UN-Habitat is the United Nations programme working towards a better urban future.Its mission is to promote socially and environmentally sustainable human settlements development and the achievement of adequate shelter for all.  For close to forty years, UN-Habitat has been working in human settlements throughout the world, focusing on building a brighter future for villages, towns, and cities of all sizes. Because of these four decades of extensive experience, from the highest levels of policy to a range of specific technical issues, UN-Habitat has gained a unique and a universally acknowledged expertise in all things urban. This has placed UN-Habitat in the best position to provide answers and achievable solutions to the current challenges faced by our cities. UN-Habitat is capitalizing on its experience and position to work with partners in order to formulate the urban vision of tomorrow. It works to ensure that cities become inclusive and affordable drivers of economic growth and social development.

UN-Habitat is currently active in over 70 countries around the world. It has a wide range of diverse projects, such as post-disaster reconstruction programmes in Haiti, addressing slum growth and housing problems in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and supporting the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States to develop land policy guidelines. With 400 core staff and up to 2,000 project personnel at any given time, UN-Habitat manages all this work through its headquarters (the UN-Habitat Secretariat) in Nairobi, Kenya, as well as through four regional offices, one for Latin America and the Caribbean in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, one for Asia and the Pacific in Fukuoka, Japan, one for the Arab States in Cairo, Egypt, and one for Africa also based in Nairobi, Kenya. UN-Habitat also has several liaison and information offices around the world (New York, Geneva, Brussels, Beijing) whose task is to create and maintain links with key governments and other multilateral organizations or development agencies. UN-Habitat’s work also depends on close partnerships with national and local governments, helping authorities and institutions to identify and address their specific needs. Despite UN-Habitat’s tremendous efforts to prevent uncoordinated human settlement growth and urbanization issues from becoming the world’s next major crisis after climate change, this challenge still requires involvement from all sectors of society. Governments, policy makers, experts, media actors, and members of the public are all vital to addressing the massive urban challenges that we face today, and we encourage everyone to get involved in transforming our shared urban future.