The Port of Beirut explosions (4 August 2020) resulted in extensive damage on multiple levels – the loss of life, injury and the destruction of vast tracts of urban fabric within the municipal boundaries of Beirut and Bourj Hammoud. In support of the Municipality of Bourj Hammoud, UN-Habitat together with the Polish Center for International Aid, Naba’a and Beirut Arab University, undertook a rapid damage assessment at the building level (exterior visual survey).

The assessment covered all building types, dividing them into four categories (unsafe / evacuate, restricted use, safe / minor damage and not affected) in order to understand the extent of damage, particularly structural impacts, as well as immediately identifying buildings at risk of collapse and in need of evacuation. The assessment provides a basis on which to formulate recovery and reconstruction measures, with regards to building damage rehabilitation.

The Port of Beirut explosions (4 August 2020) resulted in extensive damage on multiple levels – the loss of life, injury and the destruction of vast tracts of urban fabric within the municipal boundaries of Beirut and Bourj Hammoud. Led by the Municipality and Governor of Beirut, UN-Habitat supported a rapid damage assessment at the building level (exterior visual survey).

The assessment covered all building types within an immediate 2km radius of the last, dividing them into four categories (total collapse, unsafe / evacuate, restricted use, safe/minor damage, unclassified) in order to understand the extent of damage, particularly structural impacts, as well as immediately identifying buildings at risk of collapse and in need of evacuation. The assessment provides a basis on which to formulate recovery and reconstruction measures, with regards to building damage rehabilitation.

The Handbook will serve as a practical guide explaining the meaning and legal obligations that stem from the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, translating the often complicated legal language into information that can be readily understood by practitioners including government officials and members of civil society organizations.

It is presented in nine booklets, each of which discusses a particular topic. It is currently available in English and will soon be available online in Arabic, French, Spanish and Portuguese.

Purpose of the Handbook

Specifically, the Handbook has been developed to:

• clarify the meaning of the human rights to water and sanitation;
• explain the obligations that stem from these rights;
• provide guidance on implementing the human rights to water and sanitation;
• share good practices and how these rights are being implemented;
• explore how governments can be held to account for delivering their obligations; 
• provide checklists, so users can analyze how they are complying with the rights.

Target Audience

The target audiences for this Handbook are governments, donors and national regulatory bodies. It provides information that will also be useful to local, regional and international stakeholders, such as civil society, service providers and human rights organizations.

Partners in Collaboration

Through its various projects UN-Habitat has demonstrated how the right to water and sanitation can be achieved in reality and has also developed the following publications in collaboration with its partners:

Fact Sheet on the Right to Water published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in collaboration with UN-Habitat and the World Health Organization

Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation in an alliance with COHRE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, (AAAS), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and NORAD

Sanitation: A human rights imperative with COHRE, WaterAid and SDC

Cities experience large and small scale disasters that can pose great challenges to sustainable development, for natural and human-made disasters have enormous economic, social and political impacts on human lives. “Cities, where half of humanity currently resides and much of the world’s assets are concentrated, are fast becoming the locus for much of [the] destruction and loss from disasters.”  These risks will increase as urban populations continue to grow.

Disasters can present opportunities for transformative change to begin and advance more quickly because the vulnerabilities that emerge as a result of crisis or disaster are clearer and consensus may be obtained more quickly to mitigate vulnerabilities. Population displacements as a result of disasters further create new settlements that present opportunities for planning how municipalities or cities will be managed and planned to cope, in equitable ways, with population changes.

This issue guide focuses attention on Urban Risk Reduction and Rehabilitation in order to broadly outline the where and how of gender responsive interventions to strengthen planned and future actions to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment.