• Total value of UN-Habitat investments (2008-2013): US$ 10,119,166
• Total number of UN-Habitat projects (2008-2013): 8 projects
• Main donors: Fundacao Vale, Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro (PCRJ), Fundacao Euclides da CUNHA (FEC), BASF Social Foundation (Germany), MDG Fund (Spain-UNDP), Brazil, Instituto Pereira Passos, FSADU
• Implementing partners: ILO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, and UNIFEM, The Special Secretariat of Policies for Women (SPM), the Special Secretariat for Policies to Promote Racial Equality (SEPPIR), Organizations of civil society (OCSs), especially those linked to movements of feminists, and of young and black women, PETROBAS, Federal Fluminense University (UFF) & FEC, Municipalities, Brazilian Government agencies and ministries

General information

Capital: Brasilia Major cities: Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador, Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, Brasilia, Curitiba, Recife, Porto Alegre, Manaus

• Population: 198.7 Million
• GDP: US$2.253 Billion
• GDP growth: 0.9%
• Urban population (annual %): 85%
• Population growth rate (average annual %): 0.9%
• Urban population growth rate (average annual %): 1.2%
• Rural population growth rate (average annual %): -0.9%

Source: World Bank 2012

UN-Habitat projects in Brazil

Analysis of energy consumption & energy efficiency in informal settlements of developing countries

Objective of the project

To establish the level of energy access in informal settlements; make recommendations on appropriate energy services as well us come up with interventions to improve the quality of life in informal settlements within developing countries.

Service sectors covered by the project include: energy access, buildings, academia, policy and legislation, housing finance.

• Duration: 3 October 2013 to 31 December 2016
• Value: EUR 15,000
• Donor: Fondozione Politecnico di Milano, and UN-Habitat,
• Implementing Partners: Fondozione Politecnico di Milano and UN-Habitat

Promoting Urban Low Emission Development Strategies (Urban LEDS)

The Project was initiated to support innovative strategies in addressing the urban dimension of climate change in cities in emerging economies. The objective of the Project was to enhance the transition to low emission urban development. In Brazil it supported two Model Cities, Fortaleza and Recife, as well as six Satellite Cities. The Brazil cities successfully integrating LED methods, design and products into city improvement initiatives that were part of strategy development. Innovative initiatives included the integration of the cities’ water bodies in the city development plans and strategies, green building policies and product development, awareness of the politics and science of climate change, and training to carry out emissions inventories to comply with the new Global Protocol on Community-Scale GHG Emission Inventories. To reduce emissions, the public transport system in Recife was diversified to include river transport, bike lanes, bus corridors and bike sharing stations.

• Duration:March 2012-March 2016
• Value:€ 6.700.000 (Multi-country)
• Donor:European Commision
• Implementing Partners: National government,respective local governments,ICLEIFor further information ,please click here

Inter-Agency Programme for Promotion of Gender and Racial/Ethnic Equality     (i) Enhancement of crosscutting themes of gender and race in policies, programmes, & public services considering the gender equality as an important element in human settlements development ; (ii) Capacity building at the sub-national level, to strengthen and integrate actions aimed at promoting gender and racial equality.

• Duration: 3.5 years (Jun 2009 - Dec 2012)
• Value: US$ 170,677
• Donor: MDG Fund (Spain)
• Location: National level
• Implementing partners: ILO, UNDP, UNFPA, UN-HABITAT, UNICEF, and UNIFEM, SPM, SEPPIR, Organizations of civil society (OCSs), especially those linked to movements of feminists, and of young and black women.

  Strengthening activities of the Youth and Gender Assemblies     To strengthen UN-HABITAT visibility regarding the work done by the Agency related to youth and gender at the WUF5.

• Duration: 1 month (Nov 2010 - Dec 2010)
• Value: US$ 107,000
• Donor: Fundacao Vale

  Regional Urban Observatory in the Eastern Fluminense     To contribute to sustainable and inclusive development of the area by the COMPERJ enterprise, strengthen the local competences for decision making and implementation of public policies, facilitating poverty reduction, through promotion and capacity development of how to use the MDGs and the principles of the Global Compact in policy development

• Duration: 4 years (Jan 2008 - Dec 2011)
• Value: US$ 329,433
• Donor: Fundacao Euclides da CUNHA (FEC)
• Location: the eleven municipalities of CONLESTE
• Implementing partners: PETROBAS, Federal Fluminense University (UFF) & FEC

  Support to Community Development and Youth Entrepreneurship in Vila Brasilandia, Municipality of Sao Paulo, Brazil   To support  Community Development and Youth Entrepreneurship in Vila Brasilandia, Municipality of Sao Paulo, Brazil

• Duration: 4 years (May 2009 - Jun 2013)
• Value: US$ 234,450
• Donor: BASF Social Foundation (Germany)
• Location: Community of Vila Brasilandia, Sao Paulo
• Implementing partners: (i) the community of Vila Brasilandia, (ii) BASF Social Foundation (BSF), (iii) BASF S.A., in Sao Paulo, Brazil, (iv) the Municipality of Sao Paulo (PCSP), through the Municipal Secretariat for Housing (SMH), (v) the Government of the State of Sao Paulo (GESP), (vi) SEBRAE, Real Bank

  Contribution to the UN Joint Programme "Security with Citizenship in Brazilian Communities"     Reduction of the violence that affects children,youth, and adolescents in a situation of vulnerability.

• Duration: 3 years (Jul 2010 - Jun 2013)
• Value: US$ 728,148
• Donor: MDG Fund (Spain-UNDP)
• Implementing partners: UNCT Brazil, UNDP, UNODC, UNICEF, UNESCO, ILO,

  Social Reintegration of 30 Pacified Favelas - Safer Rio     To support the implementation of UPP (Pacifying Police Units) Developing and implementing methodologies for participatory planning and knowledge management.

• Duration: 3 years (Jun 2011 - Jul 2014)
• Value: US$ 7,673,504
• Donor: Brazil, Instituto Pereira Passos, Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro
• Location: Rio de Janeiro (30 identified slum areas)
• Implementing partners: Instituto Pereira Passos, Rio de Janeiro municipality

  Monitoring the MDGs at the municipal level in the states of Rio de Janeiro and Maranhao and strengthening local capacities on public policies   To contribute to local sustainable development in the municipalities identified, where large-scale petrochemical industrial activities are being built. To monitor the impact of the installation of the petrochemical complex COMPERJ  in Itaboraí (State of Rio de Janeiro) and of the refinery Premium I in Bacabeira (State of Maranhão) on the basis of local targets and indicators of the MDGs. To support the implementation of public policies, plans and programs and make possible for Petrobras to monitor the impacts of its industrial activities

• Duration: 1.5 years (Dec 2011 - Jun 2013)
• Value: US$ 584,458
• Donor: Fundacao Euclides da CUNHA (FEC) & FSADU
• Location: 11 municipalities in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Cachoeiras de Macacu, Casimiro de Abreu, Guapimirim, Itaboraí, Magé, Maricá, Niterói, Rio Bonito, São Gonçalo, Silva Jardim and Tanguá. 4 municipalities in the Sate of Maranhão, Brazil: Bacabeira, Rosário, Santa Rita and São Luis

  Impact of Economic Development on Urbanization Process in Brazil     To document and inform the development of a platform for dialogue (mainly during Rio + 20 and the World Urban Forum) on sustainable and inclusive cities in rapid exonomic growth contexts, generating opportunites and challenges for sustainable urban development.

• Duration: 2.5 years (May 2012 - Dec 2014)
• Value: US$ 291,496
• Donor: Brazil
• Implementing partners: Brazilian Ministry of Cities & Ministry of Environment, ABC Brazilian Agency for Cooperation/ Ministry of Foreign Affairs

As the Syria conflict enters its fifth year, the “What does it take to end the crisis?” campaign is gaining momentum. The hashtag #WhatDoesItTake has already been tweeted 26,000 times and the campaign has the potential to reach 60 million people. The campaign, however, is born out of frustration with the human cost of the Syrian conflict. Frustration with the fact that humanitarian assistance was never meant to be a solution. Everyone agrees, the solution to the Syria crisis is political. As such, the current stalemate can continue for many years. Or, the situation can change overnight. The question is, if the Syria crisis ends tomorrow, is the international community ready to support peace in Syria? If it comes, peace in Syria will be a “patchwork peace”. In some areas, the fighting will continue. In others, people will start returning, rebuilding their homes, looking for jobs, wanting to send their children to school. Many people will return to cities, believing that security will be better and that health care, schools and job opportunities will be more accessible. Do we know which cities and which neighbourhoods are more likely to support returns? How will we address the complicated issue of land and property rights? In addition to physical reconstruction, what will we do to help rebuild divided societies? If it comes, peace in Syria will bring a surge of private investment, again much of it in cities. Are we engaging with business leaders to understand the opportunities and challenges from their perspective? Do we have a prioritized plan for the critical infrastructure investments necessary to support economic recovery? How will we create the kinds of jobs that can convince youth to stop fighting and begin rebuilding their lives and communities? In fact, we do not need to wait for peace in Syria. We can start now to promote stabilization and recovery. The reality is that Syria today is a patchwork. True, some areas are devastated and will require massive investment to re-build. But there are many others where small investments can make a huge difference. Many cities and neighbourhoods have been free from conflict for more than a year. These areas require a different approach – one with a stabilization, recovery and even peace-building agenda. For the past 18 months, UN-Habitat has been experimenting with just this kind of approach, through pilot projects in Aleppo, Homs and Rural Damascus. The results have been encouraging. Syrians are eager to be consulted on their priorities. They contribute their own time and money to initiatives that support their coping strategies. And they protect the investments that have been made. The message is clear: after four years of conflict, we need a new approach to peace in Syria, one that begins with Syrians themselves. While local initiatives will not bring peace in Syria, they can help create practical local alternatives to continued conflict.

Like much of the world, Egypt is witnessing rapid growth of its cities. To date 43% of the population in Egypt live in 223 cities, of which 56 % are concentrated in the Greater Cairo Region (GCR) and Alexandria. This rapid urbanization represents one of the biggest challenges that faces Egypt's urban development and is one of the main causes of the growth of informal and unsafe areas in Egypt.

However, the smartest cities today are turning these challenges into opportunities because urbanization should be considered as a driver of development rather than a problem. Cities can be engines of growth, but this is only if they are managed well and if opportunities are seized and utilized. Cities bring people closer together, benefit from economies of scale, and are a marketplace of their own - placing people, goods, and services all in close proximity. To capture this potential, we must push forward sustainable urbanization policies, policies that enable growth and at the same time create an urban development process that is able to cope with the challenges of the coming years – such as climate change, increasing demands on urban infrastructure, pollution and rapid population growth.

Sustainable urbanization is multifaceted, and it is for this reason that national urban policies must look at urban development through multiple lenses such as Planning and Design, Urban Economy, Housing and Services, and Governance. We must build and design cities that are inclusive and that are equipped for the next century. It is for this reason that UN-Habitat has been focusing on pilot interventions that result in the creation of sustainable, efficient and vibrant cities so they become engines of growth and also focuses on producing knowledge products and pilot projects that can provide evidence based research to the formulation of key policies. These dynamics are not a particularity to Egypt, but they are part of global processes. Thus UN-Habit is mobilizing the government towards the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) which will take place in 2016 in Quito, Ecuador and it is aligning its work along the Sustainable Development Goals, especially Goal 11, to “make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”

Rania Hedeya

UN-Habitat Egypt

Key Partners

Type Name Government Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities ( MoHUC) Ministry of Local Development  ( MoLD) Ministry of Planning (MoP) Ministry of Finance ( MoF)   Government of Spain   Government of Germany  (BMZ)   Swiss Agency for International Development (SDC)   German Federal Ministry of Education and Research   Governorate of Asyut   Governorate of Qalyobya   Governorate of Cairo   Governorate of Giza   Al Alamein local government   New Urban Community Authority  ( NUCA)   General Organization of Physical Planning  ( GOPP) UN Agencies The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations Industrial Development Organization ( UNIDO) United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security ( UNTFHS) UN Women International Labor Organization (ILO)   International Organization for Migration ( IOM) International  NGOs Plan International Ford Foundation Universities  and research centers Asyut University   AT-Verband -Association for the Promotion of Socially & Environmentally Appropriate Technologies   Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus   Frankfurt/M University of Applied Sciences (Research Institute for Architecture, Civil Engineering, Geomatics)   Institute for Automation and Communication (ifac), Magdeburg   ifeu – Institute for Energy and Environmental Research   IUWA Heidelberg   Institute for Future Energy Systems (IZES, Saarbrücken)   Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin)   Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences, Campus Suderburg   University of Stuttgart (Institute of Energy Economics and the Rational Use of Energy(IER)   Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen Local NGOs and CBOs Nahdet Khayrallah NGO   Elshehab NGO   Tadamon NGO   Hawa El mostakbal NGO

Sudan is a post-conflict country that aspires to forge and maintain a sustainable peace. According to different studies, the rapid urbanization process observed in Sudan has been determined by four main factors. These are the massive flows of rural-urban migration and displacement due to extended conflicts which afflicted certain parts of the country; the ensuing natural disasters, especially drought and its consequences; the complex pattern of the country’s political development since independence and the inadequate state of rural development in the country resulting from territorial-imbalanced development.

While cities and towns in Sudan face many challenges, urbanization processes offer an opportunity to trigger sustainable processes of development, harnessing the capacity and aspirations of the people from urban areas. Achieving sustainable urbanization will therefore require attending, in a balanced manner, the needs of cities and towns as well as of those peri-urban and rural areas with which they have mutually dependent social, economic and environmental interactions.

In this context the Sudanese government will embark on the formulation and development of an integrated strategy for urbanization based on partnership with the private sector and community participation. Preliminary steps and actions has already been taken with respect to the preparation of the project document, initial funding was allocated by the government and a number of donors were approached for funding. The main objectives of the strategy are:

1. Apply a more efficient strategy to the use of natural resources (particularly land) in order to reduce conflict and protect these resources for future generations.
2. Ensure the settlement for the expected population increase until 2031 to reduce the informal and squatter growth and ultimately reduce poverty.

Wael al-Ashhab

UN-Habitat Sudan

Key Partners

All of UN-Habitat Sudan’s projects are developed, implemented and monitored in partnership with the relevant Sudanese ministries to ensure they are in line with the National Development Plan and it’s priorities. To institutionalize the relation with the main government counterpart, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between UN-Habitat and the Federal Government of Sudan (GoS) in November 2010 and renewed in January 2015, with the main purpose of establishing a framework for collaborative efforts on national development programmes and activities related to sustainable urbanization and to harmonize physical planning in Sudan. It should enable both partners to identify common interest and priorities. UN-Habitat has provided technical and financial assistance to the national government of Sudan and the National Habitat Committee for the formulation of the national report for the 3rd United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) based on the guidelines provided. The national report was prepared on a bottom-up participatory approach and brought together relevant Sudanese public officials from federal and state governments, representatives from civil society organizations, academia, research institutions, media, the United Nations and international donors, private sector and community groups. The national report was finally approved by the government of Sudan.