“A SAFE CITY IS A JUST CITY”
International conference to mark World Habitat Day 2007, The Hague, the Netherlands, 1 – 2 October 2007.
For the first time in human history, more than half of the world’s population is living in cities and urban areas. Their numbers will continue to grow, especially in cities and urban settlements in the lowest income countries. Living conditions for urban citizens are in many cases far from sufficient. Cities are increasingly unsafe as well as unjust, due to lack of social justice and lack of access to proper housing, safe drinking water and adequate sanitary facilities. Cities are also under threat of numerous conflicts, migration flows and outbursts of violence. Yet, cities and their citizens also often stand tall against injustice and violence, promote equal access to facilities and services for all citizens, and resist nationalism or ethnic or religious discrimation. Cities can be places where lack of safety and justice dominate everyday life, but they can also be “islands of civility”: safe and just havens furthering safety, development, justice and democracy!
Policy-makers, at the local but also at the ‘higher levels’, face the joint challenge of empowering cities as catalysts for local, national and international development.
This is not an easy task. How to handle conflicts – so inevitably present in all urban communities, in rich and poor(er) countries – in a constructive way? How to support cities that strive for a local implementation of global concepts such as human security and the responsibility to protect? How to link the Millennium Development Goals to strategies of conflict prevention and conflict transformation? Can city governments and local civil society organisations together build a strong basis for such a ‘MDG Plus agenda’?
In order to address these problems and challenges, we would like to invite you and to contribute to the discussions and sessions that will be held during this international conference.
Speakers include:- Ms Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director UN Habitat
- Ms Lindiwe Sisulu, Minister of Housing of the Republic of South Africa
- Mr Bert Koenders, Dutch Minister for Development Cooperation
- Ms Ella Vogelaar, Dutch Minister for Housing, Communities and Integration
- Mr Wim Deetman, Mayor of the Hague and chairman of UCLG Committee on City Diplomacy
- Mr Scott Leckie, Founder of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions
- Mr Naison Mutizwa-Mangiza, Writer of the UN-Habitat Global Human Settlements Report 2007: “Enhancing urban safety and security”
Conference facilitator: Mr J. Pronk, former Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Sudan and former Dutch minister.
On the second day three parallel sessions will focus on:
Transforming problem neighbourhoods into vibrant communities: the role of housing in creating safer cities and communities
Slums and informal settlements are a major social and political problem in developing countries and account for more than 50% of the urban area in such cities as Cairo, Dar-es-Salaam, Addis Ababa, Lima, Recife, São Paulo and Manila. Poverty, ineffective or unjust government policies and… Read more »
Reconstruction and peacebuilding after conflicts: support from local governments
In cities and countries all over the world, millions of people are on the move or under daily threat. In Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle East, Sudan and Colombia, to name just a few. In these troubled regions, national and local governments are confronted daily with the urgent needs of their people. Read more »
The restitution of land, houses and properties to returning refugees: a tool for reconstruction
The world’s displaced people include 2.1 million Afghans, 1.5 million Iraqis, 686,000 Sudanese, 460,000 Somalians and 400,000 Burundians, not to mention some 25 million internally displaced people. All of them hope to go home one day. Yet returning home can cause serious conflicts. In many… Read more »
Target Group: This year’s conference will bring together professionals working on all three issues in the developed and developing world. We are seeking input from policymakers, key decision-makers, NGOs, the private sector, financial organizations and other relevant stakeholders. We will give special attention to representatives from local governments concerned with city diplomacy.