• The 12th edition of the World Urban Forum (WUF) wrapped up on November 8 with the adoption of the ‘Cairo Call to Action’, after intense discussions focused on the global housing crisis and financing urbanisation.

• The conference took place from November 4 to 8 in Cairo, Egypt.

• WUF12, convened biennially by UN-Habitat, explored urbanisation through dialogues, roundtables, assemblies, and partner-led events. Over 63,000 people, in person or online, attended dialogues, sessions and discussions. 

• The theme of WUF12 was “It All Starts at Home”.

• The delegations adopted the Cairo Call to Action, pledging to act with urgency to address the global housing crisis as well as leveraging local action to achieve global goals and targets.

• The Cairo Call to Action also emphasized, among other points, the need for sustaining a systemic representation of local actors at all levels, sharing urban spaces and opportunities inclusively, urban planning to deliver better local outcomes, and unlocking finance for cities and communities.  

• Delegations also committed to ensuring equity and justice for sustainable cities, leveraging local and grassroots data for decision-making, harnessing culture and heritage as an asset for sustainability, and building coalitions and alliances to scale local impact.

What is World Urban Forum?

• The World Urban Forum (WUF) was established in 2001 by the United Nations to address one of the most pressing issues facing the world today — rapid urbanisation and its impact on communities, cities, economies, climate change and policies.

• It is a non-legislative technical forum convened by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), hosted in a different city every two years.

• The Forum is a high level, open and inclusive platform for addressing the challenges of sustainable urbanization.

• The first WUF took place in 2002.

Objectives of WUF:

i) Raising awareness of sustainable urbanisation among stakeholders and constituencies, including the general public.

ii) Improving collective knowledge on sustainable urban development through open and inclusive debate, exchange of best practices and policies, and sharing of lessons learnt.

iii) Promote collaboration and cooperation between different stakeholders and constituencies engaged in the advancement and implementation of sustainable urbanisation.

• Since its launch, the forum has helped the UN-Habitat to collect information on cases and trends and build partnerships and coalitions in order to support its work and find solutions to the global housing crisis and such major crises as climate change, conflicts and poverty.

Why is it important?

• Today, around 50 per cent of the global population live in cities, and this is expected to rise to 70 per cent by 2050. The move to urban centres is having a major impact on communities, cities, economies, climate change and policies.

• Many of the cities and towns were never expected to house such huge populations and are at breaking point. Unplanned growth and development of cities results in lack of proper housing and growth of overcrowded slums, inadequate and outdated infrastructure such as roads, escalating poverty and unemployment, safety and crime problems, growing pollution, disease outbreaks from lack of proper sanitation, lack of green spaces or basic services.

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