There are over 1 billion slum dwellers globally and if no serious action is taken, the number is projected to rise over the next 30 years to about 2 billion. Unless radical efforts are made to provide a range of affordable housing options and legal and secure land at scale, cities will be host to hundreds of millions of new slum-dwellers. The situation is critical and unprecedented.

In response, UN-HABITAT aims to mobilize a global coalition of partners to address the challenge of unsustainable urbanization. UN-HABITAT’s vision is “to help create by 2013 the necessary conditions for concerted international and national efforts to stabilize the growth of slums and to set the stage for the subsequent reduction in and reversal of the number of slum dwellers.” This vision, derived from the Millennium Development Goals, cannot be realized without systemic reforms to promote access to land and housing for all.

As a strategic result, UN-HABITAT is committed to supporting Habitat Agenda Partners (HAPs) to improve access to land and housing. The Agency is further committed to the following three outcomes: first, implementing improved land and housing policies; second, increased security of tenure; and, third, promoting slum improvement and slum prevention policies. Some of the important activities to be undertaken include: a renewed effort to promote alternatives to eviction, the production of a major new global policy paper on housing, articulating a new normative framework for slum prevention, developing new land tools to implement pro poor land policies, promoting a range of land rights rather than just individual titles, and strengthening the UN systems capacity to address housing, land and property issues in post conflict and post natural disaster situations. A specific effort will be made to promote measures to mitigate or adapt to the risk associated with global climate change. All activities will be gender responsive.