Welcome to the United Nations
Young people who gathered in Cairo for the World Urban Forum led calls on Tuesday for action to ease the housing crisis impacting billions globally, and to boost local action – especially youth-led urban development movements – to secure resilient and environmentally just cities.
Youth-led urban development
Children and young people came together for a roundtable conversation about what they want to see in future cities. By actively enabling young people to influence the cities and communities of tomorrow, they aimed to question and alter the status quo.
One of the lead participants is Lujain Romouzy, a 19-year-old dentistry student and Vice-chair of the Leaf Coalition. She is a junior negotiator representing Egypt in UN climate negotiations on ‘loss and damage’ – which refers to the adverse consequences of climate change experienced by developing countries and the push to compensate those countries.
She told UN News that she is attending WUF12 “to advocate for sustainable innovations and their importance in urban planning and sustainable development.”
Lujain and other young participants presented a policy declaration that they had gathered from Egyptian governorates.
“We’re going to take this document to the climate policy assembly and then hand it over to the negotiating team, including myself, to present it at COP29 and ensure that (youth) voices are heard and included,” added Lujain, referring to the upcoming UN climate conference that opens next week in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Quynh Anh Le, a high school student and youth representative for UN-Habitat Vietnam, also prioritizes giving young voices a platform. She told UN News that she has “high expectations” for WUF12 because she considers it to be one of the biggest urban development forums in the world.
“I hope to find projects that I can bring back to my hometown and maybe copy and apply to my own city,” she explained.
Safe urban environments
Meanwhile, Haoliang Xu, Associate Administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), told UN News that “young people’s views are critically important.”
“You really have to look at the ecosystem of creating jobs for young people – from education systems to ecosystems that encourage innovation – and provide a safe environment for young people to innovate and establish businesses and financial incentives,” Mr. Xu added.
He pointed out that there are many things “you cannot achieve” without the involvement of young people, adding that “sustainable city urbanization governance needs to take a multi-stakeholder approach.”
He highlighted the vital role played by the Pact for the Future in such efforts, saying that it revalidates the international community’s commitment to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“If you look at the action areas in the pact, they resonate with all the elements in the SDGs, from adequate housing to inclusive urban governance, to building resilience, to dealing with potential disasters.”
‘Housing is a human right’
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, told UN News that inclusion, including ensuring that women and youths are not discriminated against, is a critical element of a human rights-based approach to housing.
“It means, first of all, a country should have better data on when they actually are violating the rights of particularly vulnerable groups, such as youth, children, or women,” he explained, stressing that unfortunately, many governments don’t collect this kind of data.
He stressed that ‘housing for the future’ means that “we start finally recognizing that housing is a human right.”
“It’s not a commodity, nor simply property owned by the state. But it is something that gives meaning and dignity to people’s lives and gives them security. And it also means that we are more honest about the challenges that we are facing in providing or ensuring access to housing for everyone”, Mr. Rajagopal added.
The Forum will continue until Friday, 8 November. UN News is on location in Cairo covering all the action.
For more coverage by UN News, click here, or visit the Forum's website by clicking here.
Source: UN News