Roundtables - Women's Roundtable (WUF13)

Okay.
Welcome everyone to the women's round table.
And adequate housing for all women and girls in diversity.
My name is Allegra Balochi I'm the UN resident coordinator in Mexico and I will be the moderator for today's session, which we hope will be an action oriented platform to advance the right of adequate housing for women and girls, looking at gender transformative housing approaches, women's leadership and housing, and land governance.
We have 2 hours.
We're going to be hearing from many different voices, national and local authorities, activists, women rights defenders, urban professionals, academia, and it's really important to also know that the outcomes of this conversation will be part of the Wolf 13 Outcome Declaration.
We already know all the good ideas that will come from today have a place to go.
We have 2 hours and 14 speakers, and I really hope we can have some space for Q&A.
I will ask the room and especially women to do what women do best, which is show allyship and mutual support and try and stick to time.
Before we start with the panels, we have two panels.
We're actually going to have welcome remarks from a series of high level VIP invitees that we have here with us.
We're going to start with a high level welcome from Her Excellency, Amina Mohammed, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, and chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group.
We will have opening remarks from our host country.
Her Excellency Vajar Mova, Chair of the State Committee on Family, Women and Children's Affairs, and then from our host, also, Her Excellency ED of UN Habitat, Anna Claudia Rosbach, United Nations Un Secretary-General and Executive Director for UN Habitat, lots of titles.
To start us off, Dear DSG, if I can turn to you.
Thank you very much, Allegra, and good morning to everyone.
Your Excellency, Bajram Moordova, the chair of the State Committee on Family on Women and Children's Affairs, Excellencies here in the room.
My dear sister Anna Claudia, our Executive Director for UN Habitat, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, and more especially really just the sisterhood that is around this room.
A pleasure to be with you today at this round table.
I had an incredible session with the Women's Caucus and I want to say really appreciate that because that's given me the energy that's taking you into other rooms.
I'd like to thank Anna Claude and the team at UN Habitat for all the work that's been done this week.
As always, the UN produces really good speeches.
I'm going to be underscoring, I think here what you've all been speaking about for a week.
This is what happens when you come at the end of the week when most has been said.
But I think it's important to start with a simple truth that housing is where equality takes a physical form in our communities, our cities, and really influences the lives that we have.
For women and girls, a home can mean safety at night, privacy for their bodies and stability for a woman's children and freedom to study, to work, and to leave a violent relationship or build a life on your own terms with your agency.
When that foundation is missing, a life of fear is a reality.
Education becomes fragile, health and well being become precarious and decent work moves further out of reach for everyone.
Many of these rights are still denied.
Global housing crisis we've heard about all week, a crisis that is rapidly escalating, is not being experienced on equal terms across the world, women's rights to land, housing, and economic independence are all too often treated as secondary or denied in many cases just outright.
Women in informal settlements, migrant women are older women, women with disabilities, indigenous women, and those displaced with conflict face the sharpest barriers.
Lack often secure tenure, exclusion from finance and credit, and housing insecurity that leaves them vulnerable to violence.
But maybe I add one other dimension to this that is often silent and that's the mental burden, the mental health burden, anxieties that women are living with today.
Safe and affordable housing, again, we say it's not just shelter, it's protection, it's dignity and the foundation for opportunity and without it, inequality deepens.
With it, women can break the cycles of abuse and build resilient futures.
Every person in this room knows one of these women.
Some of you may even be that woman.
When I talk about gender based violence, I'm a survivor of that and I often speak to my teams about including people who've had that experience.
It be one that we're all vocal about, but it is important that you bring lived experiences into the way that we plan and we shape policy and implementation of it forward.
So we do know what must change from our Beijing Declaration and platform for action to the New Urban Agenda 2030 and the PC for the future, the international community has been unequivocal in recognizing what really needs to be done.
Women must have equal rights, equal protection, and equal access to that dignified life.
Housing, as we've said, is one of them, a place of peace, and so the challenge before us is not one of vision.
It really is about the implementation and succeeding in having that life of dignity.
Areas I'd like to again underscore because I've heard these as feedback through the days that you've been here, that gender inclusive and responsive housing policies, laws, and instruments, they have to be fit for purpose and we need to ensure that there is access that women have access to finance, to credit.
Also need allies on the ground and so the role of civil society is incredibly important and needs to be deepened.
They are often on the front line, feel it first and in many cases last and structuring that engagement in a much more inclusive way is important.
It includes our women's rights groups in this fight and particularly those in our indigenous communities.
Second, delivering better for women by closing the gender data gap.
This is something we have struggled with over the years.
I will tell you even on the SDGs, we have the aggregate data, but it really masks what's happening beneath the surface in countries, in communities and we have to do better by that.
Without it, we're not able to plan.
We cannot target the investments that are needed for women where they are most vulnerable.
That would be important across policy financing.
The third is we have to think about how housing is financed and for whom.
It does place the housing agenda at the core of what we speak about in terms of financing for the sustainable development agenda.
It's an integrated agenda, and I think that we need to talk less about financing silos.
It cannot just be about the urban agenda, everything else that sits within the context of the urban agenda, the infrastructure that is needed beyond just the homes will be important.
This new era of technology will require that we think about that as we build cities that are inclusive and leave no one behind.
We need accountability mechanisms that will be closely linked to the data that we talk about.
If we are not seeing, it will not be an agenda where investments in the right areas will be made.
Finally, ensuring women exercise real engagement over the decisions that shape urban life.
We've talked about that this morning.
It is the lived experience.
While we see many in vulnerable situations, it's so important that taking that agency is that how do we reflect better the lived experiences of women and their families and how to translate that shaping that policy, the design of urban dwellings and the agenda, and ensuring that mayors, senior public officials, community leaders are able to speak together.
I'd say underscore very much today the intergenerational conversation that needs to happen, the full life cycle for when one is born to when one passes, what is your space in that community and how are homes shaped for everyone.
When I talk about leaving no one behind, it is a very many constituencies and those in this diverse world that we have is a strength that is not a weakness.
Diversity is about those threads in our human fabric that must be pulled together and where they tear that we conde them and fix them in a way that everyone continues to feel a part of this.
That really goes to, I think the conversation about many of the environments that we live.
That are strained by conflict.
When that conflict ends the day after peace is also an investment in a reintegration of people into societies and that begins in homes, that begins in communities, that begins with establishing equality where people live a life of dignity.
We do have a really important opportunity here and a cloud at the helm of affairs that we just say women do it better.
We're really proud to have her as a leader and we can rewrite the historic wrongs that we see.
This is a moment of truth.
The Baku call to action must be clear that there cannot be sustainable development without a resilient city when women and girls are denied their rights to housing.
I hope the message travels out of this forum.
Our commitment in the UN is this incredible array of resident coordinators that we have around the world, half of which are women.
And lead teams that are yours.
The UN, we the people belongs to you.
Please put fire under our feet and we will be there to take this agenda forward.
Thank you.
Thank you, DSG.
Battle call for action, inclusion, and ensuring that we approach this as a lived experience and four very concrete priorities.
I now turn to Her Excellency, Bajram, Chair of the State Committee on Family, Women and Children's Affairs.
Thank you, Madam Moderator, miss Ana Claudia, Amina.
Distinguished participants, dear colleagues.
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers for arranging this roundtable dedicated to such an important and timely topic.
I believe that the key value of today's session lies in promoting an approach to housing not only from the perspective of urban development and social welfare, but also as a strategic element of gender equality, human rights, and inclusive development.
This right to adequate housing is one of the fundamental pillars of human dignity, health, security, and social inclusion.
However, systematic problems on a global scale continue to deprive millions of people to the full enjoyment on this right, especially women headed households, displaced women, elderly women, women with disabilities, and women engaged in informal employment live under conditions of greater weakness.
In cases of gender based violence, the lack of adequate and safe housing places, women before an extremely difficult choice, either to remain in a violent environment or to face the risk of poverty and homelessness.
This once again demonstrates that housing policy is not merely about the provision of living space, but also about human security, social protection, and fundamental rights.
Distinguished participants, it's particularly significant that today's discussions resonate with the priorities of the Beijing Plax 30 agenda for action and the new Urban agenda.
These documents promotes the development of cities and living spaces as more inclusive, safe environments that create equal opportunity for all.
For this very reason, the integration of gender transformative housing policies into urban development strategies has become especially relevant.
Experience shows that policies that appear formally gender neutral do not always produce equal outcomes in practice.
Therefore, it's essential to take into account the diverse needs and experiences of women during both the development and implementation of policies.
First and foremost, legal and institutional mechanisms at the national, regional and local levels must more effectively ensure women's secure and equal access to land and housing rights.
This approach should be reflected not only at the legislative level, but also in access to credit resources, social housing programs, financial inclusion, and social protection mechanisms.
Azerbijan has identified the promotion of gender equality as one of the key priorities of state policy.
In this regard, the law of the Republic of Azerbijan on guarantees of gender equality, which serves as the main legal framework in this field has for 20 years established ensuring equal rights and opportunities for women and men as one of the state's primary responsibilities.
I believe that Azerbijan's unique experience in this area may also be of interest and practical value for other countries and international organizations.
For the past six years, the State Committee, as the central executive authority coordinating policies and activities in this field, has presented annual reports to Parliament on the state of gender equality.
At the same time, the adoption of a new national action plan on gender equality also serves to implement policies in this area in a more systematic and result oriented manner.
At the same time, commissions and monitoring groups on gender issues operating under local executive authorities strive to mobilize community level capacities to protect women and girls from various forms of discrimination and violence, particularly within local communities.
Colleagues, the effectiveness of housing systems is measured by how will they respond to people's diverse needs, particularly in terms of women's safety, economic participation, and social resilience.
Therefore, it is important to consider the concept of the A economy more systematically when planning cities and living spaces.
Azerbijan also pays particular attention to these principles in its post conflict reconstruction and resettlement policies.
In the restoration of the reconstruction process carried out in the liberated territories, alongside the principles of safety for all, the creation of an inclusive living environment has been identified as one of the priority directions.
This approach is especially important in terms of creating safe public spaces, ensuring access to social services, and promoting community based development models.
One of today's key challenges is to consider housing policy in a more integrated manner.
Because housing security cannot be ensured separately from climate resilience, social protection, economic participation, and gender equality.
In this regards, joint partnerships are of particular importance.
The participation of women's rights organizations, civil society, and local communities also plays an important role in reducing such risks and developing adaptation strategies, particularly in the context of climate change, conflict and forced displacement, Taking women's needs and experiences into account in decision making processes allows for more sustainable and effective outcomes.
I believe that in our discussions, we should pay special attention to further improving legal mechanisms protecting women's land and housing rights.
Promoting gender sensitive urban policies and applying positive practices.
It is also necessary to keep under special focus the expansion of women's participation in urban planning and climate policy, as well as the strengthening of gender based databases and evidence based policy mechanisms.
I am confident that housing systems that take into account women's need and experiences can make a significant contribution to building more resilient cities, stronger communities, and more inclusive societies.
Azerbijan remains ready to continue supporting the strengthening of the international cooperation, exchange of experience, and joint policy dialogue in this area.
At the end, I would like to thank all of you for your attention and wish you productive discussions.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, Your Excellency.
Housing is a strategic element of gender equality, reminding us also of the very sad piece of data that the deadliest place for women is the home, but also for sharing the concrete example of Azerbaijan on what can actually be done.
Now I turn to Her Excellency, Executive Director of an habitat.
Thank you, Allegra, Your Excellency, distinguished delegates, colleagues.
It is a great honor to be here in the session alongside our dear Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed, who has been a gender equality leader champion and you demonstrated that in so many ways, including being this morning with the Women's Caucus and being here with us and in so many other fronts.
Um, Excellency, Excellency Bahar Mordova chair of the State Committee on Family, women and Children Affairs.
We discussed children youth yesterday, today we're discussing women.
You are standing firmly for the empowerment of women in Azerbijan as you demonstrated in your speech We spoke a lot about the global housing crisis, so the numbers are well known, 3 billion people with South living inadequate housing, more than 1 billion informal settlements, 300 million on the streets, homelessness.
But we also have to highlight that this crisis affects unequally much stronger than women.
Uh, the women face compounding barriers.
They face structural barriers, legal, cultural, and they are documented extensively by UN habitat and our partners.
We have been working with UN women strongly on generating evidence and documentation.
In a study from 2020, we found that in 80% of developing countries analyzed women are overrepresented in urban slums.
The barriers women face in assessing adequate housing are systemic, They are universal.
They include discriminatory inheritance and marital property laws that tie women's access to adequate housing to their relationship with a male relative, exclusion from land tightening and credit systems, and housing policies that are written as gender neutral, but in practice reflect and reinforce norms that uphold a power imbalance that continues to leave women behind.
The consequences of these barriers are serious and well documented.
For example, the lack of adequate housing increases women's risk of exposure to domestic violence as Her Excellency just highlighted, when they have no safe place to go.
In 2024, 60% of the recorded killings of women and girls globally were carried out by intimated partners or other family members, 60%.
This risk is especially acute in crisis situations.
We saw that during the pandemic.
The intersectional dimensions of this cannot be overlooked.
Even when some gender sensitive policies are in place, they often fail to reach women most at risk of being left behind, such as women in informal settlements, indigenous women, women with disabilities, women in post crisis context, trans women, to name just a few.
UN Habitat Strategic Plan 2026, 2029, places adequate housing for all at the center of our mandate with explicit attention to gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.
But we also realize that adequate housing for women requires women to be part of the decision making process.
Women, there are mayors, women, there are ministers, women that are governors, shaping housing policies and approaches.
That is why we also focusing on participatory multilevel governance mechanisms that empower women and girls.
As we mark the tenth anniversary of the New Urban Agenda, and we look ahead to the midterm review of SDG 11 this year.
Indeed, with only 3.5 years left until 2030, as the Deputy Secretary-General has been mentioning, this is a critical moment to take stock of and raise ambition.
Gender disaggregated data, as you mentioned as well, on housing remains inadequate in most countries.
The gap between international commitments and national implementation remains wide.
The outcomes of your discussions, our discussions today will contribute to the Baku Code to action, the WOF 13 outcome document.
I really hope that this will guide us over the next two years through the high level political forum, through the review of the New Urban Agenda, towards WO 14 in Mexico, towards adequate housing for all women and girls.
Thank you.
Thank you, ID, for reminding us we're talking about a crisis which disproportionate affects women and girls and making clear that in our solutions, we have to be intentional in redressing this.
Now, I will turn to an online intervention.
We're starting to hear voices from civil society because as we said, the importance of lived experiences.
We have Elizabeth Byrd, housing advocate of Unlock NYC online.
Hopefully we have.
Do we have any Claude Good day, everyone.
Yes.
Welcome.
Thank you.
Welcome to you too.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me here.
My name is Elizabeth Byrd, a single mother of six with 18 years lived experience regarding homelessness and government vouchers.
Pardon me.
So I'm trying to start the video.
Elizabeth, are you still there? I'm still here.
I'm trying to start video.
It's not working.
Okay.
I apologize.
But we can hear you very well.
Thank you.
Okay.
I'm also a housing advocate and a community liaison.
Raising my kids to be educated citizens wasn't a challenge for me as the only parent.
Their schools and doctors were stable.
Kids need stability to function well and be great scholars to further their education.
Living in a shelter with no avenues of permanent housing was the hardest for my huge family.
Finding creative ways to acquire government subsidy was the challenge, I thought.
When we were granted the housing voucher, I was ecstatic.
We can now get stable housing.
Waking up at 5:00 A.M.
Getting ready to drop off kids at school, making sure everyone has breakfast or a snack before leaving, volunteering at the school, using their space in the morning to search online for apartments.
By noon, I was attending opening houses, while awaiting the 15 different apartments I sent out to ask for a viewing and receiving emails or calls stating they don't accept vouchers.
Walking into an open house was a performance.
As a Latina woman by myself, that was already a strike for me.
Brokers and landlords, majority of them mail, conducting the event, ask questions before handling out the application for the apartment.
How were you paying for this rental? That's when I had to be creative.
And I let them know, I will use my financial certificate.
Confused, he proceeded to give the application After reading it, he hesitated and asked if my certificate was for Section eight.
I responded no.
And he said, they're only accepting Section eight.
Apartment denied.
Section eight is the only voucher accepted nationwide in the United States, and most landlords want it.
In New York City, it's a golden ticket, and the application for getting one is closed.
Moving on to the next viewing, the broker knows I'm paying with my government subsidy.
I'm meeting up with him at 2:00 P.M.
And I arrive at 1:55.
I waited in the cold outside the building entrance for 10 minutes.
Snow started falling.
I decided to call, but it went straight to voicemail.
I sent an email and I'm waiting for a response.
It's now 220.
I called again, but there was no response.
Can't fail.
Getting housed, but I'm failing.
Then I asked myself before getting the kids from school, did I have breakfast or lunch today? It's very common to be in survival mode, neglecting your health because you have a goal, get housed.
The most painful part of my day is telling my children that mom still hasn't secured permanent housing and time is running out.
Agencies only give you three months to find housing.
Heading to our temporary shelter placement to make dinner, do homework, get ready for bed, only to get up and repeat.
Giving up isn't my plans, nor my family's.
I must be prepared and creative for the next day, hoping to find more apartments and avoid being discriminated against by landlords or brokers based on my source of income.
I also face threats from shelter, caseworkers, and directors because I still haven't secured housing for my family.
But tomorrow is more challenging because my youngest son and daughter have their monthly checkup with their neurologists, followed by appointments with the pediatricians.
So while waiting at the doctor's office, I will be on my phone looking for apartment viewings and applying for more buildings.
I've received nine denials and only one viewing, and I'm expected to view at least ten apartments a week if we want to stay in temporary housing.
But I have a viewing to attend and will be taking my children after their doctor's appointment.
We arrived at the building, spoke to the superintendent.
He said, there was no vacancy.
But I showed him my confirmation of the viewing.
He called his management and confirmed that the person emailing me was scamming me, yet another dent in my search.
When will our trauma of being unhoused end? Finding unlock NYC and all woman led tech nonprofit that help voucher holders report income discrimination alongside a community of women with lived experience empowers me to advocate for myself and other women to know their rights.
What I went through was illegal, but I wasn't aware.
It takes one person to organize a community and communities to communicate with the government to get policies started.
When will the world unite to end homelessness and housing for everyone? Thank you.
Thank you so much.
I can assure you the room is in awe of your courage and perseverance.
It's really the voice we needed to hear to ground the discussions we're going to have.
And also reminding us that lived experiences are also diverse, intersectional, and how we need to remember that there's people at the center of this.
Thank you so much for sharing.
And now, do our colleagues stay with us? We are going to start our panel discussions.
So as I said before, we have two panels.
The first panel is going to focus on levers to realize the right to adequate housing for all women and girls.
I will introduce the panelists first.
So we'll have first Baroness Patricia Scotland, former Commonwealth Secretary-General, member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom.
Followed by Jiang Yong Hong, Principal Urban Development Specialist of the Asian Development Bank in the Water and Urban Development Sector Office, and then Dorothy Baziwi, Executive Director Shelter and Settlement, Alternatives in Uganda, and finally, Maria Mercedes Hemo Garcias, Executive Director at Lac Plan, former Secretary of Planning for Bogota.
Starting with Baroness, and we have one question, and if we have time, we may get to the second one.
The first question, dear Baroness.
You have spent decades working on legislation and policy to protect women from gender based violence.
Access to adequate housing is a key component to ensuring women can seek safety, as we've just heard.
From being able to stay in the home and having the abuser removed to being able to seek safe shelter if necessary.
What are your key recommendations for local and national authorities to develop integrated holistic housing solutions that empower women at every stage? Thank you very much.
Can I start by saying how proud I am to be on a panel with all my wonderful sisters? Secondly, to say that Elizabeth's description is regrettably a description that many women will face across the world, not just in New York, and that is their lived reality.
Indeed, that lived reality is something that I have sought to deal with since basically I was 20.
I was sitting here thinking I've been doing this now, although you know I'm only 21 for 50 years.
But there are some real things that we can do.
Housing is the center of what we must deliver.
But there is an opportunity for us to do this in a very concrete way.
During the time that I was a minister in the United Kingdom government, we developed a whole systems approach, which meant that we had to have a multi sector multi risk assessment approach and we created the multi agency risk assessment because what Elizabeth described was a systematic misfunction, dysfunction for people not working together.
We've created, and I hope everyone can look at it, the Commonwealth says No More program, which has the whole systems approach integrated.
During the time that I implemented that system in the UK, we saved 23 billion every year, and we reduce domestic violence by 64%.
Anyone who tells you this is not doable, do not believe them.
I think one of the major things we have to do is stop reinventing the wheel.
There are systems that are now in place.
During the time I was Secretary-General, we created a legal structure, the protocols, the frameworks, the legislation, and we demonstrated that they were implementable and credible in more than 20 countries.
I was Secretary-General 2016-2025.
If you look at the results of those countries, they are extraordinary.
We managed to persuade finance ministers that if you invest $1, you save seven, so you can save lives and you can save money and creating the economic tools which enables our countries to say how they can save money on housing is absolutely critical.
But we need to also empower women in terms of getting their financing right.
There's some huge opportunities for us.
You can create the family intervention programs which make sure that you have an integrated system.
What Elizabeth described is trying to respond to a system which is dysfunctional because you'd have to have Rockefeller's diary secretary to manage all those things in a way that makes sense.
But we can systemically include a system where the system itself works together to make it easy with a one stop shop.
There's so much that we can do and one of the things that actually pains me is to see us making mistakes and replicating mechanisms that we knew did not work and has not worked for 30 or 40 years.
We do have the methodology.
What I would strongly suggest is that we pool our knowledge, we pool our expertise, and we replicate what we know works as opposed to starting from square one.
We can save money, we can save lives, and we absolutely have to do it now because If we fail to do it, we know that our children will suffer.
If you look at what happens to children in domestic violence homes, they are overrepresented in all the systems of dysfunction.
They fail to thrive in terms of health, they fail to thrive in terms of education achievement.
They are overrepresented in the figures of drug abuse, in mental health, and every form of dysfunction, and we can change that.
We've changed it in more than 20 countries in the Commonwealth, we have 56 and it's going further.
I'm literally begging everyone, please.
Look at what works, share the data.
Please look at the Commonwealth says No More program.
It's there and we can and should replicate it.
It's doable.
Thank you so much again back to we have solutions.
The DSG and the ED will have to leave us now, but before I was remiss in not asking the room for an applause for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is still online.
If I can ask.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
So for now Jia Yu Yong.
The ADB invests extensively in urban development across Asia.
From your experience leading complex urban investments, what does it actually take to make housing finance work for women on the ground, particularly those in informal economies who fall outside conventional credit systems.
Thank you.
Is it working.
Thank you.
That's very practical.
That's okay.
Thank you.
That's a very practical and relevant question and also one of the hardest challenges we face on the ground.
From ADBs experience across Asia Pacific, making housing finance work for women, especially those in informal economies require changing the system.
Um, not just expanding financing.
So let me highlight three things that matter in practice.
First, we need to design finance around how women actually earn and live.
Most women in our region are not salaried.
Formal borrowers, the informal workers, self employed or managing multiple income sources.
Traditional mortgage models simply don't reach them.
What works much better are smaller, more flexible loan products, More flexible eligibility criteria, alternative credit assessment, smaller and incremental loans, and recognition of informal income streams, and repayment structures that match irregular incomes and also financing for incremental housing improvement.
ADB is supporting this approach through housing finance programs where lending is tailored to informal income household and women borrowers without traditional collateral.
Second, connecting housing finance with livelihood and capabilities is often overlooked.
Women's ability to repay a housing loan depends on income stability, and also on their access to knowledge and opportunity.
So housing finance works best when it's linked to financing literacy, livelihood, and enterprise support, and targeted outreach to women.
So increasingly, ADBs housing finance programs combines lending with financial literacy and institutional capacity building, so women can actually access and sustain loans.
It also strengthens women's role in household decision making.
Last but not least, women's access to finance only works if wider system works such as land policy and urban services.
Housing finance does not operate in isolation.
That's why we are taking a more integrated approach linking land and legal reforms, financial sector development, urban infrastructure and services, and also partnerships with communities and the private sector.
In particular, urban investment themselves need to be gender responsive.
It has to be linked with safe transport, access to services, childcare, climate resilience, and secure tenure all directly affect women's ability to benefit from housing and urban development.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Dorothy Vaziwe, Executive Director of Shelter and Settlement alternatives in Uganda, the question for you.
What collaborative models between civil society, local authorities, and communities have successfully advanced women lands rights and access to safe housing and how can these be scaled? Thank you for the question.
I realize that most of the challenges that women are dealing with are structural and systemic, but they cut across the international space, regional space, and national space.
So in our case, we're looking at ways of bringing together collaboration so that different entities and different institutions can support each other to be able to recognize and articulate women's land rights.
Um, I would add private sector to that as well because we know very well that the private sector is a big resource holder in most of our cases.
So I think some of the approaches I will draw from experiences of shelter and settlements as we have been implementing in the communities.
First, I'd like to talk about community paralegals.
This is a community peer support program where different community persons have been trained to provide information.
One of the things that we find in our communities in the rural and peri urban areas of Uganda is that women are still left behind in terms of information in terms of data, and this creates fear, this creates mistrust.
This creates a huge barrier in them being able to access housing finance, to be able to access legal support and to be able to intervene in their land conflicts.
The community paralegals are tasked with the mandate to support arbitration, mediation, and also creating referral pathways.
These referral pathways are what bringing the local authorities, the civil society, and the private sector.
Because when the paralegals are able to sensitize the community, they create relations with the courts of law, relations with the police, relations with the local authorities so that women can get their land cases and their housing cases resolved.
Um, the second approach I'd like to talk about is participatory land mapping, and this is where we are supporting women because where I come from, women are still left behind in terms of land access, use, and control.
We talk about women being able to articulate their enforceable land rights, but in most cases, they've been left behind because they're either not included on the land titles or they're not included in the documentation of land.
So we are supporting the communities to use fit for purpose tools that they can be able to add their names to different land documentation documents.
This is, for example, the certificates of customary ownership.
In Uganda, 64% of the land is customary land.
Which land follows the customs of the area? And in a patriarchal system, you find that women have been left out because women either don't own land, don't inherit land, and when they lose a partner, they are disinherited or they are chased away from their land.
So with the certificates of customary ownership, we are supporting women to articulate their enforceable land rights.
So they are able to control the proceeds of the land and the resources that come out of it, and that includes the housing.
We also are supporting community led livelihood initiatives.
This is where we are supporting women to gather collectively into housing cooperatives, and we are looking at the new option of the community land trust.
This provides an opportunity for communities to work together with their other peers and be able to access local government funds.
Because our local governments have put in place livelihood improvement programs for different categories, and once women are able to form housing cooperatives, they are able to access these resources, and they're able to develop their housing collectively.
Last but not least, we believe that participatory urban planning is also a very good approach to ensure that there's collectiveness, there's collaboration between local authorities, between communities, and all other stakeholders.
When women get the opportunity to influence their area development, to influence the development of urban development plans, and the decisions to make infrastructure, to make water sanitation and energy and roads and all this.
They actually have the opportunity to articulate themselves in what works for them.
Seen a lot of development projects coming up in our country where they place rods and they do not care about the lighting.
We all know that women will have a longer route to go from their homes because they cannot afford to stay near their workplaces.
But this opens them up to insecurity.
If our communities are able to embrace participatory urban planning, then the women are better resourced because then they can influence development and investment and this can be more responsive to their needs.
How do we scale up some of these interventions? I think we have for a long time been talking to the local authorities, talking to the national governments.
The first thing that we think is there needs to be better resourcing of the local authorities.
There needs to be more responsive structures that link the national level to the local level.
There tends to be a divide between what policy says and how policy is implemented on ground.
So we believe that if there's a better capacity building of the different stakeholders all the way from the local authorities to the communities, to the national government, then this will make policies be implemented more.
And all the ratifications that we're doing in these international forums will actually come to life on ground.
I also believe that if we embed the practices that I have just talked about, the community led practices into our national policies and our local policies, this can enable the collaboration between different stakeholders.
Lastly, I also think that enhancing women's access to finance is always the way to ensure that women can engage in more collectives, they can actually respond to their needs, and they can support the development of the areas that they are living in.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And we'll round up this panel with Marcedes Hemo Garcias.
You have spent your career at the intersection of urban planning and housing policy, from leading planning in one of Latin America's most complex cities to working regionally across the continent in the Lac plan.
From that experience, what does it actually take to embed gender equality into housing and urban planning? Where in Latin America are you seeing it done well? Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me here.
I I think that the most important thing to start from is a certainty that there's not such a thing as a one size fits all solution and we have to respond to local conditions.
So what is true in Baku, for example, would not necessarily be true in Bogota, and I'm going to give a very simple example.
Yesterday, I was walking late during the night in Baku and I took a pedestrian tunnel And I felt very safe.
I would have never taken a pedestrian tunnel at night in Bogota.
Even some pedestrian bridges in Bogota are not used by women in any hour of the day.
So that's a very important fact to have in mind.
We have to respond to social and economic conditions, and we have come to see, for example, in Bogota, that we have to respond with different typologies of housing.
So, um, collective housing, for example, where different women who have kids can share a house where each of them will have a room with her kid, but then they will share together the kitchen, the living room, a courtyard where one woman can care for every other woman's kids.
That's something that has always been done in many places in the world, but we have forgotten in recent times to actually offer many different typologies of housing and that's something we have to take into consideration.
I would like to say that scale is critical and planning a city of 8 million people such as Bogota has meant and not only to think the city in a multi sectorial way because you cannot plan housing without planning for employment, without planning for transit systems, without planning for care systems, and that's something we have innovated within Bobota, but you have to plan it in the metropolitan scale and also in the local scale.
One thing that is very important for me to say here is that we would have not been able in Bogota to include care as a guiding principle of urban planning if we have not decided to actually master plan 30 cities within the city to address not only the metropolitan needs of accessibility to universities, hospitals, work centers, but also to organize mobility patterns in the proximity, with circular routes, for example, for transit and care blocks, which are Bogota's main innovation in terms of gender specific policies and care blocks are meant to become the centers of these 30 cities within the city.
So, um All of that, I think has been possible because we have engaged in participatory processes.
But I must say a truth when you are in government, participatory processes are necessary, but they are not enough.
When you plan a city as big as Bogota, Um, we cannot stay only at participatory processes organized through stakeholders groups.
For example, women here, indigenous people there, corporate actors in another room.
It becomes crucial and very important to actually gather together because they have opposed interests many times and we have to listen to each other.
Governments have a huge pedagogy task to balance the interests of every stakeholder group and I think that's the most difficult task for a government to have a balanced policy that will not harm anyone, but we will try to balance every stakeholder's interests within a common good, a shared common good.
Thank you so much to the first panel.
And unfortunately, we're on time.
We're at time, so I will go straight into the second panel and then hopefully have time to hear more good practices that are coming from the room.
The second panel, very similar, we'll focus on innovative practices.
I think we heard a lot of them also from the first round.
But we'll start off with Maya Mendoza, Mayor of Kilmez, provincial Deputy of Buenos Aires.
And the question is okay.
Qilmez is a populous municipality in the Buenos Aires province with significant informal settlement challenges.
What is the most innovative housing initiative your administration has implemented for women? Thank you.
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Now I'm going to turn to my colleague, Simon Springt, resident coordinator in Barbados.
How can the UN support governments and partners in expanding gender deseggregated data, gender statistics, and evidence to inform housing policies that are truly transformative for women and girls? Thank you very much, Allegra, very good morning, everyone.
I I truly enjoyed listening to the previous panelists and I think there's a common thread that has been running through all of these.
First of all, transformative housing policies for women and girls, they rely on something relatively simple but all too often missing, which is the visibility of data.
I've heard it said before that statistics are merely stories without the tears.
And across our region, housing policies still rely very heavily on household level statistics.
Which really don't tell the story of who owns what assets, who carries the unpaid care burdens, who faces insecurity linked to gender based violence, disability, migration status, or informal work.
So as in many regions in the Caribbean, we have significant issues with data availability, which really compounds these challenges and really hides a lot of stories that need to be told.
Additionally, gender disaggregated data in the Caribbean is also extremely scarce, especially for economic assets such as housing.
But what we do know is that female headed households are increasing across the Caribbean and women are overrepresented among those with a housing deficit and with generally poor quality housing, and that there remains a clear gender gap in mortgage and credit access.
So from an Eastern Caribbean perspective, I think the UN can support governments in partners in three key ways.
First, by strengthening gender responsive statistics systems.
This means going beyond traditional census counts to really invest in disaggregated data on housing tenure, land and asset owners ownership, unpaid care work, safety, access to service, climate vulnerability.
In small island contexts where I'm fortunate enough to live, climate risks and urban pressures intersect, this level of detail is really essential to understand how women experience housing and urban spaces differently and to support the design of policies that respond to those realities.
Secondly, by supporting the generation of policy relevant evidence.
In Barbados and in Monsrat, for example, we've been supporting national capacities to collect and analyze real time disaggregated population data.
But again, this isn't only about data, it's about finding ways to actually use that data to make informed, timely policy choices that are firmly grounded in evidence.
Third and critically, by helping to move from data to policy action, In Barbados, UN women has supported the measurement of unpaid care work for the first time.
This evidence is highly relevant for housing and urban planning because care responsibilities shape where women can live, how they can access jobs, transport, and services.
At the regional level, we've also been supporting Comm guidelines on administrative data for violence against women, also strengthening the evidence base for safer, more inclusive communities.
Ultimately, the United Nations role is not only to support to improve gender data systems, but to ensure that the evidence translates into housing policies that recognize women as rights holders, as economic actors, and truly leaders in building inclusive Caribbean societies.
Thank you.
Thank you, Simon.
By the way, as the DSG said, half of the resident coordinators are women, but we did specifically want a man to participate.
I think we also need to hear more male voices because this is everyone's issue, not only women standing up for women.
So last panel, panelist, and then we're going to open for Q&A, but not only Q&A questions to the panelists, but if anybody else wants to share their experience and their best practice.
So last panelist, Langana Madajar, Executive Director of Bumanti Support Group for Shelter, Regional Covener for Freshwater Action Network, South Asia, and coordinator for the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights.
And your question is, Community led approaches to housing are often held up as the solution.
But community led does not automatically mean women led.
Women can be excluded from decision making even within their own communities.
From your three decades of work in Nepal and across Asia, what does it actually take to ensure that women are not just present in community led housing processes, but lead them? How can we support women globally to formalize and scale the housing solutions they are already creating on the ground? Thank you.
Thank you very much.
The women's participation in housing process.
I think this is a very, this agenda is very close to my heart.
When I started my work more than 30 years ago, started working with the women and that's 30 years back.
I would also like to acknowledge that I've also learned a lot from peer exchanges, linking with various organization that is actually promoting the participation and leadership of the crossrot women.
I would like to acknowledge that there's our friends from W commissions here, we work together and Asian Pal for housing rights, of course, that's part and then really doing a lot of work for Water Action Network, South Asia.
And there are many other organizations that we have been working together to learn each other, to strengthen each other, you know, to partner, to build confidence among ourselves, as well as a supporting organizations to help the women to lead this process.
So a lot has taken place.
And, um, Getting women engaged in the housing process, maybe it's rather easier.
It's convenient, it's easier.
But then helping them to lead the process, it's quite challenging.
It's quite challenging.
We have actually come a long way to help the women to lead the process, to lead the process in the sense that also to get engaged in improving the basic facilities, including housing in the communities, in improving access to livelihood opportunities, access to water sans and facilities, to improving the basic facilities in the communities.
Maybe that is like, it's a little easier and that's a lot of work.
But then getting them to lead the process.
That's another level, and that's quite challenging.
But I'm actually proud to say at this moment now, the Federation of the informal women settlers that we have actually started about 20, 25 years back, Napalme Sos is now it's a grassroot women's Federation is now leading, is now leading advocacy against a violation of human rights, housing rights in Kathmandu in Nepal.
What it's taken, it's taken 20 years longer investment for them to be able to come out and advocate and shout to really strongly.
That's actually I feel proud now because we have actually worked and started all this process, but then it's not Asia.
How that has actually happened, that's another the women's Network, community Women's Forum that we have been working in Kathmandu and also there are so many other networks, SSP in India, I would say, women's bank in Sri Lanka and then there are so many other process also the Federation of the women's Network in other countries as well in Asia, so they have really doing a great work.
And how we started, the basic thing is the basic thing to get organized is starting with the organizing saving groups at the community level, later than getting them federated at the city level and also at the national level.
Formalizing and strengthening these groups, getting them registered not only to work informally, because informality limits some of the activities.
So it is actually making them legal, getting them formalized, expand their scope of work, and also provide opportunity for them to have a dialogue at the national level to be able to work with the local government, it is important.
We have also help them informzing and strengthening their own institutions, networks, help them also to get them network.
And also supporting in leadership development in various ways, you know, training, workshops, orientations, peer exchanges at the local level, national level, regional, global level, at all the levels, whatever way we can actually do.
So that has really contributed in expanding their knowledge, understanding of the issues, and to be able to speak confidently and make themselves hot to interact with the media and, you know, to really keep insisting on their agenda on the right issues, so that's what we do it.
And also try to bridge the gap between women's organizations and local groups, local governments as well.
So it is very important that we actually work as a bridge to reduce the gap between the women grassroots women late organizations and other institutions including the governments, get women in the communities and work, you know, with the governments as well.
So we have in Nepal, we have actually formed Urban Community Development Fund, and then we have actually brought the women late saving and credit cooperative group as a to be there as a treasurer and, you know, to be able to manage the city level fund.
So the mayor hits that community, but then the women's group sit there as a treasurer managing the fund.
So they are in power at that community in making decisions on making on the fund investments, like, you know, prioritizing the investment of the fund.
So that's how we've been able to be able to, you know, help women also to be a part of the decision making process.
That means leading the housing process in many ways.
Ensure women are in designing construction process.
That is also very important.
In ensuring designing, we actually do a lot of community level design work with the professionals, community architect networks.
And when we talk about the designing of the houses, it's not only the house, it's designing the whole neighborhood, the whole community.
Women are always there in front.
We ensure that the women are there.
When the women's group are leading, of course, they will be organizing even this community level consultation store.
So the women are there, they are part of the decision making process of the designing of the house The communities and also the construction process many times, they do also the procurement in Kathmando even after the disaster, after the earthquake in 2015, we had worked with the community women's group to contribute in constructing temporary shelters.
They did all the procurements, they supported in the construction of the temporary shelters as well house to poor people, they are affected families impacted by the earthquake and that's how they late and also they were part of the decision making process.
We set up community development fund.
They were managing that and Now we are also supporting the women lead this climate heat resilient housing process in nine countries in Asia, right? So we are supporting for that to be more innovative, to come up with innovations and to combine their local knowledge with the professional knowledge.
So there are professionals helping them to bring their knowledge, ideas.
How can the house be more heat resilient because heat now is a big issue as well, and in the poor communities, that is even bigger issue.
Um, so, and then we are also promoting were also helping women to come up with climate regilant livelihood opportunities, so how they can do it.
Because in some of the communities, they still depend on agriculture, even if they are selling food on the street also because climate heat is making, you know, it's impacting on their livelihoods.
So we are trying to do introduce in is try to co work and then try to co create the knowledge with the women, even for innovations.
This is also like conservation of heritage as well.
It's not in some communities, the heritage needs to be conjured, it's damaged, it's getting destroyed.
The women, they have a lot of concerns.
Heritage is also part of the housing.
It's part of their own identity.
Right? Securing your heritage.
It's a part of identity, to have access to land, to be able to own land, it's a part of identity as well.
So the women la organizations, they are taking all these issues in whatever way is more relevant for them, you know, because it's not necessary that all these issues, all these agendas are equally important for all the communities, for the women's groups.
So some agenda is more important than others for some communities.
So it's different.
So we support you know, whatever they prioritize the agendas, but then it has to be women led, there has to be women's perspective, there has to be gender balance approaches.
So we support the women.
We work with the women to bring all these things to get realized and how this can be scaled up, how this can I'll be brief.
I think what is important is expand access to capital.
That's very, very important because the lack of funding opportunities to the grassroot women led organizations, women I think it's a constraint.
But then with this constraint, also, they are trying to do their best.
But then it is important we seek the opportunities, provide opportunities for them to expand access to capital and also support for care work.
That is also very important.
If you're actually talking about scaling up the women's leadership, the care support is very, very important in whatever way like childcare facilities or in many other ways like even at a household level sharing their care burden by other family members, so the education is required, policies required.
That is also important and securing land, collectively securing land right tenure collectively or jointly.
I think that is also very important that we have to consider that and these days now this day, the digital literacy, that is what can actually contribute in women, taking a height, leading the process in whatever they have been doing digital literacy, access to computers, phones and everything and knowledge, I mean, all these IT knowledge that's equally important for them.
So we should not think that the It's a grassroots women, they don't know anything or they don't have education access or.
But then it is important that we should try to make them as advanced as possible so they can really have access to all these tools and technology and they can really make themselves present at the global level as well.
I think it's important that we formed grassroots women led organizations to network, to share their experiences, and also to contribute in the community led housing process.
Thank you.
Stop here.
Thank you so much to all our panelists.
We had a lot of ideas, a lot of concrete things that we can do as the Barris said.
We don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Now I'm going to open for, I think we can take 10 minutes for questions or sharing of other experiences that are in the room.
Maybe just I'll ask to introduce yourself when you take the floor.
Thank you very much, Irgun Safara for the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against woman.
Thanks a lot for your feedback, dear panelists.
Thanks a lot for the high level of the introductions in the sign.
We discussed many points, especially about accessibility of the adequate housing and But I have my feedback we adopted general recommendation for the InsitO Committee Parity of woman representation in public decision making positions.
At this moment, we are working for the 41st general recommendation on the gender stereotypes.
In each new documents now after the CDO Convention, we're including the new terminology, which is important.
Today, we must say something about the digital environment.
Of course, we need to create gender infrastructure, but is it smart data including science, data including science? How many women and girls representing is this structural private sector at the same time, high technologies? And directly to the United Nations statistics data, all the world, only 2% of women and girls have accessibility to the high technologies.
It's reality big problems because when you have not woman in technology, when you have not woman in the high technologies, data science, when you have a woman in cloud system, you have nothing because accessibility is limited.
Here are where we get today, especially gender discrimination, what's happening now directly.
In the system.
That's why I have had several questions, not only my ideas in this situation.
How do you see the panelists or experts? How do you see how it will be going transformation of digital infrastructure and moment representation? When startups are limited, budgetary questions are limited.
When United Nations under the crisis situation with limited budgeting as we including directly, not just the country residents but UN treaty bodies are directly.
At the same time, the second question, which are very important awesome I hope you get information about the Karabakh, what happened after the territorial integrity, at this moment, activity is done, that creating new gender sensitive infrastructure on the territory of Kara now at this moment, creating the schools, infrastructure for the women universities, health insurance structures, many new instruments.
I know that, for example, at this moment in South Sudan, in Africa, and all the world, we have 26 conflict situations.
At the main conflict situation, victims are women and girls.
The mainly is a problem of the limitation of the acceptance access to the water, insurance, health and education for the women and girls.
How do we see we need to go as the United Nations under the crisis situation? Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
I will ask people to be brief, but thank you for those two questions.
To this room and then to this side? Yes, go ahead.
Thank you very much and good morning, brothers and sisters.
I'm He Royal Higness Princess Abajigma from Burkina Faso and I'm serving as the co chair of the Paris Committee on Capacity Building.
But you ask us moderator to be concrete and calm, I will share an example from my country.
Institutionalizing the corporate social responsibility can be a pathway.
That's what our MPs are doing, echoing what Excellcy Baroness was saying with clear key performance indicators, direct access to funding for the women.
So that our leader, His Excellency Kamar Capitain Ibragm Traoré is clear on that.
My mother, my sister, my grandma, without them, I won't exist.
The tone is clear.
I think taking leadership, it is important.
Capacity building.
Capacity building brought us in this room.
This morning at the Women's Caucus, I was talking about in my capacity as a co chair of Paris Committee on capacity building, I put in place the Mucha Burkini Coalition on capacity building initiatives.
Where we're capitalizing capacity building to leverage fundings, because that's was also the stakeholders are asking as investors to make sure that our sisters are capacity to absorb those findings.
So I will stop there in the interest of time, I'm more than happy to also acknowledge we need to make noise also that we need to have a women United Nations Secretary-General.
We need to come along together for that and we as a civil society, all the women we are most in the world, we need to make sure that we have one in the driving seat.
Thank you very much.
There was there was okay.
I don't see well, she's on her phone.
Okay.
Over to you then.
Yes.
I just wanted to mention, my name is Maisir Raiden, former vice president of the Word Bank and currently chairman of the NGIC, ami Ganja International Center here and in between Librarian of Alexandria in Egypt.
But fundamentally, I wanted to report again on the importance of the microfinance experience.
It's a way that has succeeded enormously to scale.
Gamin, one of the oldest ones, has almost 12 million participants.
97% of them are women and they've diversified in many other things.
CIWA in India, which has about almost 3.5 to 4 million members right now and spread in 20 states, has created political action committees that deal with the equivalent of trade unionism, if you want, for the unemployed women.
And in Bolivia, for example, Axion and Banco Sole have reached 370,000 women entrepreneurs.
In the Avana they have 170,000 women entrepreneurs being supported by these groups, and they've expanded their work with private sector like the mastercard techniques to reach 12.8 million people, mostly dealing with digital initiatives throughout Latin America.
So I think that the approach from the financial side has led to a lot of women's empowerment.
I'm using the examples of CIWA and of Gramine, but there's also Brach and many others and Axon in Latin America, and it's an approach that provides the community buildup as well because they start with the social solidarity networks at the microscale.
I think that it's very interesting to see how it has been able to scale up to these levels and to the point that institutions like the World Bank and others took them into account and supported them.
Thank you.
Yes, financing has been a resounding theme in all the rooms, I'm sure.
Last two.
Thank you.
That and there.
Last two.
And then I'm going to give last three.
I'm closing my eyes now and I'm going because then I want the panel to have a chance to answer those two questions, and then we also have conclusion statements.
Thank you very much.
I would like to welcome everyone to Azerbijan as representative of local civil society working on prevention of gender based violence and domestic violence.
One important question I had to panelists is because we struggle a lot with housing issues when it comes to those who are survivors or victims of violence.
There is nowhere to go and shelters sometimes are not enough.
The express shelters or any other practices that maybe some of the mayors or any other cities implemented to make safer spaces, safer housing, not just itself, but housing system itself.
Is it accessible for them to get help? Is it accessible for them to get medical help? Is it accessible to get some just help to be out of this femicide that she might be in at that moment? Because we feel like it's still a lot to be done to make sure that system is more affordable and accessible for those who might be in the risk of domestic violence.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
My name is Rose Christine Kaag.
I chair the Global Water Operator Partnership Alliance, and I also come from the background of the water utility in Uganda.
I want to thank all the speakers.
Just raising from the first example we heard from New York, seeing the diversity when it comes to what the problems are coming from Africa, one would see that the example that was being given is even luxury.
Just wanted to bring to the table that when we talk about housing systems, I think we should strengthen more the use of ecosystems because it brings so many people together.
There is need for us not just to assume that when we talk about housing, that the accompanying basic services are covered.
That doesn't mean in some places that when you provide housing, you have provided the other basic services.
Will look at housing more as brick and mortar and not the other accompanying things.
I'd like to suggest that more discussion on how to integrate all stakeholders and players into the story of housing.
Thank you.
Last question, comment.
Hello.
This is my voice heard.
I am Greeting participants and expressing my deepest respect to all and expressing my deepest gratitude to you for organizing such important So I am university professor and I am cultural relations public unions leader.
I was just two months ago back from New York from Conference of UN on women's status.
Azerbijan is a country that is just voting right as being given to a woman when Azerbian Democratic Republic was established.
Today we also are proud of the fact that the leader of national Parliament is a woman.
So we have organized here very interesting event just bringing together artists and poets because we are cultural Union public relations public Union and we just a woman's imagination is very rich and from this point of view, they painted paintings, how they see urbanization, how they see city in which they would like to live and poets dealt their paintings with their poems and our American collaborator online translated their poem and very creative process was organized here in this Wolf 13 area.
My suggestion is, it is right that UN always highly focused on women's empowerment.
We would like to be more engaged in the projects through maybe there would be another separate project aimed at a marginalized layer of women, the woman from regions and ensuring inclusivity.
Bringing all of them together and making it possible for them to enable their voices to be heard everywhere in accordance with SDGs on education, on woman empowerment and no one is left behind.
We would like to realize more projects.
I do know that UN always announces such course and within which these projects are possible.
But we would like to have it just separately to be more accessible for everyone to apply to win and to realize such wonderful projects.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
I will give an opportunity to all the panelists if they wanted to come back either on the questions or on a final word statement message that you want to leave the room with, and then we have two more closing remarks.
Panelists.
Okay.
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I'll turn to Rebecca Greenspan and then take the panelists if they had any thoughts or answers, and then we also have a closing event.
Madam Rebecca Greenspan, Secretary-General for the UN Trade and Development on leave, I guess, I can say, former Vice President of Costa Rica, which is the country I was recently serving in, very honored to have you here and of course, candidate to the position of UN Secretary-General.
Over to you for closing remarks.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you to UN Habitat, to the government of Azerbijan and to every voice we have heard today in the morning, activists, ministers, mayors, grassroots leaders, urban professionals, women rights defenders, UN leaders, women leaders.
Much has already been said in this session, so allow me to close with a short personal reflection.
It Maybe many of you don't know, but I was Minister of housing in Costa Rica.
This was in the 1990s, the former century.
I have to say that that has been one of the most challenging and at the same time more rewarding jobs I have ever had.
I learned so much from women courage.
And we heard today Elizabeth, yes, and most of women have gone through that same journey.
Too many millions of women have gone through that journey.
But I have learned from the courage, from the determination to have a home, not only a house, and build a community, as many of you have said, the importance of having an address.
Yes.
To have an address is the beginning of being reachable, by the world, by a bank, by a school, a hospital, a neighbor in an emergency.
It is the beginning of being a citizen of anything.
For most of human history, that beginning has bypassed women.
The address has belonged to a father, a husband, a brother, a son.
Even today, nearly 40% of the world's economies still place legal limits on what a woman is allowed to hold in her own name and many of the participants have related to the problems of the legal constraints that women face.
What we have been hearing in this room today is not housing as a sector of the economy.
It is housing as a question of authorship.
Whether the home a woman live is the end or instead the beginning of her life.
Her life as a citizen, her life as a worker or as an entrepreneur, her life as a student, a dreamer, an actor in this world.
That is no small distinction.
Almost every freedom and dignity a woman is owed by right to leave a violent partner, to start a business, to raise a child in school, to grow old without fear runs through the door of her house and through the question of whether she ultimately holds its key.
Dear friends, We have done good and bad things with good intentions.
Yes.
I have seen in my country when I came as Minister of housing, horrible neighborhoods that have built with good intentions.
We have to hear the ground.
We have to hear the community.
We have to hear the women to design the community, to design the housing, to be actors in the solutions, not only technical solutions, but social solutions.
And we've heard today about services, about transport.
You cannot imagine how many communities we have built so far away of the workplace that have made impossible for women to really go there and live there in good houses, but bad communities too distant from where we work.
And we know this.
So Patricia, you said, lessons learned.
Let's learn from the lessons, from the good practices, and from the bad practices that we have done.
In my country, we did three things that were important.
One, in every public housing or land distribution, women were entitled to the land and to the housing independently of the marital status.
And so that meant that they could not be disinherited when the husband left because that was also inherit.
Name.
The second thing we did is light in the cities, in the urban places so they can work through the passages alone without fear.
Yes.
The third thing we did is a financial system for housing for low income families that has made the difference for informal housing and made affordable the possibility of housing.
So anyone who has worked long enough in this field knows that progress does not move in a straight line.
It is tempting to see the world around us and think that we are losing that which took us so much to win.
That the future of our common project has never been this uncertain.
But days like today when we hear so many ministers and mayors and organizers and women and men who have in their skin the battle scars of victory should give us pause.
Not everything is going in the same direction.
We are not in an age with only one side.
We are in an age of contradiction, where different forces pull in different directions.
Where some doors close even as others open.
We are in a world of cross currents and in such a world, the current is not always ours to choose, but we can choose our anchor.
We can choose our agency.
We can choose because they are choices, and our anchor is not a policy or a law.
Our anchor is a principle, that the dignity of a woman does not rise and fall with her circumstances, that her right to a place of her own is no one's to revoke.
Hold to that and no current can carry our work away.
So to close, allow me to thank again, and Abitat, our host here in Azerbaijan, the organizers of this round table, everyone who spoke before me, thank you for giving this conversation the room it deserves because you are the anchor I have been describing.
You did not wait for a better time.
You built it anyway.
And while there are people like you in rooms like this one, I do not fear our common future.
May the day come, and may it come soon When every woman in every country can look at the place where she lives and say, Simply, this is mine.
Thank you.
Thank you and good luck.
So, don't leave yet.
We're going to take another 5 minutes.
Back to the panelists, not everyone, hopefully, but the ones who want to leave either a little answer or a message before we pass to the last speaker for conclusions.
Baroness.
Hello, Mimi.
Okay.
Just some final reflections about some concrete things that we can all do.
Firstly, I think there's a real clarity that although we are different countries, domestic violence and sexual violence actually manifests itself in similar ways.
We can distill from that the problems, but we can also distill some of the responses which irrespective of context seem to work.
And those are, I'm just going to mention a couple of things that I think we can do, which will make a difference.
First, we have discovered that the multi agency risk approach is what is fundamentally necessary to respond to the multifaceted, multi disciplinary needs of the person who is suffering from this conflict.
Second, that an independent domestic violence advisor who can help the individual to manifest and make their way through the system actually works.
We certainly found that that was the key to galvanizing all the other services.
Concretely, we can also create a stay put order with protection because many of our women are made to leave their homes.
Yet we know if we can make the home safe and make the perpetrator leave, it is critical to changing the paradigm, safety for the mother, safety for the children, and less disruption.
Things like rapid installation of locks and alarms and short term security, preparing a 24 hour enforcement protocols, all of those things work.
But to create a dedicated single point for emergency housing pathway for GBB victims so that they don't have to go through everything else and secure women's land and property rights at the local level.
We've heard that from everyone and fund a fast track system which is going to lead community housing for women.
We know we can do this.
I think one of the most important things for us to recognize is this is not about spending more money.
It's about spending the money we have better.
Because I was constantly told as a minister and as a practitioner, Minister, we have no money.
As Secretary-General, I was told constantly, Secretary-General, you have no money and they would speak to me slowly.
You have no money.
To which I always responded, and your point is, because we are going to do this anyway, we have to look at what are we spending money on now.
When you can persuade finance ministers and ministers of housing to recognize that for every one pound or dollar they spend on this, they save seven, the economics will drive it.
Just keep in your mind that we saved 23 billion pounds.
Through operating this system, we saved money, not spending it, and we reduce domestic violence by 64%.
Do not believe anyone who tells you you do not have the money.
You do.
It's just in the wrong places.
Save money, save lives, work together and listen and act collectively, and then we'll do this.
When you do, I will be there shouting and celebrating and knowing that women with good men have made a difference.
Thank you so much.
I will move to our last speaker.
Thank you for also taking the task of summarizing the takeaways from this really super rich panel.
Ines Sanchez dead, Universida Polytechnic de Madrid, and chair of AGGI.
Thank you very much, Madam Moderator, Madam Chair, Excellency distinguished colleagues.
Thank you to all the speakers, representatives of institutions, civil society, local authorities, the union system, and grassroots organizations who have contributed to this rich and necessary discussion.
This round table has delivered a very clear message.
The right to adequate housing for all women and girls in their diversity is not a sectoral issue.
It is a structural matter of human rights, social justice, urban democracy, and peace.
The guiding questions that framed our discussion have shown how deeply the issue of housing is interconnected with all the major challenges of our time, the climate crisis, migration, conflicts, growing urban inequalities, gender based violence, and the increasing economic insecurity affecting millions of women worldwide.
We have heard how in many contexts, women continue to face systemic barriers in access to land, property, credit, housing security, and essential urban services.
We have also understood that these inequalities become even more severe when combined with poverty, age, disability, migratory status, ethnic background, or conditions of displacement.
It emerged very strongly that there is no neutrality in urban and housing policies, a policy that appears universal if not built through a gender responsive and intersectional lens, risks perpetrating exclusion and marginalization.
Stronger legal frameworks, adequate financing, and concrete tools by national governments are needed to guarantee women's housing rights.
At the national level, above all, political will is needed to integrate a gender perspective into urban fiscal, social, and climate policies.
The reflections shared by local governments highlighted another essential point.
The quality of housing also depends on the quality of urban space and public budgets.
Safety, accessibility, proximity to services, care infrastructures, mobility, and inclusive public space are integral parts of the right to housing.
We cannot speak about adequate housing if women are forced to live far from opportunities, isolated or exposed to violence, even to political violence.
The experiences shared by civil society and women's movements demonstrated the extraordinary value of community based practices, grassroots monitoring, feminist networks, and territorial alliances.
In many cases, women's organizations themselves have developed the most innovative and resilient responses in context of crisis, conflict, and climate change.
The contribution of urban professionals and the planning community has also been particularly important.
Designing inclusive cities and housing means recognizing that space is not neutral.
It can generate freedom or exclusion.
This is why it is essential to integrate gender responsive approaches into urban design, architecture, data collection, and the evaluation of public policies.
The discussion with the private sector also highlighted a crucial responsibility.
Urban investments and public private partnerships might incorporate principles of equity, accountability, and not discrimination.
Urban development must not generate new forms of eviction or displacement affecting the most vulnerable women.
Finally, the role of the UN system remains essential in strengthening international cooperation, global advocacy, as we have seen during this wolf, capacity building and in closing the data gap, all of which are indispensable for truly shaping transformative policies.
Several should priorities and I will be finishing emerged from this discussion.
Designing gender responsive housing and infrastructure, recognizing adequate housing as a pillar of gender justice that responds to live experience, promoting inclusive and participatory urban governance, remove discriminatory legislation to ensure equal rights, ensure access to finance and credit, supporting women's leadership in decision making processes, creating accountability mechanisms, addressing intersectionality so that no woman is left behind, strengthening the connection between housing policies, care, safety, and climate resilience.
From the Waban forum in Baku, a concrete commitment must emerge to build cities that are not only more sustainable but also more just cities where women can live without fear, participate fully in urban life, and see their rights recognized.
Because the right to housing is not only about having a roof over one's head, It is about the possibility of building one's future autonomy and citizenship.
The cities of the future will be truly democratic only if there are designs starting from the real lives of women and girls.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you, Madam Moderator.
Thank you to everyone.
Big applause for panelists, speakers, and participants, and I hope we had a lot of concrete ideas that will go into the final declaration, but also for each and every one of you to take home.
Thank you so much.