UN-Habitat Arena - Practicing Housing at the Centre of Crisis Response (WUF13)

Dear guests, allow me to wait just a couple of minutes for one of the speakers who's been very busy in the Azerbajani Pavilion, so you might be just a couple of minutes late.
In the meantime I Excellencies, distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends.
It is a real pleasure for me to welcome you to this cross regional session titled Practicing Housing at the Center of the Urban Crisis, the Crisis Response.
My name is Ana Suave, and I'm heading the Azerbijan office here in Baku of habitat.
I have the pleasure and honor to be your moderator for this session.
As we start, I would like to invite you to consider grabbing some headsets as One of our speakers will be speaking in Spanish and another one will be speaking in Azerbjani if I don't convince him that his English is nearly better than mine.
As regions affected by conflict, displacement and climate related risks and disasters, housing has emerged as a central pillar of effective man made crisis or natural disaster response, social stability and long term recovery.
Beyond the immediate provision of shelter, housing plays a critical role in restoring dignity, safe return, fostering social cohesion, reconnecting communities to services and livelihoods, and anchoring sustainable urban development.
We have designed this cross regional event in the arena to bring you the experiences from the Arab States, Eastern Europe, and specifically Azerbijan and Latin America and the Caribbean.
To examine how housing can be operationalized as a core component of crisis response.
While each region faces distinct challenges, and you will learn more about it, they share a common need to move beyond short term humanitarian assistance towards integrated, inclusive, and resilience urban housing solutions.
The objectives of this session to showcase and exchange cross regional practices that provision position housing at the central for crisis response recovery and resilience and to identify scalable approaches to bridge humanitarian action with medium to long term urban development.
Our neighbors here are very excited.
I hope you can hear me correctly.
I don't know how long the event will go on, but in the meantime, I would like to briefly introduce our panelists and invite them to the podium.
Welcome to Engineer Hassan Altas, Assistant General supervisor of the Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen.
Thank you.
Please, whose aim is to contribute to the development of the Republic of Yemen on its way to recovery by targeting multiple sectors, including humanitarian and health development, infrastructure, energy, and water.
I would like now to invite directly Mr.
Tugrul by Ramov.
Yes, I know.
Mr.
Toghrul is founder and chief architect of Buramuhit Baku based architectural and an urban design practice known for its contemporary and context sensitive approach to the built environment in Azerbijan.
His work focuses on architecture, urban regeneration, and public space design with a particular attention to the relationship between cultural identity, landscape, and modern urban living.
Would like now to invite to the stage.
Ramil, welcome.
Mr.
Ramil Kaag, head of the Department on Project Management in the liberated Areas State Committee on Urban Planning and architecture of the Republic of Azerijan Yes.
Being one of the hosts of Wuf 13 is in high demand.
He plays a key role in coordinating and overseeing urban planning, reconstruction, and post conflict recovery projects in Azerbijan, including the preparation of implementation of master plans, settlement designs, and integrated infrastructure initiatives.
Welcome, Ramil.
And now I would like to invite Her Excellency, miss Aide Marcia Bello, acting Minister and Vice Minister of Housing, City and Territory of the Republic of Colombia.
In her role and the ministry, miss Marcia Bello contributes to the formulation and implementation of national policies aimed at improving access to adequate housing, strengthening urban resilience, and promoting sustainable territorial development across Colombia.
And now, last but not least, I would invite His Excellency, Mr.
Christian Zamora, Mayor of Cuenca, Ecuador.
One of the country's most historically significant and environmentally progressive city.
An architect and urban development practitioner, by background, Mr.
Zamora has promoted initiatives focused on inclusive public spaces, sustainable mobility, environmental management, and the protection of Cuenca's rich cultural and architectural heritage, for which the city is internationally recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Thank you very much.
I would like now to hand over the microphone.
To engineer Hassan Alatas who has notoriously made significant long term investment in housing and infrastructure and public services across Yemen.
I would like to ask you, from your experience, how can large scale reconstruction funding be better sequenced and coordinated to ensure that housing investments move beyond standalone projects and contribute to durable area based recovery, local resilience, and sustainable urban development.
Please tell us more about your work in Yemen.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, Salmar Muhatuo Barkato.
At the outset, I'm pleased to extend my sincere thanks and appreciation to the government of Azerbijan for its generous hosting and to UN Habitat for organizing this important international event and for the opportunity to participate in this session, which addresses a matter of great significance, housing practice at the core of crisis response.
The Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen HDRBY was established in 2018 with a firm principle that housing and reconstruction investment to be truly effective must go beyond standalone projects and become drivers of sustainable area based recovery and sustainable urban development.
Over the past years, Saudi Arabia and through SDRBY has implemented more than 300 development projects and initiatives across Yemeni governates spanning eight vital sectors, energy, water, transport, health, education, agriculture, fisheries, capacity building and development program with a total cost exceeding $1.1 billion.
From this experience, we have drawn several key lessons.
On how large scale reconstruction funding can be better sequenced and coordinated.
First, sustainable housing recovery must begin with restoring basic surfaces and infrastructure.
SDRBY therefore, authorized energy, water, and transport as enabling foundations, recognizing that housing without functioning surfaces cannot sustain communities or prevent secondary displacement.
Second, linking housing to livelihood and economic opportunity.
Saudi Arabia provided deposit and grants totaling approximately $12.6 billion 2012-2026 to stabilize the national currency and support basic commodity prices, directly improving living conditions.
Additionally, petroleum derivatives, grant exceeding $5 billion, supported electricity generation and essential services.
These economic interventions were designed to complement physical reconstruction because a house without economic stability cannot become a home.
Third, Ensuring institutional coordination among donors, local governments and development partners is not optional.
It is essential.
SDRB therefore has placed partnership with the Yemeni government at the center of its operational approach.
Recognizing the sustainable recovery cannot be imposed from outside, but must be owned and led at the national local level.
Fragmented funding leads to fragmented recovery while coordinating sequences where investments are aligned with government priorities informed by the local needs and harmonized with effects of donors and development partner is what transform financing from a set of isolated interventions into a coherent government led recovery process.
This model of structural coordination ensures that resources are directed where they are most needed.
Duplication is avoided and every investment contribution to a shared vision for Yemen recovery stability.
I think I will stop here and then maybe you will.
Thank you very much.
That actually makes a very strong case not only for integrated approach, but also integrating funding from different sources towards the implementation of projects.
I would now pass to our long term friend, Mr.
Amil Tganirov.
You have been actively involved in advancing contemporary and sustainable planning approaches linked to the Great Return Program.
In your opinion, how can integrated spatial planning actually support inclusive, resilient and people centric reconstruction? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Anna, for having me at the coziest venue of the Woof, I think.
It's a great pleasure.
Yes.
The challenge which we had in front of us was to rebuild the areas which were absolutely desolated during decades.
It was continuing desolation and destruction and to act properly, what we needed, first of all, was planning, proper planning of every single step.
Is the presentation on the screen? Change.
For those who maybe don't know, this is the context.
This is what we faced almost in every city, in every village of Garabs Azur, it was complete destruction of places, which used to be normal living places like 30 years ago.
So this is the point from which we had to start.
Of course, we needed to ensure safety and here is the answer to the question, why integrated planning is important.
In order to start building on these areas, we needed to ensure that these areas clear from mines and weapons and et cetera and then to plan phase development of areas and to ensure gradual return of people again by phases, people who used to live in these areas long time ago.
Here you see on the example of our master plan, what is the plan, we structure our work? The master plans are designed for 20 years perspective.
In the master plans, we put phasing, we add mobility systems, linked green spaces, and all social infrastructure.
We take care of the whole land and we build their phase development based on the master plan.
Master plans act as roadmap for development of every single settlement.
Here is again on the example of Adam here how we visualize the development.
Those are just a few examples of residential development of public spaces.
What we paid attention first, of course, is residential development, housing, social infrastructure, schools, and of course, public spaces.
We introduce more greenery than it was before in these cities and we take this as an opportunity to ensure very high level of greenery per person in every single settlement.
In order and one very important thing is that our planning process is not only planning in terms of zoning, but also architectural creation of architectural image, architectural style for cities, which is very important because we are dealing with the cities where repatrans are going back.
So it's very important to visualize for them how the places where they're going back, how these places will look like.
Here is one of the examples how we try to keep the memory of the place.
On the left, there is a tea house in Adam City.
It's not actually a historic building, but it was a building which was very important for the people of Alam.
It was a tea house.
It was, I think, inspired by some Chinese architecture, but people from Adam liked it and we received a lot of requests from them that they want their tea house back.
And that's why we integrated this tea house building in the Central Park, which is on the right side, designed by Netherlands company, Ora, and now construction of the Central Park and tea house has started.
Even this one example is very important for bringing memory back for the people if we are talking about this scale of destruction.
These are the results.
We see on the left side the residential neighborhood.
First one which has been completed, four more are under development, two under construction and two more will start soon.
Just in this neighborhood, more than 1,200 families will leave and in total, Aldam City we live more than 20,000 people in nears perspective.
But Aldam is just one of the cities, there are 12 cities, but I just picked one city in order to fit the time and in order to show you an example.
There are also an example of transport project, railway and transport hub, actually First example in Azerbijan when there is an integrated transport hub for railway and for land transport.
Of course, Moham Center, a new one.
It's a cultural building.
It's a community center for the people dedicated to national music of Azerbijan closely linked to his album.
Here are some other projects, also restoration of the historical building, which is also very important.
Restoration of historical heritage is another important thing which we do not separate this process from master planning.
It's something that is very linked to each other and And yes, this is a broader picture just to finalize.
You see Agdam.
You remember the first slide, which was absolute destruction and now you see one neighborhood built, one more is being constructed nearby, and on the farther horizontal, you see surrounding villages.
This is how we develop step by step.
Together with all stakeholders, together with the repatrans, we're really proud that today to compare previous World Urban forums, previous national Urban forums, when we mostly were presenting our projects, our plans, now we are proud to present what we have delivered.
But of course, this is just the beginning.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ramil.
Actually, I feel very privileged in the last two years and a half to be able to witness this progress.
Every time I return to these areas, I can see new buildings, new schools and new facilities, and a lot of people.
I must compliment to you and your department for the hard work.
I'm actually very proud today to have a very diverse panel and linked to Ramil's work.
There's also the fact that Super, the State Committee on Urban Planning and Architecture, has successfully partnered with international and national design companies and bureaus.
We have here, Mr.
Tgruul who works for Bur Mohit, who's working very closely with Ramil on the implementation of a number of projects in Harbach and Iadanzur.
Toghrul, over to you.
I would like to know how you and your colleagues of Buro Mohit have addressed the challenges of translating the national, obviously post conflict recovery and large scale resettlement priorities and the Great Return Program into local, place based, and people centric solutions that I've been able to admire when visited your office.
Thank you, Anna.
Thank you very much.
If it is okay, I will stay for me, it's easy to show sometimes on screen.
My name is Togorb Ramov.
I'm cofounder Borowit.
We established Mi with Russell in 2020.
It was the same time when Kara was liberated and so most of our work is in Karaba and most of our work is urban planning, but also make architecture.
We redesign village that was fully destroyed.
After 30 years, what we saw every time when we go to design new village is image of some kind of this.
You can see a man who trying to find his house.
He lived there for a while before occupation, but he cannot find his house now.
You see Russell in his grandfather's house.
What was from that.
As you see how iconic historical buildings that was destroyed.
This is what we had after occupation.
And as you see, all village was fully destroyed and we have to make this village from zero.
When you understand that we need to uh, think about local standards, about economical financial part of these things.
You understand that villages cannot be how they was before.
We should rebuild them from zero, and it means that people cannot find their own native village and we should make something to make this village closer, more native for them.
And what keys we found is trying to find cultural and traditional heritage of the area for peoples.
For example, in this image you see Sal village in Latin.
We put on our renders carpets exactly from the Valley where Salva exists.
And when we published this project on the website, all people who know Salva Village, who lived in Salwah Village, they said that this is definitely our village because these carpet is from our valley and from our village.
We're trying to find this type of connections.
Landmarks.
Sometimes there are landmarks that you cannot understand from first time.
When it was first time in this village, we didn't understand anything about this stone.
But for citizens of this village, when we discussed with them, understand that it's very important stone and we tried to leave it on the place and we believe that he will stay safe and when citizens will go back to their village, they will see their native stone where they collect it and make some sticks.
Sometimes, you know, there was in Soviet period, new village, which history is going just before occupation for 40 years.
In this type of village, we try also to find some connection to establish some connections for locals.
For example, this is Hudafarn village and here we found that near this area lived Ashurbanii.
Now this village does not exist, but it was somewhere here and we decided to put a sculpture of this very important for Azerbijanese man in this village and make it proud for local peoples.
And also, you know, Azerbijan was some border of Soviet region.
It was not so wealthy country in Soviet period.
And so why we do not have a lot of information about villages.
We come to village, we just have one sometimes have just one source of information.
It's people's histories.
And we try to find it everywhere.
So we find this information in images of our artists and try to use that color codes, that information in our projects.
Thank you very much.
This is a.
Thank you very much, Tagrul.
It is very interesting how you successfully managed the collaboration and you actually had the possibility of discussing priorities with the communities, which is not always easy.
I would like now to hand the floor to Her Excellency, Mr.
Ade Marcia Bello, acting Minister and Vice Minister of Housing, City and Territory and Republic of Colombia B Vanida.
Welcome, can I ask you some questions? I know that your country has also been affected by conflict, but I would like to now to shift more on ecological disasters and resilience.
You have been engaged in advancing integrated approach to urban management.
In your opinion, how can cities best integrate risk prevention and climate resilience into housing strategies? Over to you.
Thank you.
Hello.
Good afternoon, everyone.
During the forum as a country, we have focused on showing the world the change of the policies on housing based on creating the cities, getting the cities ready so that they are more resilient and sustainable when it comes to the climate change.
The key answer we are working with from the public policies is the planning of the territory around the water.
We want the growth of the cities to happen in a non planned way because if we defended that, we would be lying.
We didn't have the answer to really satisfy the needs of the population, and we need to bear in mind that Latin America suffers from an urbanization which is a little bit different sometimes due to conflict situations.
The institutions do not have the capacity to react.
And to plan how to proceed in some cases.
So given these situations, our cities are informal, self managed and self built cities whose location is generally in risk areas.
That being said, from the planning sphere, we are saying that we can plan cities according to the flows of the rivers and not an artificial planning consisting of the limitation of borders or areas.
What happens is the cities need to be organized considering well where the river starts, and we need to know where the risk map is.
We need to take into consideration the existing settlements that tend to be located in areas that can be considered as risk areas.
And what we do is to accompany this process based on a habitat from the Colombian government, we are working on an integral accompaniment.
And the idea is to find answers to the housing problems, but we take into consideration the environment that already exists because it would be difficult for us to create a program on settlements because we don't have the financial capacity to do so.
But apart from lacking these financial capacities, these families are rooted Colombia has an experience of settlements, and as there is no expropriation, the families leave and then come back to the risk areas.
So it means creating whenever possible and opportunities for mitigation and it's important to build together with the communities this habitat.
We need to start by the legalization of the settlements.
We need to upgrade the dwellings.
We need to have a proper authorization of the building, we need to improve the environment as well around it and we are working in this regard.
Then we need to figure out how the city can grow.
Public services that we can use, think of the flows of the river and see the capacity of the basing to supply the service of water and to what extent the city can grow.
And in this regard, we are working, as you said, we have experiences in conflict situations.
We have a lot of people that have been displaced due to the internal conflict.
The displaced people have reached these areas of precarious settlements.
We can say that we are working simultaneously on the natural phenomenon and also on the internal force displacement.
Thank you very much.
I really appreciate also your touching on the importance of land.
Allocation of land, finding safe land is critical in recovery.
I would like now to hand over the microphone to his excellent Christian Zamora, Mayor of Cuenco.
Bien Welcome, sir.
This is a strong emphasis on balancing urban growth with ecological sustainability.
Citizen participation and resilience city management.
In your experience, what barriers exist to implementing risk informed housing policies and programs? I would like to focus more on the challenges that you face.
Thank you very much.
I would like to salute the panel in the first, and then the audience, thanks for being here.
I would like to share two specific points that I faced as a mayor when I became mayor three years ago, and you have to give any solution to housing problems.
And first of all, is how do you get houses accessible for most of the people? And there's two problems.
You got to either go far away where the land becomes cheaper, And the other one is that when you are in those rural areas, at least for my city, Cuenca is located in Ecuador, South America.
Cuenca is a world heritage city that we are really proud of.
And specifically, in this particular region, there's a lot of landslide susceptibility maps.
So you have the municipality has done all these um programs to see where you can build houses and where you cannot build houses.
But the problem is that in the rural areas, they have managed to do these specific maps, but those are very wide maps.
So you are not allowed to build houses in very large areas of the rural spaces of our city.
And what's the problem? The problem is, yeah, there is susceptibility problems there because of the soil, but not all the land is not susceptible of building houses.
So the first thing that we did in order to break this first barrier is we changed the law, the local law, and now people that want to build houses and they believe it's not in a susceptible area, they can make specific, you know, programs in smaller areas so they can have an answer if those spaces where they want to build houses are good or bad.
So if these, you know, soil problems get solved in specific areas, not the big area that it is supposed to have problems, So we allow those people with all these specific technicians and professional people that they say how to build houses in those specific areas.
So that's how we started to build houses, even though it's a big area that you were not supposed to build houses.
But that's how we break that barrier, and now they are building those houses.
So that's the first problem and how we face it and how we gave a solution so they can build because it is cheaper the land in the rural areas, and of course, they can get more accessible to houses.
And the second one that I want to share is how do you keep prices low, which is something that we all face in the whole world.
So we started, and we are now currently doing a specific program of houses where you can have their own electricity You know, it's sustainable for this specific, you know, now we are building a compound or 90 houses.
Right now, it's been built.
And how do we recycle water? So that keep prices low.
And of course, what we did is what I already explained in the first challenge that we had And we these specific areas that we were not supposed to build, we are able to build so the land is cheaper.
We are making this solar panel program so we can lower the electricity bill.
And of course, we have reuse water so we can make this sustainable and of course, how to keep prices low.
And I would like to finish the idea of what I thought that I would do, and it is actually happening.
For specific houses, for people, you know that you have to help them because of their economical situation, what we did is we as a municipality, bought the land, but we bought the land at the predial value, which is the lowest value it has registered in the municipality.
And we let the people buy that land to the municipality at that low price, not the commercial price, but the price that the municipality has.
In that sense, it's that how we lower the price, we are being sustainable, and we broke the barrier of how we can build houses in rural areas where the soil is cheaper, and of course, you were supposed not to build there, but because we did this specific programs to see how the ground is going to support the houses.
We were actually we were able to build the houses because we did this specific programs and things in order to let the houses be built.
Okay.
Thank you very much, very pragmatic approach.
I appreciate the fact that people when they're unhappy or they need something, they come to knock on your door specifically, so you need to be pragmatic.
We've got still 20 minutes and I would like to go back to my speakers, Engineer A Lats.
You've made significant investments in Yemen.
How do you see the future evolution of the Saudi development and reconstruction program in Yemen specifically? What long term vision do you have for it? We are very optimistic that our interventions, doing all these projects and programs will help our neighbors in In Yemen to develop their countries, to stabilize the situation, to bring recovery and development to all sectors.
I would like to add something that's of importance as I see it.
That's the role of the private sector and development, especially in housing.
In Saudi Arabia, we had very good examples all over the areas, all over the cities where the private sector has a major role, where the government would grant him a piece of land to develop.
And by doing development by the private sector, the value of the land increases.
And it's a win win situation.
He will be able to provide housing, to build housing, and to rent it with a reasonable price, and at the same time, he's gaining profit.
This is one thing.
Another aspect, we have to give importance to the people, the dwellers themselves.
They have to be part of the process.
We have a project with UN habitat where we are rehabilitating houses in three governances.
We just signed the agreement the other day with UN habitat.
In this process, all the inhabitants are part of the process where we train them to rehabilitate their houses.
So that's something they are becoming proud of.
We are building their capacity and they are getting jobs later on.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for actually sharing your vision for the future of the program and how you integrate it with the program also the government.
Thank you.
Ramil, since the very beginning when we started working closely together, I've been admiring how the Great Return program is actually set it's pace, especially through coordination of the different authorities.
This I think is one of the unseen aspects of the program.
I would like you to talk more about how was it set up as a unique process of coordination amongst authorities that don't necessarily are able to work together at such a pace development and how you set up also the structure of special representatives and how they coordinate with your institutions.
Can you give us more insight on that? Yes.
Thank you, Anna.
Regarding the coordination process, from the day one, before the program approved, before general plan approved, the first step was the establishment of the coordination headquarter.
It's a very interesting experience for creating of institutional framework because this coordination headquarter actually consists of all the government on high level, all the ministers and the relevant authorities responsible for utilities, mine action, and et cetera.
So there is a government, but at the same time, there is the same squad but gathered for particular task for the task of reconstruction of the area.
So it's very important that this headquarter was set up.
It was not a formal meeting of the ministers, but it is a real working mechanism.
Because under this headquarter, there are working groups on various subjects, including urban planning.
By the way, urban planning working group is the biggest one because everyone is dealing with urban planning.
Every institution is represented there.
Environment, economy, and et cetera, I also take part in some of them and those working groups, they meet monthly, but they work daily altogether, and they report to the headquarters on a monthly basis and those reports are being analyzed.
The process is always under control and this reporting system It is more flexible rather than official formal procedure.
It's a real procedure because as soon as there is any bottleneck, any problem, any slowdown, then the headquarter relevant people very quickly react to this fact.
At the same time, the institution of special representatives, this is another very important thing.
I think this is also could be one of the exemplary models because despite the fact that there is a local governance for other districts, other cities in Azerbaijan, and there is local governance for traditional executive governance for the cities which were liberated.
But apart from them, the special representative offices were created.
Now there are six, they cover the whole area.
They are doing, again, daily follow up of whatever happening.
Even if you look at their charter, they have very prescription of their duties that their duty is to coordinate with all authorities on the ground and to make sure that everything is going smoothly.
Actually, they are entitled officially entitled to deal with any of the process, to intervene, to ask to request.
This is very unique approach and this is very effective approach because they are dealing with the areas which are being built at the same time with the people who are getting back.
So they're dealing with the untraditional amount of work for the local governance, untraditional in terms of volume and in terms of specificity.
That's why I think this is also could be considered one of the models for post conflict administrative recovery.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ramil.
It's actually one of the strengths of the entire program and I hope that you can keep it as such.
It sounds like a situation room.
Um, yes, and I think it's going to be it's actually a model that other people should look into, and this is why we're here to learn from the different approaches.
To gruel, you spoke about how to interpret local identity and contextualize the designs of the projects.
How easy has it been for you to work with communities that have been displaced for some for 30 years, which is quite unique, but who have changed their needs over time, and when they now return from where they have been living in cities to mostly rural areas, but also towns in another city, they might have different needs from what they had prior to displacement.
Can you tell us more about that? It's very interesting to work with the community because it's very different and sometimes it's very hard, but sometimes it's very easy.
It differs from the settlement also.
In some settlements, people try to help you as possible.
In some settlements, they don't want to contact with you and you have to try to scratch them to have some information.
But You know, there are different age people things in different.
Older people would like to see their own village as it was before.
And they don't want any changes.
Younger peoples would like to live in more modern villages because they mostly live in Baku.
After occupation, they was moved to Baku or another Azerbaijane cities, and they grow as citizens, and they would like to see maybe some small multi story houses, not private houses.
Middle Age, it's more complicated because they remember that village, but also in St.
They understand that new h comforts, it's small bit and think a lot of.
But we try to work with them, discuss.
Sometimes we try to skip some information also because sometimes information before it can harm to the project can harm to the finished project.
Also, they sometimes don't understand what we want to do we speak a lot.
Sometimes it's easy to skip and then show them the results.
When they see results, they say, okay, it's more better than I think somehow like this.
Thank you very much.
Actually, building trust with people who have been displaced is one of the most critical aspects, but also one of the most challenging to share the vision of how they can actually re establish themselves in the areas where they want to return.
Thank you for sharing that.
Miss Marcia Bello, I'm What can you share with us in terms of very briefly, we don't have much time, but what kind of financial and operational models can support not only the short term, but also the long term recovery, but many times simultaneously.
You need to look at obviously immediate needs for relocation, for recovery, but also you need to look at the long term and you've done that, talking about land, allocations, and so on, you're done.
But what are the financing and operational model that you've adopted? If you can share a little bit more on that.
Bueno As my colleague from Ecuador mentioned, one of the challenges we're facing is how we can work on affordable housing.
The main principle as a country is to change the housing model as a result of a market need and transform it into a real right.
So to break with this structure is essential to get the participation of communities.
We learn from people every day.
They don't wait for the state to solve their housing.
People take it in their hands in any way they can and they solve their housing issues, and so they are completely self managed.
And so why not we support them in these solutions with all the technical support that might need.
From the national government, the housing project for those in need, we are going for this idea of self management housing models.
We are taking the example of models from back in the 60s where cities had support from the state.
Then in the 90s this change into a model based on a financial capitalistic model.
But we're trying to go back to families.
How families are managing their own housing, and then support them through subsidies, thus making sure they have easier access to housing because we only base construction on market law and regulmentation, then it's impossible to give them affordable housing.
We are also working on rural areas because Colombia has been going through some conflicts that depend a lot on the signing of the peace treaty that makes sure that people get land back.
And this means not only the land per se, but making sure this land includes services and housing.
We're always working with community.
We're not waiting for developers to build.
No, we're trying to get communities to be involved.
Yes, and a complex process, I can imagine.
Yes.
Mayor Zamora, I I'm sure that your office has also been involved in advocacy and awareness raising in terms of risk prevention.
Have you worked with partners on this? Can you tell us more about how you actually built better awareness amongst people in terms of risk prevention? That's a really difficult point because when you have people with not high income, they tend to build in our countries, houses in rural areas.
If you have these landslide susceptibility maps and they are not allowed, and if they do because at the end of the road, they start building houses, even if they are prohibited to do so.
So then it becomes a problem because they have no else no place to go.
And if you want to build a family, you need to build a house, and that's a problem anywhere in the world.
So if we have worked with specific institutions about this thing, we haven't.
I think that's a good opportunity, at least for us to see different models, maybe how to deal with this.
What we have come with is specifically this particular thing that I already told the audience in the first intervention.
So I think that, a good point is where to find these places in rural areas that are not susceptible of landslde and start working basically building houses in those specific places.
That's because we live in the Andes, we live in the mountains, because many or some people might be thinking like, white You just don't build in spaces like we have seen in Azerbaiyan that you have plenty of terrain.
But in our cities, because we are in the middle of a range of mountains, those places are not really available to us.
We have no plain spaces at all.
It's always in mountains, it's always close to places and rivers and things like that.
The geography is very irregular and that's something that we have to overcome with.
But I think that uh Maybe one of the things that I can say is we haven't had yet a specific help of institutions to solve these problems, but we have get by at some point to build houses in these places that we supposedly aren't be.
But we have done all these specific ground programs to see under specific construction tools, how to build in those areas that are rural and low cost.
And, of course, at the end of the road, being able to build houses for these people that they can have access to.
Thank you very much.
We have just a few minutes, and I would like to use them to give a big round of applause to our panelists.
Thank you.
I specifically would like to thank you all for sharing your expertise and your thoughts.
They're so important, especially from such a wide variety of positions of decision making, but also of being able to listen to the people that we're serving when planning, when delivering projects, when implementing.
Um, you have helped us to understand the complexities of understanding the context of planning for short term and long term reconstruction or relocations in both post conflict and post disaster settings and how it's important to ensure coordination amongst the different authorities and actually being able to implement a sensitive approach to the context and often an evolving political situation.
Sometimes we need to act when things are not necessarily settled.
Um, I would like now to acknowledge the support of our dear College Wil, who's Alshab over there, who has coordinated this event with the three regional offices.
It's not always been easy to get us all to work together and to coordinate.
We should learn from you, Amil, a round of applause for him too.
Thank you.
I would like to declare this session closed in time.
Thank you.