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now, we are going to transition into our next dialogue session and one of the objectives is not only to hear from our experts and decision makers onstage, but also to understand what priorities, concerns, and solutions are emerging from the wider community engaged in this discussion.
We're going to take a little moment to reflect on some of the audience inputs on Slido that we have received through this first discussion.
There's the QR code there on there, and I I think we have had some reaction that we're going to get through in a minute.
But actually, it'd be great to have a few of your reflections.
That was a really interesting discussion, wasn't it? Your Excellency? It was fascinating.
What were your thoughts? Yeah, definitely.
That was very fascinating discussion with a panel is coming from diverse backgrounds.
We have heard perspectives of international organizations, academia, civil society and all were quite enriching to the substance of the discussion.
The key messages that we have heard I seen from the panelists were they in common regarding the context.
Each context is different, regardless of the occurred because of the man made disasters or natural disasters.
But at the end of the day, the suffering site is the people themselves and all solutions for this crisis should be human centric, take into account not only to provide a physical space for the people to live in, but rather also to provide an enabling environment for them to live in dignity.
Therefore, I think my first key takeaway from this panel was that each context is different.
But the second key takeaway was that each context the starting points in each context is also different.
Like the crisis happening in some countries that are considered to be less capable of recovery rather than those who are better positioned and better equipped to get out of the situation.
The third is, of course, international solidarity to support these contexts to be coped with as soon as possible.
Therefore, I think it was very interesting discussion and definitely looking forward also to have the audience's views to be reflected upon.
Had some results through actually and the question that we asked was, what key topic should we make sure to address today? The results are interesting.
In top place, we've got the support, the recovery of Gaza with no delay.
Quite a substantial number of the audience have supported that answer there.
Double standards in dealing with conflict recovery and reconstruction, that's scored quite highly, but second is actually respect and enforcement of international law equally, which is interesting.
Others on our poll is the toll of wars on our planet.
Um, housing for the next generation, seen as very important as well.
What is important for the youth? We have, over the course of this week, specifically focused on the youth as well.
Are we asking them, that is the next generation, they have to take what they inherit forward.
Important to look at their views.
Advanced support for refugees.
Obviously, we've heard a lot about that this morning.
Managing returns and re inclusion, and reconstructed template projects.
Obviously, a lot of lessons learned over the discussions here.
You can talk about that, can't you? Lessons learned, there's been a huge recovery and reconstruction process here.
Yeah, definitely.
Looking through the prevailing topics that the audience are selecting for us, I think they are also very much aligned with what has happened here in Azerbijan and what we are going through for the moment.
That is a huge scale recovery and reconstruction activities.
Mr.
Hussein already talked about it in only one region of Azerbijan out of 12.
Um, seeing what I was referring to when I said that the context is different and starting points.
There are also some unique challenges that every country and every context is experiencing and for us, one of them is, of course, land mines.
So you can start recovery, you can start reconstruction, but in order for you to start the process, you need to have an enabling environment.
Here, we face as a challenge in Azerbijan is also 1.5 million units of land mines that needs to be cleaned up before you start the recovery and reconstruction.
That means you may be financially very well equipped.
You may have your political enabling environment in place like having a peace agreement or having a ceasefire, but you cannot start your recovery because of this fact of having land mines in the area and you cannot enter.
Um, but what we have built as a template, I think in the last few years, spending around $15 billion since the end of the conflict and spending around 25% of the state budget every year.
Azerbaijan has put a quite good example for the world, countries suffering from this, that if you build from scratch, you need to build a building back better concept here, we have heard also from our panelists, is quite applicable in this sense as well that whenever you recover, you can recover it better by having all sustainable urban solutions, climate resilience, city planning, and other standards that are necessary.
Had some more.
The polls are moving here.
This is quite interesting to the support of the recovery of Gaza with no delay, that's getting a lot of support.
But there's some other points that we can see here, the misalignment of donor funds allocation with housing priorities as more funds are allocated to livelihoods and cash interventions with no evidence of impact in displaced persons.
As the world, obviously, we read of stories, we hear of stories of that misalignment.
That is definitely an issue.
And also the framework to guide reconstruction in developing spaces such as Africa and elsewhere, very specific to very specific continents and those areas can't necessarily take those templates, can they? Exactly.
I think regardless of the conflicts happening in any part of the world, there are certain preconditions that should be met in order for you to start the recovery and reconstruction that are needed by the people residing in these areas.
And coming on top of that is the finance, the means of implementation that you need to make sure and we have heard also from our panelists about this.
Innovative source of funding is very important that we should be thinking about as Madam Anna Claudia Rosb talked about housing as an industry that can also be a source of additional funding.
But the second most important, of course, is how you engage with international actors like MDBs, multilateral development banks and other stakeholders that can be considered as a potential source of funding.
Well, listen, we had a lot of support from this audience about G.
G, we will be hearing from the Palestinian minister in our next panel.
We're also going to be exploring more in that second panel to allow the audience to contribute, please do continue your contributions.
They're very important to us today.
I think we are going to move on to our next panel, actually.
Thank you again for those comments.
Thank you so much.
I thank also Professor Barakat for summing up.
I the points that have been made by the panelists.
Now, we move on to our second panel, which will focus more directly on implementation, scale, and the practical challenges of reconstruction in context affected by conflict, displacement, and devastation.
Please join me in welcoming our distinguished panelists to the stage.
His Excellency, Mr.
Sami Hijab, Minister of Local Government of Palestine, His Excellency, Mr.
Imad Al Masri, Deputy Minister of Public Works and Housing for Syria.
Madam Ayana Shulk, chairwoman of the committee for the Organization of State Power, local staff government, Regional Development, and Urban Planning and Parliament of Ukraine.
Mr.
Ming Jiang, Global Director for Urban subnational Finance, Tourism and Disaster Management at the World Bank.
I'm Madam Hugui Daniels, Deputy Director General for Operations and the International Organization for Migration.
Welcome to all of you.
And as we begin this next discussion, we invite the audience once again to participate through Slido.
Our next question is now online.
What are the biggest bottlenecks preventing large scale housing reconstruction today? Thank you.
I nearly forgot my microphone then as well.
Just a message to the panelists, you can put the microphones right close up to your mouth.
I hope everyone's got their headsets as well because we will be needing those.
Thank you all very much for joining me during this discussion.
To open this second discussion, I'd like to start with the question of scale and delivery.
Let me first turn to Mr.
Zhang and miss Daniels.
What does it take to deliver housing recovery and facilitate returns at scale and speed? I'll start with you, Mr.
Zhang.
Thank you.
Actually, I'm very happy to share the stage with some of our clients that we have been working with together.
I think this housing at the post disaster and the post crisis recovery is really critical element.
I think in the previous session, there's a lot of strong emphasis how critical this whole housing recovery is.
Over the years, we've been supporting some of the countries working on the housing recovery and on the scale.
There are some very useful lessons that have been learned.
One of the things actually working very closely with Ukraine through the Hope Project on the housing recovery.
I think this whole transparency process and try to especially where you have to start with repair that can have quick result.
That's important to have quick win.
I think so people can see the results immediately.
In Ukraine in the leadership of the government, we work with them to set up this digital system where families have damaged house can apply, and they can transparent prioritize this system, which quickly get to the results on the ground.
I think the other thing that we can see is the owner driven house where you have lower density owner driven approach.
Rather than you have a centralized contractor system, you do the owner driven approach that has been very successful across different parts of the world.
Over the longer term, it's a little bit more difficult where you have a dense population.
You have a multi story multifamily building that you have to go through the contract process and that usually takes a little bit more time and you need to building the capacity over time, and in the post disaster context, where countries like Turkey, Chile, they had prearrangement for post disaster reconstruction.
When the disaster comes, you don't need to go through the contractor processes.
Again, you just have the contractor ready has been important.
Sorry, I'm talked too long.
Just two more important points.
The role of local government is really important in supporting the families and supporting the municipal infrastructure and also the community base, especially rebuilding committees quite important.
I just stop for now.
Thank you very much, Zhang.
Miss Daniels.
Thank you very much.
We heard a lot in the first panel about what's needed in terms of the enabling environment.
From IOM's perspective, going to scale is really about how we think and how we invest.
We've been a champion agency on exactly this, the solutions agenda to internal displacement.
We've seen a couple of things.
We've learned a couple of things of what needs to happen.
So when we think of housing, we often think of how many units have we delivered, but we have to go beyond counting the number of houses.
We really need to focus on, are these houses linked to land tenure? Is there security for people living in these houses? How are they financed? What's the role of local governance? So it's linking the buildings with the systems that are required to take it to scale and not just for going to scale, but for it to be sustainable.
We've also seen that we need to rethink how we do assessments.
Typically, what we do is count the number we, I mean, as a community, we count the number of buildings that have been impacted.
But it's not just about counting damaged buildings, we need to speak to the people, what is it that they need to be able to stay and the rights that they have to stay there and what they need to recover.
This means we have to invest in land registries, housing policies, the financial mechanisms because without this, it's not sustainable.
This is particularly important because when we're looking at displacement, the data shows us that people are being displaced to cities.
Displacement is an urban, is predominantly an urban phenomenon.
In our data, we see that one of the strongest enablers of livelihoods and self reliance is access to sustainable housing.
So we've already heard about how we have to engage municipalities and local authorities, and we've already seen what works from Uruguay to Ukraine to the Philippines.
And migration and urbanization, when done well, these are two of the strongest levers we have for sustainable development.
And in this particular context, when we put housing at the center and we treat it as the foundation of recovery, we can not only go to scale, but we know that if we invest early and we build systems that last, we're going to scale.
It's durable, we're upholding rights, and people are living in dignity.
We know what to do.
What we need is the political will to make this happen.
Miss Daniels, thank you for that.
I'm going to stay with you if that's okay and that message is loud and clear.
We're hearing it all the time about the political will because in many crises, the immediate focus is understandably on emergency humanitarian responses.
So how do we start thinking about housing recovery, reconstruction and return to the very beginning, given that we are also working on legacy systems a lot, aren't we? Indeed.
But we know and a lot has already been said about this, that housing is more than the building, which means that right from the start, invest in the livelihoods, invest in the services, invest in social cohesion.
We've also heard that housing gives us the opportunity to build back better and address all of these issues.
We have seen the It sounds really boring documentation, but just how important documentation is to owning the building, to having access to access to services.
Now, we've also heard a bit about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
What we've seen really works is incremental housing being flexible and that I doing it in a way that the people who are going to be living in these houses are actually involved in how they're built and how the systems are built around them.
Of course, financing is critical, can't be short term.
And we, again, in our experience have already seen what works with a neighborhood, whether it's with a neighborhood approach, whether it's with blended finance.
Yes, we have to involve municipalities and local governments, but that's not all.
There's a very vibrant diaspora, there is the private sector, there's insurance companies, and how we are able to finance the systems that support sustainable housing, as well as the housing themselves.
But what's most important is to be thinking about this from day one, right? So that's not we know that we need an immediate response, and in many cases, that response is temporary, but the solution doesn't have to be temporary and should not be temporary if it's truly a solution and investing in this early investing in this from day one.
Thank you very much for that.
Um Elaine, I would like to bring miss Julak into this now.
Your country is working through a lot of challenges at the moment.
What are your thoughts on what you've just heard, your response? A good day, colleagues.
Thank you, moderator for invitation.
I would like to say a few words about Ukrainian experience.
Ukrainian experience proves that the housing challenges cannot be delayed for future when the war is over, when active war processes finish.
We have to solve living housing issues as soon as possible.
I will give you some examples during the four years of war.
Russia destroyed more than 13% of the whole housing of the country a it affected more than 2.5 million houses, more than 70 million square meters.
At 5 million of Ukrainians have an official status of temporarily displaced persons, and half of them are allocated abroad.
It was necessary for us to find long term and short term solutions to solve housing problems.
First of all, the parliament a after the beginning of full scale war, implemented the mechanism of compensation for the damaged houses and implemented the mechanism to apply for such damages compensation and the victims obtained certificates for the property.
A lot of families already use this program, and the main challenge was finance, of course, and the first funds which we allocated for this program was from Ukrainian banks, which were from the international banks working in Ukraine, and we did this allocation, then money from Russia, which stayed in Ukraine were allocated to support the victims who stayed without house.
After the beginning of full scale war, the government implemented also the mortgage program and temporarily displaced active displaced persons or villion to participate in this program.
They have to make the first installment and the government will provide 70% of the compensation and government can support all the categories of the population which can pay a certain percentage for the mortgage.
And another important issue, the Parliament managed to implement and approve the law on housing where a lot of stakeholders will participate and we created new laws for real estate for housing.
We implement new standards for real estate, such as inclusivity, safety, and we and also implement various local housing strategies and national strategies and give opportunity to green to rebuild social housing, and we would like to thank our partner, European Investment Bank, which is working in five municipalities and five social areas.
They build such housing.
Also, we increase the responsibility of local and central government and try to modernize the economy of Ukraine.
The main issues in Ukraine are safety, dignity and be of our citizens to trust of citizens to government because they provide decent housing.
Thank you so much.
Now, the challenge of displacement and how to move beyond prolonged displacement situations is also central to recovery efforts in Syria Minister Al Masri.
What's needed to end displacement, and what is the role of the different stakeholders? Aid Assad Abakum and gentlemen, Thank you very much to the east of the Mediterranean Sea.
Since the very beginning, we had the singer Fairz singing, I have a house and a small piece of land, so I am safe.
I will not sell my land for any gold.
The dust of my country comes from paradise.
In our culture, the house means the safety, but now the government looks into housing as a strategic vision, which is a structure.
We need to revive life with all its historic economic and social aspects, but the challenges we are undergoing are large.
Any researcher in the field of reconstruction can co several challenges, and I believe that he will find all challenges in Syria.
Shortly, we started to have libération of all our lands, and we had political stability.
And after 15 years of war, we started to have a very tired economy, and we have a dire need for 2 million housing units.
In 1.3 are totally or partially destructed, and we need to have 700,000 housing units.
We have 4.7 million migrants and displaced persons.
And inside Syria, we have 7.2 internal displaced persons.
We have a lot of damage.
In Syria.
And today, the government has confronted the most important issue, which is zero camps and zero tents and looking for solutions include social housing systems and national structures is being laid down to reach a balance between supply and demand.
Now, any returnee to Syria when he dream of anything like the song of Beirus, I have a house unsafe, he may not find a house.
Even though he may have money to build a house, the infrastructure is destroyed, mines, fields are everywhere.
There are a lot of challenges, but we did what we have done, sorry, through the national housing strategy is to set priorities and to think creatively.
Creativity is the core of solutions.
Zero tense means we have camps in the northern part of Syria where before libération, it was housed by 2.4 million people in camps, which are catastrophic according to categorization, they threaten people in times of rain and war, and they are very poor and they are they look like slums.
After libération, about 1.1 million people returned from those camps and now 1.2 million people.
We had 225,000 families and we need 200,000 sorry, 2225 homes for those households.
Now in Syria, we are in dire need for the rain that we had in the first day in Beco.
We need huge finance for housing.
But what we are doing today is to resort to creativity, and we receive some support from some donors and friends, and we are in a challenge.
But all Sincere people have an opportunity to share with us as they share it with Palestine and Ukraine and all countries that suffered from wars.
What we do and through the national strategy for housing, and you have received some of the figures and Aro regarding the housing report, which has been bill in collaboration with UN habitat and local entities.
We started to thought about the return of 1.2 million people to their homes, but their homes are distributed in a vast area of land in Syria.
And we set a creative algorithm so that we could see how we've started to close camp by camp, and this will, of course, will take time and the capabilities, and we started to have the slogan of tent and the next year we will have camp.
Zero tent means that all those catastrophic tents are just a tent.
So we will try to help at least 30,000 families to return homes in scattered areas and we resorted to creativity and we used a matrix.
We were surprised that we had a base or a rule that each camp is exception, and each attempt is exception.
So we have a lot of variabilities.
Some people would like to return to their work.
So people would like to return to their schools.
Some people say, I don't have a home, and some people say, I started to have a larger family, so I need more than one house.
So we started to have creativity through algorithm.
And the more we solve the problems, the more we are successful.
And we are about to start implementing our plan of 010 for this year.
I'd like to say one thing.
Unfortunately, you.
We are short on time and I really want to talk to Your Excellency here, so thank you very much for those comments.
Now, all of you, I have to say, I do want to point this out.
All of you are just sitting on the stage, really amazing to have you here and hear the efforts that are going on in this area to deal with the crisis, huge numbers that you've mentioned there of having to rehouse and that thinking creatively.
I Your Excellency, you have had a huge amount of support in this room and we'd really like to hear from you, if we can in a few minutes about the scale and the destruction and displacement, which poses enormous challenges in Gaza.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
We are happy to be part of this very important discussion to share with you and the esteemed audience the suffering of Palestinian people both in Gaza and West Bank.
Talking about housing in Palestine, particularly in the Gaza strip is not only about rebuilding homes, but about restoring life.
Dignity and stability.
Housing is the true foundation for social, economic, and humanitarian recovery.
The aggression has caused massive destruction affecting approximately 372,000 housing units in the Gaza strip.
Around 60,000 units are partially damaged and repairable, while the majority have suffered complete or severe destruction requiring full reconstruction.
In addition, nearly 1.9 million around 2 million people which is the vast majority of Gaza population have been displaced.
In the West Bank, particularly in nin and Tolkaram camps, more than 10,000 housing units have been partially or completely damaged.
Alongside the displacement of more than 37,000 from camps and targeted areas.
Critical infrastructure has also suffered extensive damage, including water and sanitation networks, schools, and university facilities, deepening the humanitarian and development challenges.
Although housing is the cornerstone of recovery.
It is often treated as a secondary priority compared to urgent humanitarian needs.
However, experience has shown that genuine recovery cannot begin without providing safe and dignified housing that restores people's sense of security and stability.
Based on the lessons learned from previous reconstruction efforts, the success of any recovery process requires genuine international political will, sustainable long term funding, facilitated access for construction materials and equipment, effective international coordination, and the meaningful involvement of local communities as key partners in planning and implementation.
The government's recovery and the reconstruction plan is based on a five year framework, beginning with an early recovery phase that includes providing temporary housing units and rehabilitating partially damaged homes, followed by the construction of no fewer than 200,000 housing units.
Recommendation must not be limited to housing alone.
But should also include the rehabilitation of infrastructure, schools, hospitals, and water and electricity networks in order to build cities that are more resilient and sustainable.
In Palestine, we believe that reconstruction is not merely an engineering process, but a humanitarian and moral responsibility aimed at restoring hope to people before rebuilding stones.
In conclusion, the reconstruction of Gaza requires Aginian international partnership based on justice sustainability and respect for our people's right to live in dignity, leading toward a just and lasting peace.
I think on that note, we are going to say thank you to our panelists for sharing your insights, your experiences, and your perspectives throughout this discussion.
It was really, I mean, passionate, interesting, human, all the words that we expect to hear from all of you on this stage.
Please join me in thanking His Excellency Sami Hijawi.
His Excellency Iad A Masri, miss Elena Juliak, Mr.
Ming Zhang, and miss Ugochi Daniels, all really fantastic.
Thank you.
I do want to remind you that we have a session on Middle East crisis and global urban and housing impacts at midday in this room.
So please do stay on for that.
We haven't had as much time as we've wanted, but it has been fantastic, thank you all very much.
Thank you so much.
To help us to conclude today's dialogue, we'll now return to some of the broader reflections and messages emerging from the discussion.
I would therefore like to invite Professor Sultan Barakat back to the stage to summarize the key takeaways from today's discussion.
Professor, the policy is yours.
Thank you very much for being possible really to summarize what has been a fantastic discussion.
We've heard really wide and broad and open opinions on the issue.
But let me attempt.
I think number one agreement of this dialogue that housing is central to people's existence, dignity, health, socioeconomic, family relations, livelihoods, and therefore, it justifies the effort.
We all must invest in trying to think, how does it recover in the aftermath of conflict? But also, how can we rebuild better? It's not maybe sufficient and we've heard this message coming out a few times to simply reconstruct.
But we must reconstruct with a better vision into the future.
Also important was the message of prevention.
Prevention, as in supporting the respect of international law, housing as a civilian infrastructure should simply not ever be targeted in a conflict.
This is what the law says, and this is what we seem to be affirming.
The best strategy to move towards reconstruction is to prevent destruction in the first place.
We also heard quite a few times the issue of context.
In order to move the policy forward, we must really avoid talking in general about housing reconstruction across the globe, but maybe in specific context because as we've heard in the last panel, the existence of political will for the implementation of any housing reconstruction is incredibly important.
If the government is not behind the scheme and not willing to invest in it, it's very difficult for housing to gain any traction.
We also emphasize housing as an asset.
It should not just be looked at as a subsidized contribution for the most vulnerable, but also there are people who may make some benefits out of housing reconstruction.
There are different layers of beneficiaries, some who may be able to invest in their own housing but then make it available for others as a rented property.
And the most important in all of this was the issue of documentation, which was emphasized again and again.
People need to have access to rights of tenure, to their clear documentation.
And as you can imagine, in the aftermath of conflict, this becomes a major challenge.
We also emphasize the gendered nature of housing and the role women play in particular at the household level and the need for us to shift the discussion from individuals to families and maybe try to see what women and what other contribution towards protection of children and women can be added to the housing sector.
The need of innovation.
It was brought up more than once.
Innovation not only in terms of financial mechanisms, but also innovation in terms of solutions and innovation that takes you into sustainable reconstruction, sustainable housing maintenance, future of stability.
To get there, we talked about quite a few challenges and some that were highlighted from the context of Azerbijan and Syria, particularly important, the existence of land mines and the fact that areas may simply not be accessible before you invest a lot of money and effort in clearing those territories first.
The importance of international solidarity and standing side by side was again emphasized the importance of working out of our silos and zones of comfort.
If we are focused purely on humanitarian responses, that doesn't mean we should ignore the future need of housing because it's not going to go away.
This is what will be on people's minds from day one, and it is a challenge for our humanitarian response to design it in a way that takes into consideration people's aspirations as we move forward.
And that, of course, reflects also on the financial institutional architecture that exists to support housing and what global financial institutions can contribute and maybe the added risk they need to take in order to create funds and possibilities that can respond to the real needs and not necessarily in ideal circumstances.
But they have to be maybe seen as part of investing in peace and peace building and may not always have the same financial return as normal.
Finally, I think the whole idea around responsibility was brought up a few times and maybe it takes us back to where we started in terms of context.
When you have a stable state, it is the state responsibility to ensure the well being of its citizens and therefore maybe drive its reconstruction with a clear vision, clear agenda.
But under the circumstances of emerging from conflict, and given the scale of the destruction in most of those contexts that we heard today, it will be practically impossible for them to do it single handedly.
They do need international support, they need the support of the private sector, and we have to think in a very imaginative way, including, I think, maybe focusing more on creating an ecosystem that allows for the reconstruction of housing rather than one strategy.
So that you can use the state, you can also employ whatever the private sector is able to do.
You can employ the construction sector, which we heard the importance of small contractors.
The availability of building materials, that is absolutely critical.
How you can support to make sure that materials are available within affordable prices.
And finally, I think, again, there was a lot of emphasis and maybe acknowledgment of the role habitat can play in all of this in terms of an agency that can bring together a lot of actors in a sector that has been until now largely marginalized and pushed aside, but we now recognize how central it is for sustainable recovery and peace building.
Thank you very much.
I want to thank again all my panels here today and thank you professor there, and thank you, over to you for your final words.
Thank you so much.
It was really very lively discussion.
I think we have heard as we have since the beginning of the panel was saying each context is different.
We have heard exactly from first hand practitioners how these context is different.
The solutions are common, that we have identified some of them, but I'm sure being creative, we can find out even more.
Thank also, Professor Abakat for his takeaways on the notes and once again, gratitude to our panelists for this very enlightening discussion.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, everyone.