Good morning, everyone.
Please take your seats so we can start.
I call to order the first multi-stakeholder panel discussion of the high-level meeting on the midterm review of the new urban agenda.
This panel discussion today will address the theme "Delivering for People: Scaling Up Adequate Housing, Land, Basic Services, and Inclusion.
" And let me take this opportunity to warmly welcome all of you.
My name is Fernando Marani.
I'm Program Director of Justice, Inclusion, and Equality at the Center for International Cooperation of New York University as part of the Pathfinders Initiative.
I will be moderating this session today.
Let me start by thanking the President of the General Assembly for the invitation to moderate this discussion, as well as her team at OPGA and the staff of UN-Habitat, including at the New York office, for all their work and professionalism in preparing for today's session.
This panel is about the part of the agenda that people experience more directly in their daily lives: the home they live in, the services that they rely on, and whether the city makes room for them.
It's about responding to, and respecting, protecting, and fulfilling the human rights of all, particularly those at risk of being left behind.
Seen through the inequality lens, the scale of the challenge can feel overwhelming.
An estimated 2.8 billion people worldwide experience some form of housing inequality.
At the same time, the global real estate value is nearly $380 trillion, the largest store of wealth in the world.
So the resources exist, but the challenge is delivering them to those who need them most.
Affordability sits at the heart of this problem.
And informality is not a marginal phenomenon; it's how most urban growth is currently happening.
Forced displacement compounds the challenge creating urbanization without growth.
People push into cities by conflict and climate disasters rather than draw by opportunities.
And this is why bridging the humanitarian development divide is one of the questions before this panel.
And yet, the window for action is real.
For example, two-thirds of the African cities that will exist in 2050 have yet to be built.
An African city will absorb more than 1 billion additional residents over the next three decades.
The decisions that are taken now will determine whether this growth is inclusive.
Our research at Pathfinders has found that societies making progress against inequality and exclusion deliver visible results in people's daily lives.
And housing is among the most visible of all.
Delivering on housing rebuilds trust and helps renew the social contract.
It is a strategy for peace, justice, and inclusion.
Because justice matters here, too.
Together with IAAD, we are currently working on a new analysis on how people-centered justice can prevent forced evictions before disputes even reach a courtroom, through legal empowerment and community paralegals, mediations, and closer collaborations between justice planning and housing institutions.
The common thread across the solutions that we know is people.
It's putting people, their rights, and their participation at the center of housing and urban policy.
The midterm picture can be summed up in one sentence: progress in policy frameworks has yet not matched the delivery at the scale that we need.
Our task this morning is to focus on implementation so no one is left behind.
But before we hear the presentation by the panelists, and thereafter, the floor will be open for comments from all of you, observations, and questions.
But there is no pre-established list of speakers, so delegations wishing to speak after the presentations are not invited to request the floor by pressing the microphone button from this moment onward.
Allow me now to introduce the panelists for this morning.
Each panelist will have 4 minutes for their intervention, and I kindly ask each of them to respect the allocated time so we can go over the list.
We will have first Ms.
Sara Lister, Co-Director of Governance, Rule of Law, and Partnership Hub at UNDP.
We are also joined today by Ms.
Megan Gillgan, Acting Director of UN Women Strategy Partnership Division, and Dr.
Casla, Special Rapporteur on the Right of Adequate Housing.
We also hope to have the Mayor of Quito joining us later this morning, Mr.
Cristian Pavel Muñoz-López.
We will move now with the first panelist.
Sara, we have a question for you.
So that will be: what innovative and scalable approaches across policy, financing, and delivery are needed to accelerate access to adequate and affordable housing? And how can these efforts better reduce inequality and vulnerability while supporting member states in meeting the global commitment? You have the floor.
Thank you very much.
Good morning, Excellencies, Delegates.
Thank you to the President of the General Assembly and to UN-Habitat and partners for convening this discussion.
Adequate and affordable housing is more than a place to live.
It is the place from where people are better able to access jobs, education, health care, and other essential services.
And housing outcomes are shaped by interconnected systems: land governance, infrastructure, municipal finance, transport, climate adaptation, and more.
So that is why UNDP does not see housing as a standalone sector, but as a broader development issue.
And that is where UNDP can add value as part of the integrated UN approach to development, bringing that expertise in governance, finance, climate, and local delivery capacity.
Drawing on UNDP's experience in over 170 countries and territories, I would briefly like to highlight three areas of focus to answer your question.
First, policy.
Housing must be planned as part of integrated urban systems, bringing together sectors and institutions responsible for delivering them.
Otherwise, housing that fails to connect people to opportunity can deepen the very inequalities we are trying to close.
This requires stronger multi-level governance, not only better coordination, but meaningful engagement of local governments and communities in planning and decision-making.
For example, in Uruguay, UNDP and the Inter-American Development Bank support national and local governments to upgrade informal settlements by integrating housing, infrastructure, and disaster risk management.
Second, financing.
Mechanisms must match local responsibilities and reach the places and communities most at risk of being left behind.
Cities need financing systems that align domestic revenue, transfers, private capital, development finance, and climate finance around shared priorities.
This is the logic behind integrated local financing frameworks, now backed by a global commitment.
The Sevilla Platform of Action has set a target of 40 ILLFs by 2030.
In Ukraine, for example, UNDP, the European Investment Bank, and the EU support national and local authorities to prepare and implement recovery investments, enabling €1.2 billion in financing across 120 communities.
And thirdly, and finally, delivery.
Cities and regions need stronger institutional capacity and a different delivery model.
Plans and financing only translate into results when local institutions can plan, coordinate, and deliver, and capacity must be matched by new ways of working.
Delivery should move from top-down provision to partnership with communities, including those most at risk of being left behind.
In Bangladesh, for example, UNDP supported this approach by combining stronger municipal capacity and community-led planning, driven largely by women, with housing improvements, flood protection, water services, and livelihoods, reaching nearly 4 million people across 19 cities.
Taken together, these three shifts will allow us to accelerate progress on housing while narrowing rather than widening inequality.
And the UN's role is to support them with coordination, financing instruments, and the partnerships needed to act at scale and to ensure no community and no person is left behind.
And UNDP stands ready to continue working with member states, local governments, national governments, and communities to turn these commitments into lasting, equitable results.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Sara, and thank you for highlighting governance, financing, and delivery as three core elements to advance this agenda.
Let me now move to Megan from UN Women.
Megan, how can integrated urban planning and investment be strengthened to ensure equitable access to basic services, sustainable mobility, and public space, particularly in underserved and rapidly urbanizing areas, while reinforcing synergies across relevant global frameworks and commitments? Thank you very much for the question.
And Excellencies, Delegates, huge appreciation to the organizers of this panel.
At UN Women, what we have learned over the past 16 years in our Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces global initiative, which supports more than 75 cities in 36 countries across the world, is that women's top concerns in urban spaces often center around fear: fear of sexual harassment, sexual violence, and the fear of violence in everyday public settings.
This fear affects how women and girls move through cities, how they access services, how and if they work and study, and how they participate in public life.
To strengthen integrated urban planning and investment for equitable access to basic services and sustainable mobility, we need to institutionalize gender-responsive and participatory urban planning.
We start with generating sex disaggregated data and gender statistics to inform gender-responsive planning and work with multi-stakeholder mechanisms that bring together local government, business owners, and women's rights and environmental organizations to design and deliver integrated solutions.
This ensures that planning and investment reflect women's lived realities, including mobility patterns, care responsibilities, safety concerns, and result in services and public spaces that are more accessible, inclusive, effective, and environmentally sustainable.
Through the Safe Cities and Safe Public Spaces global program, for instance, in Morocco, in Rabat, public spaces were revitalized using a participatory and gender-responsive approach.
The success of that model led the Ministry of Housing to develop national guidelines on gender-responsive planning to institutionalize the approach and ensure that all women and girls can safely access and use public spaces.
For urban planning investments to be truly sustainable and integrated, we also need to strengthen multi-sectoral governance and financing for equitable urban development, fostering collaboration across sectors, including urban planning, transport, housing, public services, and environmental protection agencies.
Another example from Halifax in Canada.
A multi-sectoral committee was set up to bring together representatives from urban planning, transportation, parks and recreation, safety, and others to implement an integrated approach to planning for women's safety in public spaces.
Investments in safe and affordable public transport, water and sanitation, lighting, accessible public spaces, housing, and care infrastructure are needed to implement the plans with dedicated budgets to maintain and sustain these services and spaces.
Together, these efforts can improve access to basic services, sustainable mobility, increase women's autonomous movement, and enable greater participation of women in economic, social, cultural, and public life.
A last example in Tanzania, the Sighes Market was upgraded through a partnership between local authorities, market committees, and community members.
Investments included gender-responsive sanitation infrastructure, such as accessible public toilets and handwashing facilities.
These were combined with improved market governance, women's economic empowerment initiatives, and prevention of violence against women and girls.
Together, they show how integrated urban investments can strengthen access to services and women's safety in public spaces.
A succinct way that UN Women frames the issue is that women want to be able to walk, to travel, to work, to study, to exercise, meet friends, use public services, and participate in public life without having to constantly calculate the risk of harassment and violence.
Thank you very much, Megan.
Thank you very much for putting concrete examples how to build gender-responsive approaches, starting with actual data and then creating solutions that are multi-stakeholder and multi-sectorals in nature, and the work that UN Women is doing in this area.
Now let's move to our third panelist.
Dr.
Koldo Casla is the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing.
And the question for you today is: what actions are needed to strengthen the capacity of local and regional authorities, communities, and stakeholders to create inclusive solutions while ensuring implementation reaches persons in vulnerable situations? You have the floor.
Thank you very much.
Excellencies, Delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
It is an honor for me to be here in this panel.
My name is Koldo Casla.
I'm the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, appointed by the Human Rights Council last March.
In this capacity, my role is to help states fulfill the right to adequate housing, respect, protect, and fulfill the right to housing, as it has been recognized in international human rights treaties that the vast majority of countries have signed up to in exercise of their national sovereignty.
So in that capacity, I would like to share with you all, in the three minutes I've been given, five points.
The first point is that we are living at a time of crisis of multilateralism and also a time of crisis for the principle and the standards of human rights.
And I think in this context, it is really important to make an effort to reconstruct the meaning of human rights from the bottom up.
It really is important that we have discussions in New York or in Geneva or in Strasbourg or all over the world about international human rights treaties, international human rights laws.
But we need to bring people with us.
We need to bring the communities with us.
And we need to reconstruct, in a very participatory way, the meaning of human rights to make sure that people are on our side.
That is the first point I would like to convey.
The second point is that local authorities, local governments, need to be trusted in this process.
They need to be given resources.
They need to have the competences to deliver on the right to housing.
In the vast majority of your countries, local governments are the ones, and regional governments are the ones that have the mandate to deliver on social rights, on access to education, on access to health, on access to social security, on access to housing.
We need to trust and give appropriate resources to local authorities and regional authorities to deliver these mandates.
The third point is that, as a consequence of what I have just said, local authorities are not just another stakeholder.
For a very long time, local authorities have been seen as stakeholders very close to or very similar to NGOs in United Nations settings and contexts.
Local authorities are part of the state.
They are duty bearers.
They have responsibilities for the delivery of social rights, like housing and the others.
And as such, they must be held accountable.
They are the state.
They are duty bearers in human rights.
The fourth one is that we need to trust not only local authorities but people themselves.
Democracy needs to work at a very local level.
And just like we need to redefine the parameters of human rights, we need to trust the people to find solutions for their own problems at the local level.
This is very important in relation to housing, because there are many countries, many places around the world, many of you will recognize this, where communities themselves are taking ownership of their own life.
They are building community long-term.
They are building cooperative initiatives.
They are building housing from the bottom up.
And it is important that we trust the people themselves.
And finally, my fifth point is that international human rights law matters.
We need international law.
We need international treaties.
We need multilateralism.
We need these spaces as a reference and as a normative reference, but also as a space to share good practice and to learn from the future.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Koldo.
Thank you for really stressing the importance of local governments in finding solutions to this challenge and actually trusting them and providing them with the tools to ensure they deliver, but also connecting the local realities to these multilateral discussions and how it can really help us to advance the implementation of the agenda.
And now let us move to the fourth speaker of this morning, of this panel.
We have with us the Mayor of Quito, Mr.
Cristian Pablo Muñoz López.
And the question for him is: what is required to bridge the humanitarian development divide early, building local authority and community capacity to co-create inclusive urban solutions for displaced population? So Excellencia, you have the floor.
Thank you very much.
Good morning to you all.
I'll be speaking in Spanish, if that's OK.
Thank you to the panel and to everybody here.
Firstly, I'd like to say that it's a pleasure for me to be here, because as you might remember, Quito was the host of Habitat 3.
Therefore, the new urban agenda was firstly discussed in my city, Quito.
And today, at the midterm assessment, I would like to comment on a few public policies.
I think that's particularly important.
And I'd like to refer to three points.
Firstly, institutional matters.
I think that when Quito was considered to host Habitat 3, it was to do with the constitution that was adopted a few years before, because in our constitution, we have some important issues, such as the rights of nature, the right to cities, and a legal and constitutional provision that ensures that national development planning should include our territories and also civic participation.
And I'm saying that because within cities, at the local level, this constitutional spirit is being repeated.
So to overcome the gap between the expectations for people, of their development, and what each municipality has to do, we have three elements.
Firstly, we have to have a public assembly.
We can't validate municipal policy if it is not first validated by the public assembly that covers a population of 3 million inhabitants.
This validates public policy and the budgets every year.
Secondly, this means that we have participatory budgets where the local authorities, or rather the boroughs of each city, get to decide which projects they're going to implement on the basis of the budget that is approved.
And finally, within our administration, we've set up this idea of territorial cabinets.
Quito covers 3 million inhabitants, but we are divided into 10 territories that we call zonal administrations.
And within those, we have territorial cabinets that include public participation.
Second point now.
What we're working on in Quito is a social protection floor and a social protection system.
At the time, I was a national legislator, and I put forward a law in our country which is a first.
And I also wanted to include that we could ensure that we could include this social protection floor within our cities.
Now, obviously, this might be different for every city in each country, because cities may or may not have powers over certain things.
And in Ecuador, municipalities look after urban planning, but we've also given a lot of weight to social policy, social planning.
So that's why we are including the social protection floor at the municipal level.
We believe that's essential.
And we also have a key issue of looking after the elderly population.
We have been consolidating a care system, stressing particularly the urban planning needs that have been raised by women, and also, thirdly, focusing on social protection.
We're not just focusing on providing assistance, but also ensuring that there is social protection.
And I just wanted to say that to close this gap, I think it's important that within this type of forum, we ensure that there are policies, either urban or mobility-based policies, but that are a part of social policies.
I say that because we always talk about how much we need to subsidize mobility policies.
And if we look at them just as mobility policies, then any subsidy might be seen as too much.
But if we think of them as social policies, then we can understand that these mobility policies might benefit the poorest.
They would, therefore, benefit in cities.
Now, the other issue is housing.
And I'll close with this.
We are, at least within Quito of 10 administration areas, we have five hubs for urban development.
And we are working on the paradigm of the 15-minute city to make sure everything is available within 15 minutes, so that as many services as possible are as close as possible to the public to ensure that all of the essential services are within this close area to each people.
So we're trying to close the distances between the development expectations of people and urban planning policies.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for that.
Thank you very much for highlighting some concrete solutions coming from Quito.
Of course, it has a very key role in the history of the new urban agenda, in particular the issue of participatory budgeting, social protection floors, and social policies to strengthen the trust of citizens and their government.
And I think the issue of trust is something that we saw across the panel, like how really working on solutions that are inclusive in nature, that address the inequality, that address those populations that are in more vulnerable situations, can really help a government to strengthen the trust of their people and build stronger and more peaceful societies.
Before we move into the interventions from the floor, please let me join me in extending a very warm round of applause to all the four speakers.
First, because they kept the time, which is never the case in panel.
Thank you very much for that.
That opens more time for all of you to intervene.
Thank you very much.
So now we will open the floor for comment and statements.
I would like to remind delegations that there is no pre-established list of speakers.
So participants wishing to take the floor are invited to press the microphone button.
In giving the floor, we will follow the practice of member states will be alternated with representatives from observers, United Nations systems, entities, and stakeholders.
I remind delegations that the time limit for interventions will be three minutes for individual statements and five minutes for statements on behalf of groups, which will be strictly enforced by means of automatic microphone cut-off.
To assist delegations in managing their time, a clock will be displayed on the screen, and the microphone will start blinking 30 seconds before the cut-off.
I appreciate all of you also being as collaborative as the panel to keeping the time.
Having said this, I will also appeal to all speakers to deliver their statement in a reasonable piece of time so we can also facilitate the work of our colleagues on the interpretation booth into the six official languages.
Thank you, everyone, for the cooperation.
So now let's move to the list of speakers.
And we will start giving the floor to the distinguished representative of Uruguay, that will be followed by Azerbaijan and Czechia.
So Uruguay has the floor.
Thank you very much for allowing us to participate in this meeting.
For Uruguay, social housing precarity cannot only be seen in terms of access to services or construction quality.
It needs to be seen through a human rights lens to recognize people as rights holders and housing as a fundamental component to the exercise of other rights, such as employment, health, et cetera.
This means that we need to rethink our housing policies, taking into account cultural, social, and territorial diversity, both in urban and rural context, to therefore promote safe, adequate environments, strengthening the community fabric, and to address the needs of everyone without discrimination.
For Uruguay, the right to security in housing means that we need to ensure the right to infrastructure and development opportunities for the entire population, including rural and intermediate areas.
This means building public planning capacities, also promoting instruments that allow us to manage conflicts, guide investments, et cetera.
It's essential that urban transformations make a tangible impact on people's lives.
In Uruguay, we face clear challenges, high living costs over the last few years, driven by global input inflation.
And there is also a divide that we tend to underestimate, which is between the need for housing and how this is integrated within people's lives.
And this is also something across the region.
This currently situated inflation is also particularly driving up the costs of construction, public policies.
And it means that municipalities either have to be further indebted or do something else to find a solution.
In Uruguay, we have to reach a logical solution, which is that we have to produce housing and habitat.
And I want to just share a few programs that we are currently carrying out.
One is a program that is on coexistence between informal and formal housing.
The main component is co-living, but it aims to improve housing and habitat and also improving public spaces and infrastructure, and also strengthening the community and safety within this co-living space.
We are only able to come up with this with public participation.
We believe that that is essential.
We have another program too.
This is one that oh, the microphone's being cut off.
Thank you very much for that presentation, Your Excellency.
Floor to the distinguished representative of Azerbaijan, that will be followed by Czechia and Spain.
Azerbaijan, you have the floor.
Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.
Yesterday's discussion showed that while countries are at different stages of implementing the new urban agenda, they face a remarkably similar challenge.
How do we translate commitments into tangible improvements in people's daily lives and deliver results at scale? Speaking at the ministerial segment at the High Level Political Forum, the Secretary-General called for stronger action to address the global housing crisis, expand equitable financing for urban infrastructure and services, and ensure that no one is left behind in urban development.
These priorities were equally reflected at WWOOF-13 in Baku, held under the theme "Housing, the World: Safe and Resilient Cities and Communities.
" One message stood out clearly: housing is not an isolated sector.
It is a foundation for dignity, opportunity, and sustainable development.
The Baku Call to Action reinforced this understanding by emphasizing people-centered, localized approaches and the importance of turning global commitments into local impact.
So how can we accelerate delivery? First, affordable housing requires an integrated policy approach.
Housing supply, land management, accessible finance, regulation, and special planning cannot succeed in isolation.
Different population groups face different barriers, and scalable solutions therefore require coordinated policy and financing instruments.
Azerbaijan's experience illustrates this approach.
In 2016, we established the State Housing Development Agency together with a national roadmap on adequate housing.
Since then, 18 residential projects comprising around 14,000 apartments have been delivered.
Nearly 70% of homeowners are under the age of 35.
Preferential mortgage offered at significantly below market rates, together with rent-to-own schemes, provide multiple pathways to home ownership.
The next step is to expand practical solutions across different national contexts.
This is precisely why the work of the UN-Habitat Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Adequate Housing for All is so important.
As co-chair, together with Somalia, Azerbaijan remains committed to advancing practical, scalable, and member-state-led solutions that build on the momentum generated by WWOOF-13 and this high-level meeting.
Second, housing alone does not create inclusion.
A home must connect to quality public services, mobility, education, health care, public spaces, and economic opportunity.
Equally important, development should not only be delivered for people, but with people.
WWOOF-13 demonstrated the value of meaningful participation by bringing local authorities, civil society, community representatives, and other stakeholders.
In Azerbaijan, draft master plans are publicly discussed before approval, ensuring that local communities contribute to shaping future development.
In parallel, grant programs supporting urban initiatives led by civil society help transform participation into concrete action and strengthen partnerships for more inclusive cities.
Finally, we must bridge the humanitarian development divide from the earliest stage of.Thank you very much, Your Excellency.
I will now give the floor to the Distinguished Representative of Czechia, followed by Spain and the International Organization for Migration.
So, um, Czechia, you have the floor.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates.
Czechia fully agrees that delivering the new urban agenda requires moving from policy commitments to implementation at scale, with particular attention to those most at risk of being left behind.
Our experience shows that affordable housing cannot be addressed in isolation.
Effective solutions require integrated territorial approaches that combine housing policies with strategic and spatial planning, sustainable mobility, access to basic services, and strong urban, rural, and inter-municipal partnership.
Investment in affordable and sustainable housing should therefore be accompanied by smart land-use planning, renovation of existing housing stock, brownfield regeneration, and measures to prevent socio-spatial segregation and promote social inclusion.
We also see a crucial role for local and regional authorities.
They are closest to communities and best placed to respond to local needs, strengthening their capacities, improving access to financing, and delivering inclusive solutions, particularly in smaller cities and rapidly changing regions.
Where relevant, local authorities should also be supported in responding to the needs of displaced populations through inclusive urban planning and equitable access to housing and basic services.
Czechia remains committed to sharing experience, strengthening partnerships, and working with all stakeholders to ensure that no one and no place is left behind.
Thank you.
I thank the Distinguished Representative of Czechia.
And now I will give the floor to the Distinguished Representative of, um, Spain, followed by the International Organization for Migration and stakeholder.
Number 1, España, tiene la palabra.
Spain, you have the floor.
Thank you to the panelists for the very inspiring, uh, presentations.
The new urban agenda reminds us that sustainable urban development must be built by people and for the people.
It also reminds us that adequate housing, access to land, basic services, mobility, and public space are interconnected dimensions of the same agenda of rights, inclusions, and social cohesion.
Yet, when we discuss the right to housing, we often focus on how many homes to build or how to finance them.
But there is a more fundamental question: what kind of housing do we want to guarantee? Adequate housing is much more than a roof over one's head.
It is a safe, healthy, accessible, and dignified place from which people can build their lives.
That quality depends, to a great extent, on the high quality of architecture and the built environment.
That is why Spain firmly believes that there can be no genuine right to housing without architectural quality.
This conviction inspired our long high-quality architecture, which recognizes architecture as a public good, as a matter of general interest.
Good architecture reduces inequalities, improves health and well-being, strengthens social cohesion, increases resilience to climate change, and ensures that public investment creates lasting value.
This is precisely the vision promoted by the new urban agenda: building better cities through the integration of architecture, urban planning, and public policy.
Spain has translated this vision into concrete action.
Our Spanish urban agenda has already been implemented at more than 500 local authorities, turns international commitments into practical projects adapted to local realities.
We are now advancing our new metropolitan agenda, developed through a broad bottom-up participatory process that brings together public administrations, professionals, universities, the private sector, and civil society.
Metropolitan challenges such as housing, mobility, and public services require shared governance and common vision.
This integrated approach also underpins our 2026-2030 State Housing Plan, backed by $7 billion, the largest public investment in housing, uh, in Spain's history.
Its goal is to permanently expand the stock of public housing, affordable housing, accelerate rehabilitation, and improve access for those facing the greatest, uh, housing difficulties.
But at the same time, we must transform the way we build.
Industrialization offers a new model based on innovation, digitalization, and sustainability, making it possible to deliver higher-quality housing more quickly, more efficiently, and with a lower, uh, environmental impact.
And for this reason, Spain has launched the, uh, Strategic Project for Housing Industrialization.
Thank you very much.
I thank the Distinguished Representative of Spain.
Um, now I will give the floor to the Distinguished Representative of the International Organization for Migration, followed by stakeholder.
Number 1, Anne Barrain.
So, IOM, you have the floor.
Thank you, Moderator.
Migration is already shaping the urban future.
Cities cannot be safe, resilient, or sustainable unless migrants, displaced people, returnees, and host communities are included from the start in housing recovery, climate adaptation, and urban planning.
Access to safe, adequate housing is foundational to dignity, protection, and recovery in displacement-affected and fragile urban contexts.
It enables access to services and livelihoods, social cohesion, and durable solutions.
According to, uh, our World Migration Report from 2026, global displacement has reached record highs, driven by conflict, violence, disasters, and climate impacts.
More than 120 people million people were displaced worldwide by the end of 2025, including internally displaced people and refugees.
Most displaced people now live in urban or peri-urban areas, where access to housing, services, and livelihoods is often limited.
As 58% of the world's population lives in cities and towns, displacement is becoming increasingly urban.
In closing, delivering the new urban agenda requires inclusive, rights-based, and locally led solutions that leave no one behind.
Migration-sensitive frameworks can reduce urban poverty and housing insecurity, strengthen urban-rural linkages, and unlock the contributions of migrants and displaced people as workers, caregivers, entrepreneurs, neighbors, and partners in resilience.
Thank you.
I thank the Distinguished Representative of IOM.
Now I will give the floor to the stakeholder.
Number 1, followed by Barrain, Anne Liberia.
Stakeholder Number 1, you have the floor, and please introduce yourself.
Distinguished delegates.
Uh, I will speak from two different perspectives.
One, from a regional one from the Women and Habitat Latin American and Caribbean Network, and the second one, from a global perspective, on behalf of the wider commission and thousands of grassroots women leaders and organizations working every day in informal settlements, rural communities, and rapidly urbanizing areas around the world.
The Secretary-General's report tells us that while urban policies have advanced, delivery has not kept pace with people's needs.
From our perspective, this is because implementation still happens too far from the communities most affected.
If we want to scale delivery, we must first scale trust.
And across our network, organized women are already demonstrating what really works.
We negotiate for secure land and housing, we map informal settlements and identify the most at risk, we manage community savings that leverage investments, we also upgrade neighborhoods, improve disaster preparedness, and water and sanitation.
We, as the UN Women was describing today, Representative was describing, we also improve and deliver, uh, safety audits for women and girls, and build partnerships with municipalities.
These are not pilots.
These are really, uh, proven models that can be scaled when governments recognize communities as implementation partners.
First, housing policies must go beyond construction targets or numbers of houses, units, and we need to speak about secure land tenure.
We need to protect women's land rights, prevent forced evictions, and support community-led upgrading.
Adequate housing is more only than a roof.
It is safety.
It is dignity, livelihoods, and access to services.
Uh, the wider commission commits to expanding partnerships with between grassroots women's organizations, local governments, and development partners to scale community-led housing, strengthen women's land rights, improving local accountability, and build resilient neighborhoods.
Um, there we are with today we call on member states, UN Habitat and development partners to make the one strategic shift shift move, move from a consulting communities to investing in community-led implementation, especially those led by organized women-led groups, and we encourage member states and development partners to establish community partnership financing windows that channels small, flexible, and predictable funding directly to organized grassroots communities.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for your intervention.
And now I would like to give the floor to the Distinguished Representative of Barrain, followed by Liberia and China.
Um, Barrain, you have the floor.
Shukran.
Uh, thank you, Mr.
Chair.
If there is one lesson that we can share from the Kingdom of Bahrain's experience, it is that expanding the chances of receiving appropriate housing cannot be achieved by simply building more housing units.
Rather, it is achieved through building an integrated system that places humans at the center of the development process.
Based on this, the Kingdom of Bahrain has adopted an integrated approach that connects urban planning and city development and housing financing and partnerships with the private sector, based on the fact that appropriate housing is not simply restricted to providing a house, but providing an integrated and full environment that includes the infrastructure and services and facilities and public spaces in a manner that enhances the quality of life and social stability.
The Kingdom has also provided different avenues of housing through innovative housing projects, including expanding its partnership with the private sector.
This has offered more flexible solutions and contributed towards speeding up the provision of housing services while maintaining the sustainability of the housing system.
Our experience has taught us that expediting the implementation of the new urban agenda requires focus on building scalable models that countries can fit according to their national priorities, while enhancing integration between policies, governance, financing, and partnerships to guarantee that they are felt by the largest group of beneficiaries possible, largest number.
Here, the Kingdom of Bahrain believes that international cooperation is a basic element in speeding up this track.
We are proud in the Kingdom's participation, along with several states, in providing a solution, uh, in submitting a resolution of Housing for All during the UN Habitat session in 2023.
This resolution called for establishing an international an intergovernmental expert working group to offer practical solutions that would speed up the provision of sustainable, appropriate housing, uh, and affordable housing for all.
We also are working on bolstering data collection and financing mechanisms and supporting countries in implementing this target.
We believe that the success of the new urban agenda will be measured, at the end of the day, by our ability to guarantee that its effects are felt by the people on the ground, and that everyone, with no exception, is able to live in safe societies that are inclusive and sustainable.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Your Excellency.
I would like now to give the floor to the Distinguished Representative of Liberia, followed by China and Nepal.
Liberia, you have the floor.
Moderators, distinguished ministers, excellencies, I bring you warm greetings from the President of the Republic of Liberia, His Excellency Joseph Nyimabwaka, Senior the Minister of Local Government, and the people of Liberia.
Today, rapid urbanization presents both tremendous opportunities and significant challenges across Africa.
Our cities continue to grow at an unprecedented pace, creating increasing demands for housing, infrastructure, transportation, sanitation, and essential public services.
If managed effectively, urbanization can become a powerful driver of economic growth, innovation, and social transformation.
However, without coordinated planning and strategic investment, it can also contribute to the expansion of informal settlements, environmental degradation, and growing social inequalities.
In Liberia, we recognize that affordable housing is not just a basic human need.
It is also it also enhances human dignity.
Affordable housing is a driver of progress in health, education, and economic opportunities.
Thus, affordable housing and sustainable urban development are critical to human capital and national development.
This is why our government remains committed to strengthening urban planning systems, improving land administration, enhancing infrastructure development, and creating an enabling environment that encourages responsible public and private sector investment in housing.
Liberia currently faces a significant housing deficit, with demand projected to reach over 500,000 housing units by 2030, requiring the construction of at least 30,000 new homes each year.
Rapid urbanization has further increased this demand.
This housing deficit is driven by rising cost of living, high construction costs, limited access to housing finance, rapid urbanization, and widespread poverty.
This means provisions of affordable housing is not no longer viewed simply as the construction of buildings.
It is also positioned as a platform for creating jobs, promoting entrepreneurship, and expanding financial inclusion through initiatives such as the Program for Youth Entrepreneurship Investment, Youth Entrepreneurship Investment Bank.
Young Liberians are being empowered to become architects, engineers, developers, and business owners.
At the same time, women are being encouraged to participate as financiers, developers, and leaders in the housing sector, advancing on gender equality and strengthening their role in national development.
I thank you.
I thank the Distinguished Representative of Liberia.
Now I will give the floor to the Distinguished Representative of China, followed by Nepal, and stakeholder Number 2, China.
You have the floor.
Thank you, Coordinator.
I'm very honored to speak on behalf of China to participate in this, uh, stakeholder panel.
One, China is committed to the implementation of the new urban agenda that over the past 10 years we, uh, had a lot of, uh, success.
In terms of housing supply, we had a two-track approach: market and subsidy.
In addition to commercial housing, the government put in resources into subsidized housing, shanty town resettlement housing benefiting hundreds of millions of people.
Through, uh, these, uh, different forms of housing, uh, new residents, youth, and low-income groups, uh, have benefited from this.
In this way, we have given them decent, uh, housing.
The, uh, central finance have policy investment into the central western regions and rural areas, addressing housing safety for many poor rural households.
In community inclusiveness, we focus on housing quality.
Uh, we emphasize on equity, uh, so as the communities are friendly.
Through old neighborhood renovation and urban renewal programs, we upgraded more than 250,000 older residential communities, installing elevators and adding new elder care, childcare facilities, and community cafeterias.
In shanty town redevelopment, we preserved affordable living spaces and prevented social segregation.
In recent years, many cities promoted child-friendly communities with more safe play areas and walking paths for children.
Community libraries and activity centers are also providing children of all ages space to learn and socialize.
In planning and governance, we established a city health checkup system that regularly assesses the four dimensions of housing units, residential compounds, city blocks, and municipality as a whole.
So as to turn problem issues into urban renewal, uh, projects, this has given shape to a process of problem identification, solution, and improvement, uh, scaling.
The new urban agenda, um, um, as well as our new five-year, uh, plan policy has, uh, put, uh, into our central work so as to improve the housing.
We believe the new urban agenda, in order to achieve its goal, it is, uh, dependent on many things, especially on financing, technical standards, data sharing, and capacity building.
We would like to, uh, show that our, uh, uh, commitment.
We would like to turn political commitment into concrete action.
Thank you.
I thank the Distinguished Representative of China for their intervention.
Um, now I will give the floor to the Distinguished Representative of Nepal, followed by stakeholder Number 2 and Mexico.
Nepal, you have the floor.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Excellencies, uh, Nepal's urban policy framework envisions building a balanced, prosperous, and resilient national urban system, anchored in the principles of sustainability, inclusivity, resilience, green development, and efficiency.
We have adopted a whole-of-whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach, integrating sustainable urban development with national planning, rural transformation, and effective multi-level governance to deliver on the SDGs and the commitment of new urban agenda.
Let me highlight five key points for collective action.
First, adequate and affordable housing must be integrated with planned sustainable and resilient urbanization, not as a standalone sector.
Housing policies should be linked with land management, transport, basic services, and resilient infrastructure to prevent informal settlement, reduce urban inequality, and promote low-cost, innovative, environment-friendly housing for all, especially vulnerable communities.
Our national urban development strategy aims to promote planned land use, inclusive housing, and stronger regulatory frameworks to ensure that cities grow in an orderly, equitable, and climate-resilient manner.
Second, sustainable urban-rural integration is essential.
Cities and rural areas should evolve as complementary growth forces through better connectivity, regional infrastructure, local economic development, and integrated markets.
Investing in cities and urban infrastructure helps expand access to services, lowers capital cost of infrastructure, creates jobs closer to communities, and reduces excessive migration pressures on major urban centers.
Third, empowered local governments are fundamental to inclusive urban transformation.
Local bodies require predictable financing, stronger technical capacity, robust urban data, and participatory planning so that communities become planners in co-designing solutions rather than being beneficiaries alone.
Inclusive governance is indispensable for ensuring that women, youth, persons with disabilities, and marginalized groups are fully represented in urban decision-making, implementation, review, and follow-up processes.
Fourth, resilience must be embedded in urban development ecosystem.
Urban planning should integrate disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, green public spaces, and resilient infrastructure to protect lives, biodiversity ecosystems, and economies.
Investing early in resilient urban system is far more cost-effective than building after disasters, particularly for vulnerable populations and displaced communities.
Finally, global partnership and financing must match the scale of urbanization.
Achieving sustainable urban development requires coordinated action among all government actors, development partners, IFIs, MDVs, private sector, and local communities.
Constitutional finance, greater investment in urban infrastructure, innovative financing, and integrated implementation are crucial for accelerating progress towards SDG 11 and new urban agenda while advancing the broader 2030 agenda.
I thank you.
Thank you very much.
Um, I, I thank the Distinguished Representative of Nepal for the intervention.
Now we will go with stakeholder Number 2, with which we'll follow by Mexico and Malawi.
Uh, stakeholder Number 2, you have the floor.
Please introduce yourself.
Thank you, Chair.
Excellencies, delegates, and colleagues, it's a pleasure to be with you here today.
My name is Amanda Entrican, and I am speaking on behalf of Habitat for Humanity International, a global housing organization working in more than 60 countries.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has worked to advance housing solutions through construction, policy, and market systems.
For many of us in our network, this moment where housing is recognized as a global priority and not only a local concern is both welcome and long overdue.
Let me begin by welcoming the strong support from member states for the political declaration announced yesterday and by recognizing the meaningful inclusion of civil society throughout these convenings.
We are grateful to you and Habitat as well for elevating housing within the global agenda and facilitating dialogs like this one.
In responding to the question before us, I would highlight three gaps we see in our efforts to expand access to adequate affordable housing for resilient uh, for resilient housing.
Apologies.
First, a gap in commitment.
We often see infrastructure and economic development prioritized as drivers of growth, while housing remains separate from major investment and legislative efforts.
Progress is being made, but intent must be matched with action to reduce barriers related to land, regulation, zoning, and planning, while also strengthening local capacity to deliver on national goals.
Second, a gap in language.
Although housing challenges are universal, we often lack a shared framework to discuss them across contexts and countries.
As a global housing organization operating across diverse cultures and political contexts, we have come to recognize that this is a barrier to collective to the collective global effort needed to solve the housing crisis.
As such, we have launched Habitat for Humanity's Global Housing Continuum, a simple tool designed to help governments, local authorities, and practitioners speak a common language and identify housing needs and solutions to foster a more productive global dialogue.
Third, and finally, a gap in financing.
While housing finance receives significant attention, less attention is paid to how housing is captured or reflected within official development assistance.
Our research suggests there is limited measurement and understanding of official development assistant investment in housing, with less than 1% of ODA focused on housing.
While adequate housing is indispensable to produce outcomes in education, health, and well-being, it is markedly absent in the flows of development assistance.
Partner countries must look more meaningfully and donor countries must look more meaningfully at the absence of this type of assistance.
Addressing these gaps in commitment, language, and financing will help local authorities, communities, and stakeholders co-create solutions that reach those most in need and at the scale that is urgently required.
Thank you.
I thank the Distinguished Representative of Habitat for Humanity International and your meaningful contribution.
Now I'd like to give the floor to the Distinguished Representative of Mexico, followed by Malawi and Malaysia.
Mexico, you have the floor.Muchas gracias.
Thank you very much.
Good morning to you all.
In light of the crisis that is affecting thousands, hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have been excluded or left behind in terms of access to housing, Mexico maintains that the most urgent need for change is a paradigm shift, not only changing instruments.
Therefore, we propose 4 approaches to address this crisis: firstly, recognizing housing as a right and the role of the state as the guiding entity thereof; secondly, providing support and diversifying the support modalities; three, legal certainty for tenancy as an instrument of inclusion; and four, regulatory frameworks that take into account specific needs by population type.
Furthermore, Mexico maintains that the dichotomy between the urban and rural environments has generated an artificial vision, leading to the fragmentation of policies, and therefore we address seeing the territory as a continuum, providing integrated territorial planning that recognizes the right for indigenous and rural communities, that plans peri-urban, urban, and rural areas in a joined-up way so as to close gaps in access to opportunities and services.
We must support local governments and communities in applying urban planning and ensure that they have the appropriate means to ensure that the urban agenda reaches those that need it most: indigenous groups, women, leaders of families, etc.
Just to mention a few examples: in contexts marked by crises, wars, etc.
, we believe that the humanitarian response and development cannot operate in separate compartments.
It's essential to link up reconstruction with long-term development so that addressing emergencies is integrated at the outset of territorial planning policies, seeking to focus on risk reduction and building local capacities for resilience, integrating these aspects in urban planning.
Finally, Mexico promotes the development of human mobility frameworks that protect the dignity of displaced persons and refugees, reducing urban poverty and housing insecurity, and strengthening rural-urban ties.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much to the distinguished representative of Mexico.
Like now to give the floor to the distinguished representative of Malawi, followed by Malaysia, and stakeholder number 3, Malawi.
You have the floor.
Excellency Liz, Malawi appreciates the opportunity to contribute to the important discussion on delivering addressed housing, secure land tenure, basic services, and inclusive urban development.
As one of the first urbanizing countries in Sabah and Africa, Malawi recognizes that urbanization presents significant opportunities for economic transformation, while also placing increasing pressure on housing, infrastructure, and essential services.
Addressing these challenges remains central to our implementation of the new urban agenda and our long-term development vision, which is Malawi 2063, which identifies urbanization as a catalyst for inclusive and sustainable development.
To increase access to adequate and affordable housing, the government is implementing a national housing program that will construct over 10,000 housing units for security institutions, while promoting greater private sector investment in affordable housing.
We are also reviewing the national housing policy and the national urban policy to strengthen housing delivery and improve access to housing finances.
The Malawi Housing Corporation is implementing an ambitious program to construct almost 250 housing units over the next 10 years, which will significantly contribute to reducing the national housing deficit.
These houses will be available for both rental and home ownership purposes.
Secure land tenure is equally fundamental.
Malawi continues to modernize land administration through the Land Information Management System, while strengthening integrated spatial planning and implementing the Malawi Secondary Cities plan to promote balanced, resilient, and well-planned urban growth.
As reaffirmed in the political declaration adopted at this midterm review, delivering adequate housing and sustainable urban development requires strengthened means of implementation.
For developing countries such as Malawi, this demands greater access to financing, technology transfer, capacity building, and strong partnerships.
We therefore call for enhanced international partnerships.
We therefore call for all parties to come together to implement what was approved at these discussions.
Malawi remains committed to working with all partners to accelerate implementation of the new urban agenda and to ensure that every person has access to adequate housing, secure land tenure, and the opportunity to live in safe, inclusive, and resilient communities.
I thank you, Mr.
Moderator.
I thank the distinguished representative of Malawi.
Now I will give the floor to the distinguished representative of Malaysia, followed by stakeholder number 3, and Brazil.
Malaysia, you have the floor.
Thank you very much, Mr.
Moderator, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
Malaysia believes that delivering adequate housing requires moving beyond simply building structures.
We must build a comprehensive, people-centered housing ecosystem.
Under our Malaysia Madani framework and the housing reform agenda of the 13 Malaysia Plan, housing is a catalyst for social inclusion, economic opportunities, and also for sustainable urban development.
To achieve this, Malaysia is driving three strategic shifts.
First, data-driven accessibility and inclusive financing.
We are establishing a national integrated housing data repository to align housing supply with real economic market demand and purchasing power of our citizens.
Concurrently, we are expanding home ownership for the first-time buyers, informal workers, and vulnerable groups through targeted mechanisms like housing credit, guarantee scheme, and rent-to-own model.
Second, integrated livability and local empowerment.
Adequate housing cannot exist in isolation.
Development must be integrated with reliable transport, health care, education, digital connectivity, and green public spaces.
Crucially, we are empowering local authorities and communities to ensure these solutions are responsive to local needs, especially for women, children, older persons, and persons with disabilities leaving no one behind.
Third, climate resilience and urban recovery.
As climate risks intensify, we are integrating disaster risk reduction into our urban planning, avoiding high-risk areas, and strengthening climate-resilient infrastructure.
When disasters hit, our humanitarian response is people-centered, co-designed with impacted communities, and this strengthens urban recovery, restores dignity, and enables communities to rebuild permanently.
Excellencies, achieving this objective of the new urban agenda demands stronger international cooperation, innovative financing, and knowledge sharing.
By combining integrated planning, inclusive governance, and scalable housing solutions, we can collectively build cities where adequate housing serves as a true foundation for inclusion, resilience, and shared prosperity.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Malaysia.
Now I will give the floor to stakeholder number 3, followed by Brazil and Morocco.
Stakeholder number 3, you have the floor, and please introduce yourself.
Excellencies, thank you, Mr.
Moderator, distinguished panelists, and fellow stakeholders.
My name is Dr.
Onika Camberla Rowe.
Today I deliver on behalf of Harmony for Humanity Foundation and the Canadian International Chaplaincy Foundation.
I have the honor to contribute from the perspective of civil society and small island developing states.
For small island developing states, the right to adequate housing cannot be separated from the realities of limited land, climate change, vulnerability, high construction costs, water insecurity, inadequate infrastructure, and repeated exposure to disasters.
A house may be built today, but it cannot withstand tomorrow's hurricane if the family has no reliable access to water and sanitation, or if rising seas threaten the community in which it stands.
Can we truly call that adequate housing? This is why, from a CIDS perspective, we must move beyond counting housing units and address the entire human ecosystem of housing land, security of tenure, basic services, accessibility, accountability, and climate resilience.
Through our work in the community level, Harmony for Humanity Foundation has witnessed how the absence of basic services disproportionately affects those already at risk, particularly women, children, older persons, persons with disability, and low-income families.
I therefore respectfully submit three considerations.
Housing policy in CIDS must be climate-resilient by design.
We must stop rebuilding vulnerability after every disaster.
Investment in resilient housing, water system, and community infrastructure must be treated as development financing, not simply emergency.
Second, to land, housing, and basic services must be approached as a matter of human dignity and inclusion.
Excellencies, the promise of new urban agenda and SDG 11 will remain incomplete unless adequate housing is connected to SDG 6 on clean water and sanitation, SDG 10 on reduced inequalities, and SDG 13 on climate change.
It is about whether that roof survives the next storm, whether clean water flows beneath it, whether the family living underneath it can afford to remain there, and whether the community around it is safe, inclusive, and resilient.
As civil society and stakeholders, we are working with government and local authorities and the UN Habitat to develop partners to.
I thank the distinguished representative of Harmony for Humanity Foundation.
And now I will give the floor to the distinguished representative of Brazil, followed by Morocco.
Brazil, you have the floor.
Good morning.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
I'm very happy to be here.
Appropriate housing goes beyond having a ceiling or a roof over your head.
Recently, with the Minha Casa Minha Vida program, somebody said, "I'm going to go back to studying because now I feel encouraged to move forward.
" As we usually say at the UN, the future has to do with cities.
60 percent of folks live in cities.
In Brazil, around 85 percent of folks live in cities.
In Brazil, we have this initiative called Minha Casa Minha Vida, or My Home, My Life.
It is the biggest housing program in Brazil.
We have almost 10 million homes that have been granted to people since 2009, and around 3 million of them are going to be granted between 2023 to 2026, the current administration.
We are at 2.5 million at the moment.
And we think about housing in a broad way with services, health care, education, because we want to bring these people into official services so that they have access to public, high-quality services.
We're also planning for more trees and more libraries to foster the environment and education.
And we always prioritize women.
Around 85 percent of deeds are granted to women.
We also prioritize traditional communities, quilombola communities, and indigenous communities because we want to cater to those who need it.
We're also trying to encourage civil construction so that we have more innovative buildings and we can multiply and give better scale to this program, which already has extraordinary scale.
For every 10 Brazilians, 9 say that yes, this is a good program, and this is a big booster of civil construction in Brazil.
Over half of new undertakings in Brazil are from the Minha Casa Minha Vida program.
We must continue investing, and we must continue making progress with everyone so that we build cities that have less social inequality.
We know that big players are against it, but the majority is going to win.
We want to offer dignity, quality of life, and a better life for the families who need it.
Thank you so much.
I thank the distinguished representative of Brazil.
And now I would like to give the floor to the distinguished representative of Morocco.
Morocco, you have the floor.
Mr.
Moderator, Excellencies, allow me to begin by thanking the panelists for the very rich interventions.
The Kingdom of Morocco believes that the access to adequate housing, essential services, and an inclusive framework for life is a foundation for human dignity, social cohesion, and territorial equality.
Under the enlightened leadership of our King Mohammed VI, we have driven a new economic development model focused on territorial equality.
The Moroccan experience highlights three essential levers to implement the new urban agenda.
Firstly, focusing on housing policies.
The Ville sans bidonville policy, which is a cities without slums policy, has allowed us to benefit more than one million people.
We have direct assistance for housing.
This supports purchasing power for households, particularly young people and the most vulnerable.
Secondly, we've been focusing on urban inclusion, which means that we need to have close-up governance, focusing on local authorities as the main designers of public policy.
And that is how we have rolled out the new urban agenda at a regional level with a pilot laboratory in Rabat.
Third, inclusion means preserving territorial memory through the rehabilitation of Casbah and local areas in our cities.
Through this, Morocco has shown that it is possible to modernize cities but also preserve our heritage.
These experiences show that the right to adequate housing cannot be divided from territorial identity and governance and also durability.
We also are focusing on sharing solutions that work by strengthening urban multilateralism.
The Kingdom is proud to have contributed to the African Regional Platform for the New Urban Agenda.
This is aimed to build prosperous and resilient African cities.
Finally, let us pool our efforts so that we can ensure that our cities become spaces for dignity, equality, and durability, leaving no one behind.
Thank you very much.
I thank the distinguished representative of Morocco.
And in order to be able to start panel number two of this morning on time at 11:30, where more interventions will be allowed, we will have to close the listeners' speaker now.
For those delegations that were not able to deliver their statement in this panel are kindly requested to submit their statement at un.
org to be posted in the United Nations journal.
And to conclude this first panel, I would like to go back to the panelists.
We heard many good intervention examples for actions happening on the ground.
I would like to give each of you the chance in one minute for your final comments.
And I would like to start with you, Sara.
You have the floor.
Thank you very much.
Distinguished delegates, I would reflect that I think we have heard a remarkable consensus across the room this morning that adequate housing and access to services are not just a housing challenge.
They're a governance challenge, they're a finance challenge, and they're an inclusion challenge.
And we cannot address these challenges separately.
I think it's clear from listening to all of you that we do know what works.
Stronger coordination across levels of government, financing that reaches local actors, and locally led development that puts communities at the center.
So I think the UN system is well placed to support these efforts to focus on acceleration and implementation.
And UNDP stands ready to play its part and continue working with member states, local governments, and partners to turn commitments into lasting impact.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sara.
Megan, one minute for you.
Thank you.
And just to add to Sara's comments, a huge amount of consensus, but I think also an enormous amount of inspiration and passion in this room.
I just wanted to make three points to draw out what really impacted me in this discussion.
I think a continuous focus on human rights-based approach grounded in the lived experience of access and safety to design inclusive solutions for all, a huge emphasis on democracy at the local level and the participatory planning and budgeting approaches.
Third, I think from very well articulated by our civil society colleagues, the importance to include and invest in communities and civil society members as partners in urban development, and the real emphasis on integrated holistic approaches to housing, services, environment, rural-urban linkages, legal and land reform as being critical to really drive this agenda forward.
So thank you very much for the really inspiring discussion.
Thank you, Megan.
Thank you very much.
Koldo, your one minute.
Thanks very much.
Thank you all for this rich engagement.
Two brief points.
The first one is that I think it comes to the fore the necessary interlink between the private and the social.
And I believe it is important to talk more openly, as UN Habitat is doing under the leadership of the current executive director, about the social and environmental or ecological function of property, of ownership, and how we discuss together how we regulate institutional property so it can serve not only private interests but also the social interests of the community in the spirit of fulfilling the right to housing.
That is the first point.
And the second point is that I also praise the efforts to, under UN Habitat and led currently by Azerbaijan and Somalia to under the working group on adequate housing.
I think it is an important contribution.
And I will urge all member states to remember that the right to adequate housing is recognized in international law, and it should be part of those discussions under UN Habitat.
Thank you.
Thank you, Koldo.
Thank you very much.
And to conclude, I'll get the floor back to the mayor of Quito, Alon Muiños.
Just one minute for your final thoughts, please.
Thank you.
I'd like to touch on three topics.
Firstly, I'd like to agree with Mexico.
I think that we need to work on a paradigm shift.
We have a paradigm so that we have a platform that is a platform for everyone and leaves no one else.
Secondly, the need to ensure that for large housing projects, there should be more coordination between the national and local level.
I'm saying this as a mayor.
Very often, we have involvement from the central government, which doesn't necessarily include the voices of mayors.
If we want to have a big housing project, it's essential to work on coordination between both levels.
Finally, this is perhaps one of the main axes of our administration that is security of land tenure.
In Quito, we have around 1,200 regularized barrios and around 4,000 unregularized.
And if I were to tell you one of the most important policies, it would be to regularize these barrios.
This means ensuring land tenure security and land title.
That's my closing comments.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
Again, the Office of the President of the General Assembly, DGACM for the Secretariat support, and UN Habitat for putting together this panel.
And again, I will ask for a round of applause for the panelists and all your contributions this morning.
Before concluding, members, I remind you that the panel on discussion number two will take place immediately after this panel discussion.
I invite the moderators.
I see them already ready to take the stage and the podium.
I ask everyone to stay seated while we change the podium for the next panel.
Thank you very much.
The panel is now concluded.
Cities and housing are at the heart of sustainable development.
They drive economic growth, innovation, and opportunity.
But as urban populations continue to grow, so do the demands for housing, infrastructure, basic services, climate resilience, and public spaces.
Delivering sustainable urbanization requires more than a vision.
It requires investment.
The financing gap remains significant.
Over one billion people live in informal settlements, mainly in Asia and Africa.
More than half of people in urban sub-Saharan Africa lack basic services.
Local and regional governments face limited fiscal capacity, constrained access to finance, and growing pressures to meet the needs of their communities.
At the same time, climate change, economic uncertainty, and rapid urbanization are increasing, affecting the most vulnerable.
The challenge, however, is not only mobilizing resources.
We must ensure they reach the places and people who need them the most.
Innovative financing mechanisms are emerging.
Public and private partnerships are expanding.
Cities are exploring new ways to strengthen local revenues, attract investment, and unlock climate and development finance.
As we review the implementation of the new urban agenda, one question remains: how do we finance sustainable housing at the scale and speed required to meet the needs of the most vulnerable? I call to the order the second multi-stakeholder panel discussion of the high-level meeting on the midterm review of the new urban agenda.
This panel discussion will address the theme "Unlocking Delivery: Financing Sustainable Urbanization at Scale.
" Let me take this opportunity to warmly welcome all of you.
My name is Min Jang.
I'm the Global Director for Urban Subnational Finance, Tourism, and Disaster Management at the World Bank Group.
I'm serving as the moderator for this session.
Before we begin our program, I would like to invite everyone to watch a short video that sets the scene for today's conversation.
We can move.
They already played it.
Okay.
I can move forward.
As we reach the midpoint of implementation of the new urban agenda, one message is increasingly clear: while we know much more about what needs to be done, the greatest challenge is often how to finance delivery at the scale that is required.
This discussion also comes at an important moment following the adoption last year of the Compromisso di Sveviglia at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development.
The Sveviglia outcomes reaffirm that sustainable development will depend on stronger domestic resource mobilization, more effective public financial management, greater investment in local and regional governments, and financing systems that better align public, private, and international resources.
These priorities resonate strongly with the commitments of the new urban agenda and provide renewed momentum for financing sustainable urbanization and adequate housing.
Financing will largely determine the pace at which the new urban agenda moves from commitment to implementation.
Without adequate and predictable finance, plans for sustainable cities and adequate housing will remain ambitions rather than results.
But finance does not emerge in isolation; it is shaped by institutions, by how cities are governed, how land is managed, how revenues are raised, and how responsibilities are divided across national, regional, and local governments.
Mobilizing finance, therefore, often requires institutional reform and policy change at multiple levels.
And public resources alone will not be sufficient.
We need effective partnership between governments, the private sector, financial institutions, and communities.
The central challenge is not simply to find more money, but to build institutions, policies, and partnerships that can channel finance toward sustainable urbanization and adequate housing at scale.
We are fortunate to be joined today by an outstanding panel representing international development, public finance, national housing institutions, and community-led innovation.
We shall first hear presentations by the panelists, and thereafter the floor will be open for comments, observations, and questions.
As there is no established list of speakers, delegations wishing to speak after the presentation by the panelists are requested to press the microphone button starting now.
With that, let us begin our discussion.
Our first speaker is Colin Wark, President and the Chief Executive Officer of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, or CMHC.
Ms.
Wark, through its partnership with UN-Habitat, CMHC has also been partnering with experts around the world to examine how different housing supply and finance systems can better respond to today's challenges, including at the city level.
Drawing on this partnership, what lessons can be drawn from municipal finance that help create more efficient, adequate, and financially sustainable housing systems? Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you to the to UN and to all of my fellow panelists.
It's a great opportunity to be here and address the UN today.
We have the great pleasure at CMHC of being able to do some research with UN-Habitat.
In May, we launched a research project with them, and it's covering five major themes, one of which is municipal finance.
The others include market models to expand affordable housing, indigenous-led supply models, investor roles and safeguards from unintended consequences of housing speculation, and integrating climate resilience.
These are all fascinating topics that I'm sure we'll talk about in future forums.
For today, our focus is municipal finance.
Our intention of this work with UN-Habitat is to generate evidence and insights that will help address issues and advance municipal finance around the world.
There are we do have some preliminary results.
The research has just kicked off in May, but we do have some preliminary results that I'm very pleased to share with you today.
We will be of course, there is the issue of the availability of finance, and many panelists have spoken about that in other sessions.
This one of our first findings is around, once you have finance, how to ensure that it is effective, that it is that it is able to finance the things that you need it to finance, that you make the best use of the financing that is available.
And one of our first findings in our research is the importance of alignment and coordination.
This includes the planning systems at the municipal level, the infrastructure, the financial functions.
This applies internally within municipalities, within the departments, and also externally in different levels of governments, often who partner on the same projects in light of the same objectives.
In practice, this means making planning systems effective, having efficient zoning approvals.
It applies to building codes.
In Canada, for example, we have different building codes in different provinces, and we're looking at ways to harmonize those to make the systems more aligned and more coordinated.
And not doing so comes with a cost.
Some other CMHC research that we've done identifies that for every one-fold increase in regulation, there's a 1.4-fold increase in the cost.
So getting regulation right can really help keep the cost of affordable housing down.
As you may know, CMHC is involved in housing finance.
We've been involved in housing finance for 80 years this year, and we also deliver programs on behalf of the government.
And one of those programs is the Housing Accelerator Fund.
This is a fund that provides incentives to municipalities to get things right, to get that alignment and planning and coordination right at the municipal level.
It allows municipalities to identify and develop tailored solutions for their own environment.
And that brings me to a second preliminary finding of our research, which is the importance of empowering municipalities so that they can identify what is important at the local level and that they'll have the tools and the structures in place and build strong institutional capacity to deliver the things that matter to them individually as a municipality.
So those are the preliminary findings that I'm able to share with you today, and I really look forward to the discussion.
Thanks so much.
Thank you very much, Ms.
Wark, for these valuable insights.
Let me now turn to Ms.
Ines Maglias.
I used to work with Ines.
She's Vice President of Housing at the Caixa Economic Federal Brazil.
You also used to be Minister of Cities in Brazil.
You are leading one of the world's largest public housing finance institutions and with a big program, as it was mentioned in the last session, Mia Casa Mia Veiga.
Caixa has demonstrated how national financial institutions can work in partnership with governments at all levels to expand access to affordable housing, infrastructure, and essential services.
From your experience, what reforms are needed to efficiently and effectively leverage domestic finance at the national level, including unlocking potential local regional governments, housing authorities, and other stakeholders to overcome fragmented investments to achieve all the goals? Thank you for your kindness words.
I do my best in four minutes, you know? I try.
I'm going to speak in Spanish because I'm more comfortable.
I think that we've learned an awful lot within democratic governments, governments that have implemented strong housing policy in Brazil.
We know that in addition to mobilizing resources, we have to build institutions and a permanent system of financing governance and also ensure a form of implementation that organizes various stakeholders and means that we can roll out this system at a large scale over a long time.
So firstly, we have to establish the necessary institutions, establish the enabling legal environment for fair regulation so that all involved stakeholders can be included.
We also need to ensure that we have institutions that are able to fund, operate, monitor, and adjust policies over time.
And this calls for strong regulation.
The second is that we need predictable and long-term national financing.
We have the privilege of having a fund with the FG called the FGTS.
It funds urban fundings.
Mexico has INFONAVIT, and there are other important funds in other countries.
We think that international cooperation is very relevant.
But if we want to just stop financing policies and move on to funding long-term initiatives, this means that we need to forge strategies for investing national resources.
These are just the basic ways of building a long-term policy, long-term funding.
Third thing, we need to combine subsidies, guarantees, and credit.
We need to because credit doesn't necessarily reach those that need access to housing or make more just and sustainable access to housing.
We need instruments that are able to do this and deliver the right level of resources.
We need to also strengthen multi-level cooperation.
This includes the issue of governance, which should enjoy the democratic participation of civil society, local governments, et cetera.
Because while the national government has a very important role to play in establishing priorities, organizing resources, providing the legal frameworks, and reducing inequalities and regional inequalities, at the same time, the implementation happens at the local level.
So local and regional governments have to build their capacities as part of the process and as part of the solutions, also including civil society and social movements.
It's also important to include the productive sector to build capacities and create a niche for the productive sector so that it starts building accessible housing.
And I think that we've had quite a lot of success here because the business models established for Minha Casa Minha Vida used part of the private productive sector to build large-scale housing projects in Brazil.
We also believe that social movements are an important stakeholder for large-scale housing production.
Another aspect from my point of view is one challenge that we face in Brazil in particular.
This is including health and climate within the urban agenda.
We know that in the most vulnerable areas with that are most affected by poverty and climate, for instance, in some Brazilian favelas, the temperature can sometimes reach more than 50 degrees centigrade.
That's why today in human settlements, we believe that the topic of housing, climate, and health are indivisible.
And we will save many lives if we can focus on the topic of adaptation.
Finally, I want to say that the priority of government decision-making has been to put investment in the new urban agenda as a part of the investment for the country's development.
We can't separate the development of roads, railways from the issue of urban infrastructure.
Both of these are extremely important.
They are all part of the social and urban infrastructure.
This all of these together means that we can have fairer cities and save lives.
Finally, I want to say that in Brazil, despite having a clean energy matrix, we are also developing instruments to ensure sustainable investments, such as the Brazilian Sustainable Taxonomy, which is under the Finance Ministry.
The aim of this is to guide resources to mobilize climate resources and ESG towards the most vulnerable areas and to ensure fair, sustainable development.
I think that's everything that I wanted to note.
I wanted to in terms of what we are doing and what we've managed to achieve in Brazil.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ms.
Maglias, for sharing the valuable experience from Brazil.
Let me now turn to Mr.
Wing Dryce.
As Mayor of Genk, Belgium, and a longstanding leader in local government, Mayor, you have championed integrated urban development, sustainable city financing, and the localization of SDG.
Through your leadership, the city of Genk has become recognized for its innovative approach to urban regeneration, social inclusion, and partnerships that help cities deliver sustainable and resilient development.
Now, Mayor, how can the role of international financial institutions and the climate financing and the capital market contributions be better aligned for local and regional governments to deliver on the new urban agenda, while at the same time strengthening the flow of finance towards local impact? Thank you, Excellencies, colleagues.
I speak on behalf of the Global Task Force of Local and Regional Governments, an invaluable platform that brings local experiences into global decision-making.
From a city's perspective, the financing problem is not only a shortage of money, it is a broken delivery chain.
International financial institutions, climate funds, and capital markets often operate through different rules, timelines, and sectoral windows, while cities must deliver one integrated neighborhood: housing, energy, mobility, public space, and social inclusion together.
So how can these sources be better aligned? I would suggest a simple division of labor.
First, international financial institutions should finance early-stage project preparation, provide guarantees, and help cities aggregate investable projects.
Too many good local plans never reach financing because smaller administrations lack the staff, technical expertise, or upfront resources to develop them.
Preparation facilities should be accessible to local governments directly, and pooled pipelines should allow smaller cities to reach scale.
Second, climate finance should pay for combined local outcomes.
A social housing renovation may cut emissions, reduce energy poverty, improve health, and increase resilience at the same time.
We've heard that also with other speakers.
Yet cities are often forced to oblige to four different programs.
Financing criteria should reward this integrated value rather than reduce policy silos.
Third, capital market finance can provide long-term scale, but only when local investments plans are transparent, credible, and connected to stable revenue.
Allow me to illustrate this with a flagship initiative from my own city, the city of Genk, 70,000 inhabitants.
By becoming the first city in Belgium to implement such a comprehensive sustainable financing framework, we have shown that ambitious climate and social objectives can go hand in hand with sound financial management.
Rather than focusing on a single project, the framework covers all sustainable investments planned by our city for 2026 up until 2031 period.
This includes projects such as urban greening and soil deep paving, renewable energy initiatives, the creation of green public spaces, sustainable building renovations, the development of social structure, and innovative water management solutions.
The financing framework is therefore closely linked to Genk's multiannual strategic plan.
It includes clear criteria to determine which projects qualify as sustainable, how they are monitored, and which reporting requirements apply.
As with most sustainable financial frameworks, the principle of use of proceeds is central.
Funds raised through sustainable financing are allocated exclusively to eligible sustainable investments.
In 2025, the city conducted a market consultation and received offers from several financial institutions.
For each loan, Genk could choose between a conventional gray loan and a sustainable green loan.
On an average, the interest rate on green loans was 10 basis points lower, resulting in a potential saving that could amount to as much as €100,000 a year over time.
Through this approach, Genk sends a clear signal to the financial sector.
When attractive sustainable financing products are available, the city is prepared to make use of them.
In doing so, Genk actively contributes to strengthening the market for local sustainable investments and financing opportunities.
The framework, ladies and gentlemen, was finalized in early 2025 with external expert support and successfully underwent an independent assessment through a second-party opinion process.
The city of Genk also shares the framework with other local governments and stakeholders.
We see the same logic in practice through our European Open Lab project.
In social housing at a former mining neighborhood, the city works residents, housing providers, Energyville, the Flemish Research and Technology Center, and private partners to create a positive energy district.
Residents were involved from the start, so technical innovation is tied to affordability, comfort, and daily life.
The lesson is practical.
Finance works better when it supports a territorial partnership, not a standalone technology.
I would like to conclude.
Local governments must therefore be involved with financing instruments are designed, not invited only when a call is launched.
And finance must cover the full delivery chain: planning, project preparation, capital investment, operation, and maintenance.
Our request, ladies and gentlemen, is straightforward.
Let international institutions prepare and de-risk.
Let climate finance reward integrated impact.
Let long-term investors scale what works and give cities the mandate and the predictability resources to deliver.
To implement the new urban agenda at scale, we must finance territories as partners, not projects as isolated transactions.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Mayor Dryce.
Thank you.
Let me now turn to Mr.
Navid Hanif as Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development at the United Nations DESA.
Your work brings an important system-wide perspective on mobilizing and aligning public, private, and international finance with national priorities and global frameworks.
Mr.
Hanif, what do you think the role could the United Nations system play in strengthening coordination at the country level to scale up financing for adequate housing and sustainable urbanization in line with the new urban agenda and the Sevilla commitment? Thank you, Mr.
Moderator, and thanks to the organizers for giving DESA the opportunity to join you on this important conversation.
I think the new urban agenda gives us the vision, and the Sevilla commitment has renewed the ways to finance such agendas.
So they complement each other seamlessly.
And the Sevilla commitment is unambiguously clear that closing infrastructure gaps is absolutely essential for achieving the SDGs.
And for that, you need investment in quality, reliable, resilient, and sustainable infrastructure.
And housing should be considered as an essential part of this infrastructure building undertaking.
So that means housing should also be considered as in not as a social expenditure, but as an investment in productive, resilient, and climate-smart infrastructure that underpins inclusive growth.
So the UN system's role may sometimes be invisible, but the UN system creates those conditions, institutional structures to bring all these things together.
So as a first step, I think the UN system has to ensure that the urban priorities presented in the vision document should be an essential part of common country analysis, UN Sustainable Development Cooperation framework, and above all, the integrated national financing frameworks, because that is where you see the full picture of global, national, public, private financing that is available to a country.
And all the SDG strategies should also have urban planning as a central objective.
Second area where UN systems' role is critical, and my previous panelists have also mentioned, you need to create an ecosystem for financing.
It just doesn't happen that one sector is chosen to finance.
And the Sevilla commitment is again very clear.
It has lifted local finance to a very visible level in a global agreement.
So the UN system should continue to elevate local government finance as a global development priority.
And that is acknowledging the Sevilla commitment.
That means helping governments recognize that local government finance is development finance, and it should be placed financing of cities at the heart of national budgets.
Strengthening integrated local financing system, that requires that we give countries capacity for fiscal decentralization, predictable intergovernmental fiscal transfers, sustainable own-source revenue generation, and financial management and infrastructure asset management as well.
So this ecosystem, which also includes MDBs, public development banks, national commercial banks, they have to come together to generate resources because they are required in trillions of dollars that are made available for countries to invest in infrastructure.
Second, third, actually, make cities investment ready.
See, there is no dearth of instruments, but there are very few cities who are credit-worthy.
So the UN system has to come together and help city governments, and of course, working with national governments, project preparation capacity, technical assistance, and better public investment management, and capabilities that many cities need to transform housing needs into bankable investment opportunities.
And the UN can also help local governments strengthen municipal finance, improve property taxation and land management, and prepare investment pipelines and access climate and development finance.
Lastly, and that's so this ecosystem investment-ready sub-national level governments, then system also has to come together.
And I want to give two examples.
Twenty years ago in Rwanda, UN system came together and helped Rwanda, and this was UN Habitat, UNDP, to build a plan for building cities before they turn into slums because of expansion.
And that plan was about national urban priorities, city planning, municipal capacity, land administration, and investment planning.
That's what the UN system has done, and it should continue to do.
We have done same things in Egypt and Cambodia as well, not pursuing investing in housing as one activity, but part of the larger development strategy of a government.
Thank you, Mr.
Motrett.
Thank you.
Thanks a lot, Mr.
Hanif.
So please, let's give a big round of applause to all of our speakers for a very interesting dialogue and sharing their critical insights.
I will now open the floor for comments and statements.
I would like to remind the delegations that there is no pre-established list of speakers.
Participants wishing to take the floor are invited to press the microphone button.
In giving the floor, member states will be interspersed with a representative of observers, United Nations system entities, and stakeholders.
Delegations are also reminded that the time limit for interventions will be three minutes for individual statements and five minutes for statements on behalf of groups, which will be strictly enforced by means of automatic microphone cutoff.
To assist delegations in managing their time, a countdown clock will be displayed on screen, and the microphone will blink 30 seconds before cutoff.
Having said this, I would appeal to all speakers to deliver their statements at a reasonable pace to facilitate interpretation into the six official languages.
I thank you for your cooperations.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representatives of Bahamas, which will be followed by United Republic of Tanzania and Cuba.
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Sustainable urban development requires sustainable financing.
Governments should simplify funding mechanisms so that local authorities can access resources more efficiently while maintaining transparency and accountability.
Investment decisions should be based on community needs rather than administrative boundaries, while public investment should encourage private sector participation through partnerships that create affordable housing, stronger infrastructure, and more resilient communities.
In the Bahamas, the Ministry of Urban Renewal and Community Relations has established the Urban Renewal Foundation, overseen by a board of directors responsible for mobilizing resources from both local and international private partners.
This approach allows us to receive support beyond government financing and helps ensure that important community initiatives continue to deliver meaningful results.
One example of this is our Urban Renewal Band, which has received donations of band instruments and uniforms.
This program teaches children in inner-city communities how to play, read, and write music, how to march in formation, how to work together harmoniously, and how to become focused and disciplined, among many other valuable life skills.
We have also benefited from grant partnerships with UN agencies and loans from international organizations such as the Inter-American Development Bank.
The Ministry of Urban Renewal and Community Relations operates 31 centers on 11 different islands.
These places have become a safe haven and a rehabilitation hub for young people.
These centers provide opportunities, encourage positive, wholesome, life-enriching, and impactful alternatives, and offer many of our youth a genuine second chance.
At the same time, small island developing states continue to face significant barriers in accessing international financing, although the Bahamas remains highly vulnerable to climate-related and external shocks.
We are frequently excluded from international grant financing because our GDP per capita classifies us as a high income country.
I.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Bahamas for your intervention.
I will now give the floor to the distinguished representative of the United Republic of Tanzania, followed by Cuba and stakeholder one.
Yeah.
That's right.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it's an honor to speak on an important topic on unlocking the river, financing sustainability, urbanization at scale in Tanzania.
Tanzania is one of the fastest urban transitions in Africa.
Cities such as Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Mwanza, and Arusha are emerging urban centers, continue to attract people, seek economic opportunity, education, health care, and improving livelihood.
Dear delegates, the governmental strategy for planning for urban development is anchored in a resident urbanization for development roadmap, which emphasizes structure reform and cost-effective service delivery to scale this effort.
Tanzania has been pioneered in the use of innovation financing models such as Tanga, water infrastructure, green bond.
This model demonstrates how sub-national entities can help support economic capitals market to fund essential services like clean water, which is critical for population in drought-blown regions.
Effective municipal finance in development necessitated as local government are responsible for implementing significant portion of sustainable development goal.
Dear delegates, the economic impact of this initiative is sustainable.
For instance, the Cook Fund project, which supposed nearly 50,000 businesses and created 27,000 jobs.
Dear delegates, local government often significantly constrained in mobilizing resources needed to keep pace with urban growth.
Infrastructure demands frequently exceed availability of budget at the same time when urban authority must balance competitive priorities while ensuring fiscal sustainability.
This gap requires shifting from traditional financing approach toward diversity and innovation financing solution that can unlock investment at scale.
Key strategies adopted by Tanzania financing sustainability organization are strategic local revenue mobilization, leveraging land development captures, expanding public-private partnership, accessing climate and green financing, strengthening municipal finance management, and promoting integrated urban planning.
Dear delegates, financing sustainability organization is ultimately about investing in people, opportunity, and the future of Tanzania, let us commit to build cities that are productive, resilient, inclusive.
I thank the distinguished representative of the United Republic of Tanzania.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Cuba, followed by stakeholder one and Honduras.
Thank you very much, Chairman.
If we really want to speed up the implementation of the new urban agenda and the Sustainable Development Goal 11, we need to begin by recognizing an evident reality.
The main limitation isn't the lack of commitment, but rather the lack of means of implementation.
It won't be possible to build inclusive, resilient, sustainable cities while we have a persistent international financial architecture that reproduces inequalities and hampers the fiscal space for those that most need to invest in housing, infrastructure, transport, water, sanitation, and climate resilience.
Cuba reaffirms that the mobilization of natural national resources is important, but it cannot be a substitute for international commitments in terms of financing for development.
Therefore, it's essential to increase concessional funding, facilitate access to resources on a fair and predictable basis, and advance towards reforming the international financial architecture.
We also need to design metrics beyond the GDP per capita, and it would be interesting to understand how international financial institutions can include this multidimensional metric, particularly when granting this funding to SIDS to implement SDG 11.
In Cuba's case, these challenges are further worsened by the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the government of the United States and the recent fuel siege on the country.
This illegal policy is severely hampering our access to financing, technology, construction materials, equipment, and other essential inputs to carry out our urban development, build housing, modernize our infrastructure, and strengthen our resilience within our cities in the face of climate change.
These territorial effects drive up the costs of every project, and they prevent international cooperation.
Despite this, we continue to promote policies to guarantee the right to adequate housing, expand access to basic services, strengthen territorial planning, and build more inclusive communities in line with the new urban agenda.
The success of sustainable urban planning depends ultimately on our collective ability to close the gap faced by developing countries.
Without sufficient resources, sufficient predictable, accessible resources, the commitments that we are reaffirming together today will remain forever just mere aspirations.
Thank you.
Thank the distinguished representative of Cuba.
I now give the floor to stakeholder one, followed by Honduras and Papua New Guinea.
Stakeholder one, please speak.
Please introduce yourself.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator, excellencies, and distinguished delegates.
My name is Arianna Karamallis, Director of Global Engagement at Build Change, a global leader in resilient housing.
Housing and financing sustainable urbanization are one agenda, not two.
And sustainable urbanization will not be achieved if we overlook those living in informality, the majority of the world's urban residents.
Across the Global South, self-built and informal housing is the norm, not the exception.
The severe consequences of disasters impacting these communities is not a given.
It is due to the failure of systems that leave self-built homes unprotected from floods, storms, and earthquakes.
We welcome the declaration's commitment to incremental housing and secure tenure over displacement, but recognition is not resolution.
With African urban populations set to double by 2050, financing for informal housing will determine whether the new urban agenda succeeds.
Financing incremental resilient upgrading of existing housing through subsidies, private finance, and ODA will unlock sustainable urbanization at scale, reducing disaster losses while saving carbon and land.
With this in mind, we ask stakeholders to act on five points.
First, channel climate and disaster finance to homeowner-driven upgrading and release disaster risk financing based on vulnerability before disasters strike, not after.
Second, innovate housing finance, expand ODA and blended finance, develop mortgage and credit mechanisms for the informal majority, and scale subsidies for resilient upgrading, not new builds alone.
Third, recognize self-builders as primary risk managers and co-financiers, formalizing technical assistance, secure tenure, and disaster-resilient building practices for the majority who build their own homes.
Fourth, operationalize the platforms this declaration already names, resource the informality task force and the global action plan for some transformation, and strengthen the open-ended intergovernmental working group on housing.
Fifth, scale digital technical assistance, tools like Build Change's BC TAP platform, putting resilience engineering and financing expertise directly into local hands, enabling resilient housing at the scale this crisis demands.
Housing finance today will shape the resilience of tomorrow's cities.
Build Change stands ready to partner with member states, stakeholders, and financial institutions to get this right.
Thank you.
I thank stakeholder one for your intervention.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Honduras, followed by Papua New Guinea and Botswana.
Thank you very much.
Good afternoon to you all.
The topic that we're discussing today cuts across all of our nations.
In Honduras in particular, we have great expectations in terms of housing and sustainable urban development since our current government has made a crucial step through the creation for the first time in the country of the Secretariat for Housing and Human Settlements.
This is the governing entity for public policy in housing.
We've made substantive progress this year in this new phase for the housing sector.
One of the most important points is the national policy for subsidies as a response to the informality in countries in the region.
Its architecture combines smart, well-targeted subsidies, reciprocal guarantees, and access to long-term loans.
However, we continue to support the strengthening of institutions, strategic planning, policy innovation, but we do also fully recognize and we are aware of the fact that we face imminent challenges in reducing the housing deficit.
For this reason, sharing this space as nations which have such broad-based experience and as a country such as Honduras, we are beginning this transformation process within our institutions.
And this forum, therefore, is an invaluable opportunity to learn, to exchange good practices, and to forge joint solutions.
More than just asking a question in this space, I wanted to share with all of you a thought.
The challenges that we face are common to all of our countries.
Despite the fact that the levels of development and abilities that we have as countries are different, therefore, we shouldn't squander this opportunity to build partnerships to speed up the delivery of technical assistance, sharing of knowledge, and financing mechanisms.
Only through more solidarity-based international cooperation will we be able to guarantee that we can address this challenge.
And this is the meaning of the new urban agenda, that no country should move forward together and that such progress is a shared commitment.
Thank you very much.
Representative of Honduras.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Papua New Guinea, followed by Botswana and stakeholder two.
Thank you, Chair.
And panelists, excellencies, distinguished delegates.
My name is Abel Toll, Managing Director of the National Housing Corporation of Papua New Guinea, and I speak on behalf of the government of Papua New Guinea in alignment with the statement already delivered by our Minister for Housing, Honorable Dr.
Kobi Bomario, yesterday on behalf of the people of Papua New Guinea and our Prime Minister, Honorable James Marape.
Papua New Guinea aligns itself with the outcomes of the 7th Pacific Urban Forum held in PNZ in March this year and our set commitments to advancing the new urban agenda and achieving SDG 11.
For small island developing states such as Papua New Guinea, the greatest challenge is not a lack of land, vision, or commitment.
It is access to affordable long-term finance.
Papua New Guinea has approximately 97% customary land with enormous potential for sustainable housing, economic growth, and climate-resilient urban development.
Through our National Housing Policy 2023 and National Housing Sector Development Plan 2023 to 2027, we have established a clear national roadmap.
The remaining challenge is mobilizing affordable long-term finance to unlock that potential.
The people of Papua New Guinea and the Pacific have demonstrated resilience and self-reliance for generations through our customary land systems, traditional knowledge, and strong community values.
We are not asking for dependencies.
We are seeking fair and equitable partnership that enable us to unlock our own potential.
In this regard, we fully support the contributions from all the panelists, and I wish to also echo the timely remarks of Her Excellency Ms.
Amina J.
Mohamed, United Nations Deputy Secretary-General, during the launch of the SDG Report 2026, where she reminded us that we need to have access to long-term finances and that developing countries pay their bills.
It's when you put barriers in front of them that they don't.
Those words resonate strongly with the Pacific.
We therefore call for a more flexible and inclusive international financing architecture that expands access to concessional finance, climate finance, and technical assistance for small island developing states.
If we are serious about delivering the new urban agenda, then finance must become an enabler, not a barrier, to sustainable urban development.
For Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, unlocking finance means unlocking land, housing, jobs, resilient communities, and inclusive economic growth.
This is the partnership we seek.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Papua New Guinea.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Botswana, followed by stakeholder two and Angola.
Moderators, excellencies, Botswana aligns itself with the call to strengthen financing for sustainable urbanization.
One of the lessons from our experience is that the pace of urbanization is increasingly stripping the physical capacity of government to respond through traditional public financing alone.
Since COVID-19, we have witnessed reductions in the housing budget, undermining our housing targets.
To address this housing deficity, the Borneo National Housing Program aimed to deliver 100,000 housing units by 2029.
However, delivering housing at this scale requires significantly greater investment than public resources alone can provide.
Physical pressures and competing national priorities have reduced the scope for government guarantees and direct equally participation in large-scale housing projects.
The model adopted under the Borneo National Housing Program leverages private sector financial capital to accelerate delivery of affordable housing.
Under this model, government provides land at no cost while private investors finance and undertake the development of housing, eliminating the need for direct government capital expenditure on construction.
To date, 180 private investors have expressed their commitment to partner with government, making a significant step towards the implementation of the program.
In addition, we are exploring the introduction of housing levy as part of broader strategy to establish predictable domestic financing for affordable housing.
We also recognize the need to diversify financial instruments that can support land servicing, infrastructure development, and housing delivery at scale while ensuring that affordable housing remains accessible to low and middle-income houses.
Moderator, strong, resilient, and financially empowered local authorities are essential to deliver the new urban agenda.
Botswana is advancing a decentralizing agenda aiming at strengthening local governance and gradually expanding the physical autonomy of local authorities.
As cities continue to grow, local governments will require stronger physical frameworks.
When these are in place, the implementation of new urban agenda can be accelerated while safeguarding physical sustainability of future generations.
I thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Botswana.
I now give the floor to stakeholder two, followed by Angola and the Philippines.
Stakeholder two, please introduce yourself.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator, excellencies, distinguished delegates.
I am Amina Laraya, the Chief Executive Officer of NCEAG, Bahrain's leading integrated real estate developer specializing in public-private partnerships that deliver affordable housing in sustainable communities in collaboration with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning.
I'd like to offer a perspective from the private sector, drawing on our experience in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Governments around the world face the same challenge.
How do we deliver more housing more quickly while maintaining affordability, quality, and sustainability? The answer, in my view, lies in strong partnerships between the public and private sectors.
At NCEAG, we have had the privilege of working closely with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning for many years.
Our partnership has demonstrated that when government provides the vision, policy framework, and commitment to social outcomes, the private sector can unlock the investment, expertise, and innovation needed to accelerate delivery.
One of the greatest contributions the private sector brings is financing.
Governments should not have to fund every housing project from public budgets alone.
Through well-structured public-private partnerships, developers can mobilize private capital, work with commercial banks and institutional investors, and spread investment over the life of the project.
This allows governments to leverage their land and policy support to deliver significantly more housing than would otherwise be possible.
Bahrain's Government Land Development Program, the GLDP, is an excellent example of this approach.
By making government land available through transparent partnerships, the ministry has enabled companies like NCEAG to invest, finance, design, build, and deliver integrated communities while aligning commercial objectives with national housing priorities.
This creates value for the government, investors, and most importantly, the families who benefit from these homes.
The private sector also brings innovation in construction, digital technologies, project management, and customer service.
Competition encourages efficiency, reduces costs, shortens delivery times, and continually raises quality standards.
The lesson from Bahrain is that governments do not have to choose between public leadership and private participation.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning provides the vision and safeguards the public interest while companies like NCEAG bring financing solutions, execution capability, innovation, and operational excellence.
As we work towards the urban agenda, I believe the GLDP demonstrates that when governments and private sectors work together, all.
I thank the intervention of Nasich, and now I give the floor to the distinguished representative of Angola, followed by the Philippines and Indonesia.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates, Angola thanks distinguished panelists for their insightful presentation.
Financing sustainable urbanization at scale should not be addressed merely as a response to demographic change, but a strategic pathway toward economic transformation, social inclusion, and climate resilience.
Angola's rapid urbanization, driven by demographic growth and internal migration, presents both significant challenges and unprecedented opportunities.
It reinforces the need for a strategic and integrated approach to urban development, one that combines sound territorial planning, resilient infrastructure, access to adequate housing and basic services, social inclusion, and climate resilience.
Guided by the National Development Plan 2023-2027, Angola continues to advance a comprehensive agenda for sustainable territorial and urban development.
We are working to reduce the housing deficit, improve living conditions, and promote more balanced territorial development through national urbanism and housing programs.
Mr.
President, accelerating the implementation of the new urban agenda requires more than one sound national policy; it requires predictable financing, strong institutional capacity, and enhanced international cooperation.
Sustainable urbanization must also support structural transformation by promoting urbanization, innovation, connectivity, and decent employment.
Well-planned cities should become engines of opportunity, productivity, and sustainable development.
To conclude, Mr.
President, as we look toward 2036, we must continue assessing the progress achieved, tackling remaining challenges, and renew our collective commitment to building cities that are more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator.
I thank the distinguished representative of Angola, and now I give the floor to the distinguished representative of the Philippines, followed by Indonesia and Sierra Leone.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Allow me to thank the distinguished panelists for a very insightful discussion.
The Philippines aligned itself with the view that unlocking finance for sustainable urbanization is not simply about mobilizing more resources; it is equally about improving how financing is planned, coordinated, and delivered so that it reaches cities and communities where it is needed most.
Our experience has shown that sustainable urbanization requires an integrated approach.
Through the Philippine New Urban Agenda, we have sought to better align housing, land use, infrastructure, climate resilience, and local economic development with a coherent policy framework.
This has helped strengthen coordination across sectors and levels of government, and improved the effectiveness of public investments.
At the same time, local governments must be at the center of the implementation.
They are best placed to understand local needs, but they also require adequate financial space, stronger institutional capacities, and greater access to financing.
Empowering local authorities is therefore essential to achieving the objectives of the new urban agenda.
International cooperation also remains indispensable.
We need international financial institutions and climate finance mechanisms that are more accessible, predictable, and responsive to the needs of developing countries.
Equally important is leveraging public finance to crowd in responsible private investment and innovative financing for affordable housing, resilient infrastructure, and basic services.
These priorities are reflected in the Sibylla commitment, which recognizes the need to strengthen financing for sustainable development and reform the international financial architecture.
Finally, the United Nations system can continue to play an important role in promoting policy coherence, strengthening national and local capacities, and facilitating partnerships that translate global commitments into local action.
The Philippines remains committed to working with all partners to accelerate the implementation of the new urban agenda and build more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable cities.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of the Philippines.
Now I give the floor to the distinguished representative of Indonesia, followed by Sierra Leone and Kenya.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates.
For Indonesia, financing sustainable urbanization at scale is not an abstract discussion.
It is a daily test of whether we can deliver adequate housing, infrastructure, and basic services for more than 270 million people in an economy where cities already generate the majority of GDP and continue to grow rapidly.
We see three practical lessons.
First, domestic systems must be the foundation.
Indonesia has made housing and basic services a national investment priority.
Through our multi-year housing programs and urban infrastructure funds, we are increasingly using medium-term expenditure frameworks and performance-based budgeting to align sectoral spending around integrated urban outcomes rather than fragmented projects.
This includes strengthening fiscal transfers and on-landing mechanisms so that local governments can co-finance upgrading in informal settlements and critical service gaps.
Second, blended and innovative finance are essential to reach scale and inclusion.
Indonesia has combined public subsidies with private capital through subsidized mortgages for low-income households, interest buydowns, guarantees for social housing developers, and pilot instruments such as land value capture and rent-to-own schemes.
These approaches help de-risk investment, crowd in domestic financial institutions, and ensure that concessional finance is targeted where it adds most value, including to secondary cities and vulnerable communities that are often overlooked by markets.
Third, projects must be bankable, climate-responsive, and locally owned.
We are strengthening project preparation at city level, integrating climate risk, nature-based solutions, and social inclusion into the design of housing, transport, and basic services.
This increases the quality of pipeline for development banks, climate funds, and private investors, while ensuring that every money spent advances both the new urban agenda and our net zero and resilient commitment.
Indonesia stands ready to work with UN-Habitat, international finance institutions, and partner countries to defend this shift from fragmented short-term financing toward coherent, scalable systems that enable cities to plan, finance, and deliver sustainable urbanization for all.
I thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Indonesia.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Sierra Leone, followed by Kenya and South Africa.
Thank you, Moderator.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen.
Sierra Leone welcomes this important dialogue on financing sustainable urbanization.
As urban population continue to grow across the developing world, the challenge before us is no longer simply one of planning better cities; it is how to finance the transformation at the scale and pace required to achieve the new urban agenda and sustainable development goals.
For Sierra Leone, sustainable urbanization is a national development priority.
Rapid urban growth, increasing housing demand, infrastructure deficits, and climate vulnerability require substantial long-term investment in housing, land administration, transport, water, sanitation, resilient infrastructure, and municipal services.
Meeting these needs demands a shift from fragmented project financing to integrated system-wide urban investment.
Our first priority has been to create an enabling environment for investment.
Through the country Customary Land Rights Act in 2022, the National Land Commission Act 2022, and the National Country Planning Act 2025, Sierra Leone has strengthened land governance, improved tenant security, modernized spatial planning, and increased certainty for both public and private investment.
Secure land rights and transparent planning systems are essential foundations for mobilizing finance at scale.
Secondly, we recognized that domestic resources alone are insufficient.
We are therefore pursuing innovative financing models that leverage public assets to attract private capital.
The TAFF-Saloon Micro-City Partnership, which plans to deliver approximately 5,000 housing units over 10 years, illustrates how government can contribute service land and enabling policy environment, while the private sector mobilizes finance, technology, and implementation expertise.
Such public-private partnerships reduce investment risk while expanding access to quality housing and infrastructure.
Thirdly, international financial institutions and development partners remain indispensable through programs such as the World Bank supporting resilient urban Sierra Leone project and the Sierra Leone Land Administration project, together with support from the African Development Bank.
Sierra Leone is strengthening spatial planning, municipal capacity, land administration, digital geospatial systems, and climate-resilient urban infrastructure.
These investments demonstrate how development finance can catalyze broader public and private investment.
I thank the distinguished representative of Sierra Leone.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Kenya, followed by South Africa and Bahrain.
Thank you, Moderator.
Excellencies, distinguished delegates.
Kenya is honored to address this panel on unlocking delivery, financing sustainable urbanization at scale.
Unlocking scale public-private and financing is a cornerstone of the new urban agenda.
Robust financial frameworks are essential to achieve key goals like eradicating poverty and ensuring affordable housing.
Optimizing these funds ensures socioeconomic equity, drives local implementation, and leverages both sectors' strengths.
To scale up finance for adequate housing and infrastructure, integrated reforms are necessary.
Key steps include empowering local authorities to access capital, blending public and private funds, and shifting from fragmented sectoral investments to multi-stakeholder country platforms.
Kenya is addressing these challenges through structural, legislative, and financial reforms, primarily driven by the bottom-up economic transformation agenda.
By shifting away from debt-heavy funding, Kenya aims to unlock domestic capital and de-risk the housing infrastructure and basic services sector.
The role of international financial institutions, climate finance, and capital market contributions can be better aligned to deliver on the commitments of the new urban agenda, including through inclusive and innovative finance mechanisms by decentralizing funds to the municipal level, establishing blended finance vehicles to de-risk private investments, updating credit methodologies to reflect climate vulnerabilities, and integrating inclusive financial instruments to support marginalized and informal urban community.
Kenya aligns IFA's climate finance and capital markets by developing transformational country investment platforms to de-risk investments, establishing sovereign sustainability frameworks, and regulating carbon trading under the Capital Markets Authority.
The UN scales adequate housing investments by reforming financial architecture, reducing capital costs, and mobilizing capital.
Spearheading the Global Championship for Adequate Housing, Kenya leads these sustainable urbanization efforts and urges the UN to act as an honest broker, aligning international capital with national priorities.
Scaling housing and urban transformation requires a dual approach.
Multilateral funds must de-risk investments, while national governments establish secure land tenure, inclusive financial rules, and community-led planning.
Kenya addresses its housing deficit through national policies, multilateral partnerships, and grassroots programs.
Key strategies include the Affordable Housing Program, which is a national initiative that builds homes explicitly priced for low-income owners.
I thank the distinguished representative of Kenya.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of South Africa, followed by Bahrain and Uruguay.
Unlocking financing is key in achieving integrated human settlements with sound infrastructure.
Informed our housing policy mandates, which ensures the key aspects of planning, linking into our integrated human development and settlement planning in places where we put five-year and annual plans and targets which are aligned to our spheres of government at the national, provincial, and local government.
These targets are also costed, and they are based on the availability of budgets.
But we also appreciate that a fiscus will never be sustainable and afford everything that we need to do as informed by our housing policy.
Therefore, external funding streams through our public-private partnerships, particularly in our programs for social housing and first-home financing, ensures that we protect and provide the security of tenure through savings stems, amongst other things.
Transformation of informal settlements and availability of affordable housing programs, which ensures that delivery of houses and its mandates supports the housing of people of South Africa.
Our recent housing statistics indicates that we are at 86 percent in terms of permanent housing availability.
We appreciate the role of funding systems as proposed.
The management of the country's finance is included through our national treasury as it provides for the checks and balances on our public finances as spent.
We recognize further the role of the work of infrastructure funding that will assist local government to deliver more, particularly in terms of addressing transformation and spatial planning.
The involvement of our communities through public participation in budgets and project identification and housing streams is critical.
Public participation is informed from a constitutional point of view in Section 52, which ensures that every South African has a say in a budget and a project identification process to ensure that our planning is aligned to the community needs.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of South Africa.
I now give the floor to the distinguished representative of Bahrain, followed by Uruguay.
Thank you very much.
As part of the financial pressures in different countries, making note of Bahrain, we believe that the challenge is not so much providing further financial resources, but rather restructuring the housing system so that this system can be itself more effective and it can then be rolled out on a large scale.
Thus, we provide support to a financing system that's based on partnership between the public sector and the private sector.
These two sectors work together as part of one framework to provide housing opportunities and to better use national resources.
This transformation has allowed us to make our financing program more flexible, thus increasing resources and increasing the number of beneficiaries.
And more people in Bahrain have more options available to them in terms of rights to property or to rent accommodation.
And we're also strengthening the financial sustainability of this program in doing so.
This itself is also strengthening the financial and housing regimes so that then they can be partners in development.
This has breathed new life into our housing stock, and we provide 1.3 billion dinars and injected that into the local economy, and 22,000 families have benefited from these resources.
We've also strengthened this approach by transforming our local resource programs to provide more resources into this sector and to therefore accelerate the implementation of housing programs, making them more available.
Thus, we think that innovative financing is not simply creating new tools, but rather you should have an integrated system to make these things more financially feasible, to link up partnerships, funding, and planning, to increase the number of citizens that can then have access to viable housing.
In this connection, we reaffirm the importance of working within UN Habitat and strengthen the support provided to countries to have innovative financing and capacity building.
The aim is to support sustainable urban development and implement this new program.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Bahrain.
For those delegations who are not able to deliver their statements, they are kindly requested to submit their statements to e-statements@un.
org to be posted in the United Nations Journal.
I now give the floor finally to the distinguished representative of Uruguay.
In Uruguay.
In Uruguay, we are incorporating accessible benefits and loans and systems to guarantee the access to adequate public and private housing, including modalities for self-construction and other modalities.
Access to housing involves a system of public-private funding to diversify the sources of funding, reduce the cost of credit for households, and to increase the state's ability to invest in housing policies.
We would like to share one program that promotes private investment in accessible housing for low-income and middle-income families and people who struggle to access the formal loan market.
And we also have a blended finance program based on key rule regulation and ensuring accessibility without bringing the benefits solely to the market, and subsidies for the demand that ensures sustainable housing supply.
Combining public and other sources of funding is an important source for us.
We also are including this in sustainable housing policy.
This has been particularly important for investment in various programs.
Along the same lines, it's essential to allow funding for public land.
It's also important to strengthen regional cooperation, to share capacities, to generate comparable information, and promote financing mechanisms for sustainable and resilient cities within our region.
In addition, we mustn't overlook interregional dialogue and strengthening South-South cooperation, particularly in areas of territorial governance, urban innovation, energy transition, and sustainable resource management.
Thank you.
I thank the distinguished representative of Uruguay.
Before we conclude this session, I would like to return briefly to our distinguished panelists.
Having heard the rich discussions from member states and the stakeholders, I would like to invite each of you to offer one closing reflection.
We're short of time, so just one key takeaway, one action that should be prioritized over the next five years, or one partnership that you believe will be critical to accelerating financing for the implementation of the new urban agenda.
Ms.
Magalhães, may I begin with you, followed by Ms.
Voq, Mr.
Hanif, and Mayor Drais will have the final word.
I think that we've just heard a very broad convergence in terms of thinking, but what we need to do now is also converge in how we act.
The next opportunity will be the decade of implementation for the new urban agenda, and we have to transform commitments into permanent systems, resources into projects that make sure that they're not just isolated initiatives.
We need to have adequate housing and turn this into sustainable development projects within our countries, and also ensure that we have an adaptation strategy geared around creating healthier spaces for our population.
I think that by combining local efforts guided by national guidelines and the support of international mechanisms that we already have, I think that with that, we will be able to chart a course for this action over the next few years.
Thank you.
Thank you for the opportunity.
A really rich discussion, and I appreciate being part of it.
One thought that I'd like to share is that what I heard a lot of is that there is a role of government to support and to de-risk housing, but we need more capital than governments alone can provide.
So we really need to design our housing systems in a way that attracts investors and in a way that can bring in the important participation of private sector participants in the housing system.
Related to that is the need for long-term, predictable financing.
This is the case in any jurisdiction, whether it's a developed region or a developing region.
Construction projects are, by their very nature, long-term.
And in order to attract those investors and attract those capital and to have it work the most efficiently, we need to find opportunities for the and scale, bring that for the continuous redeployment of capital and the continuous redeployment of the workforce as well.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator.
One takeaway from this very rich discussion is that there's no dearth of ideas and knowledge.
The primary challenge is the implementation gap.
We need to overcome that.
Speed, scale, all of these things need to converge.
So for that, the public sector has a central role to make it a political priority.
And then investment will come not just by budgetary allocations, but commitment to leverage private sector money, because the amounts that are required, no public entity can deliver those.
Fiscal constraints are really evident.
And lastly, which a few speakers mentioned, and I think that's the so implementation gap, public sector leveraging, I have heard repeatedly, and that is one area where UN is really now working very intensively, is South-South cooperation.
Cities have so much to learn from each other, and we need to upscale that.
And of course, let me assure you, UN will make sure that this area of action remains a global priority when it comes to unleashing financing.
Thank you, Mr.
Moderator.
Thank you also, Mr.
Moderator.
It was indeed a very rich discussion and a lot of interventions.
I also noticed that a lot of intervention took to words of local governments and the problems that they have.
So I think if there's one element that I want to just bring in is that we are today on a crossroads, crossroads towards how can we have sustainable financing for housing, but also for the SDGs and for a lot of projects.
And the time is running out, and we as local governments in the world are always asking, please give us a seat at the table.
And when we are at the table, also make sure that we would be trusted to also hold the steering wheel.
And I also think that in finding new models for financing, local governments, but regions, territories, I think it's important that we can be creative and that we also can make sure that we learn from each other, like other panelists also already said, and that we need no barriers, but we need an enabler.
And I believe that local governments together in the multilevel government that we need in the world can make sure that it happens because we are in the heart of where it happens, also if we are looking for financial solutions.
Thank you very much to our distinguished panelists for your valuable insights and leadership.
My sincere thanks to all member states, UN entities, and stakeholders who contribute to today's engaging discussions.
Today's conversation has underscored that financing sustainable urbanization and adequate housing is not simply about mobilizing more resources.
It is about strengthening institutions, building effective partnerships, and creating integrated financing systems capable of delivering at the scale envisioned in the new urban agenda.
With that, I formally close this multi-stakeholder panel too on financing sustainable urbanization and adequate housing at scale.
I would like to remind participants that multi-stakeholder panel three on delivering urban resilience in an area of climate, disaster, and environment risk will begin at 3:00 p.m.
here in the Trusteeship Council chamber.
Thank you all, and I wish you an enjoyable lunch break.
GA
General Assembly
Midterm Review of the New Urban Agenda (NUA) - Multi-stakeholder Panel 1 and Panel 2, General Assembly, 80th session
The theme of the High-Level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Midterm Review of the New Urban Agenda (NUA), 16-17 July 2026, is "Delivering Sustainable Urbanization for All: Accelerating and Scaling Implementation of the New Urban Agenda to 2036 Together".
Description
Multi-stakeholder Panel 1 - Delivering for People: Scaling Adequate Housing, Land, Basic Services, and Inclusion
Sustainable urban development is achieved by and for the people. Achieving the vision of the NUA hinges on responding to the needs of, and respecting, protecting and fulfilling the human rights of all, particularly those at risk of being left behind, including women, children and youth, older persons, persons with disabilities, refugees, internally displaced persons and migrants, persons experiencing homelessness, as well as Indigenous Peoples and local communities. In this regard, the right to adequate housing as well as access to land, basic services, public health and inclusive urban opportunities are important priorities. During and after crises, urban and housing solution pathways shall bridge the humanitarian-development divide as early as possible. Migration sensitive frameworks can positively contribute to migrants' dignity, reduce urban poverty and
housing insecurity and strengthen urban-rural linkages. At the midpoint, progress in policy frameworks has not been matched by delivery at scale.
This panel will examine how to accelerate implementation to ensure no one, and no place is left behind.
Multi-stakeholder Panel 2 - Unlocking Delivery: Financing Sustainable Urbanization at Scale
Local, subnational, national housing authorities face persistent constraints in accessing
predictable, adequate, and sustainable urban financing. Currently, global growth uncertainties, fiscal pressures, rising debt burdens, and fragmented financing flows are further constraining urban and adequate housing investment and operations across many regions. Under these circumstances delivering on the NUA at scale will require increased efficiency and effectiveness of the application of available finance while developing new innovative financial models.
This panel will examine how to unlock affordable, efficient and effective public and private financing at scale to support NUA implementation.
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