By Sharon Atieno
With around 1.6 billion people worldwide lacking adequate housing, an estimated 15 million people forcibly evicted yearly, and another 150 million living in homelessness, delegates at the twelfth session of the World Urban Forum (WUF12) have adopted the Cairo Call to Action to address this crisis.
With one in seven people globally projected to live in urban areas by 2050, the document highlights ten key demands for sustainable urbanization.
One of them is the call for urgent action to address the global housing crisis. This includes transforming informal settlements and slums and addressing homelessness by making housing affordable. It also focuses on urban recovery and reconstruction while advocating for access to basic urban services and leveraging digital technologies to enhance delivery.
The Cairo Call to Action also calls for achieving global goals through local action. This involves the localization of global goals by aligning them with national frameworks and communities’ priorities. Additionally, local actors with the necessary institutional and financial capacities and resources should be empowered.
The document is also agitating for sustaining a systemic representation of local actors at all levels, highlighting that localization can only happen when all relevant stakeholders, cities and communities have decision-making power including through meaningful dialogue.
“We call for sustained and systematic representation of communities as political actors in local and national decision-making processes and for the representation of local and regional governments and other stakeholders in multilateral systems,” the document reads.
Additionally, the Cairo Call to Action calls for sharing urban spaces and opportunities inclusively, leaving no one behind including the youth, women, persons with disabilities, the elderly and Indigenous groups among others.
It also advocates for urban planning to deliver better local outcomes, underscoring that “effective urban planning is the backbone of delivering inclusion, resilience, accessibility and sustainability in cities and communities.”
Further, the document agitates for unlocking finance for cities and communities, especially through innovation and cooperation across public, private, domestic and international spheres.
Ensuring equity and justice for sustainable cities is also a key focus of the Cairo Call to Action. It highlights the need to prioritize the needs of marginalized and underserved communities in urban planning and resource allocation. This includes promoting equal access to housing, services, and economic opportunities, and actively addressing systemic inequalities that hinder full participation in city life.
The document also calls for leveraging local and grassroots data for decision-making, noting that bottom-up data should be recognized and integrated into urban planning, and technology should be harnessed to enhance the people’s voices.
“We call for greater recognition and use of local, grassroots and disaggregated data as a means to generate greater social inclusion and more localized approaches to urban development, also leveraging voluntary local reviews of the sustainable development goals,” it reads.
Additionally, the Cairo Call to Action calls for harnessing culture and heritage as an asset for sustainability, underscoring that cultural heritage can be leveraged to drive social inclusion, foster resilience, and offer sustainable economic opportunities.
It also advocates for building coalitions and alliances to scale local impact. “Local action is more impactful when driven by coalitions that bring together communities, local and national governments, the private sector and civil society. Empowering local actors through these partnerships and coalitions is a powerful tool for addressing community-specific challenges while aligning with broader national and global goals,” the document reads.
Over the past five days, WUF12, convened biennially by UN-Habitat, explored urbanization through six main dialogues, roundtables, assemblies, and partner-led events.
Under the theme “Local actions for sustainable cities and communities,” the event which took place in Egypt was attended by 24,000 participants from 182 countries.
In addition, four heads of state, 60 ministers, 45 deputy ministers and 96 mayors, attended more than 700 events from 1,500 organizers.
Generally, over 63,000 people, in person or online, attended dialogues, sessions and discussions.
Discussions centred on mobilizing resources amid urban expansion, climate challenges, and global crises. Key issues included enhancing local government capacity, securing predictable funding, and building effective partnerships, as well as creating tailored financial frameworks that empower cities to drive sustainable, inclusive growth.
