Join us on 19 October at Habitat III – the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development – to discuss how well-managed urbanisation can revitalise urban spaces that had either been lost to violence or suffered from a lack of access to basic services and neglect.
Addressing security and inclusion in cities as universal issues, practitioners, community leaders and researchers will come together to ask what terms of inclusion are needed to adhere to the principles of the New Urban Agenda.
We’ll ask how is security understood by law-enforcement agencies in contemporary cities at the street-level? And how does this relate to the lived experiences of city dwellers, particularly the poorest and most marginalised? At the city-level we’ll turn our gaze to the city wide socio-political and civic actors and institutions that govern urban security provision. And, at the national-level we’ll look at how the dynamics of security provision in cities relate to the processes of state building and peace building.
During the event, IDS and Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) will launch a new film called ‘No One Left Behind’ drawing on voices from marginalised city communities in four countries. The film projects clear perspectives on key threats to security and wellbeing. More importantly, it offers specific and optimistic proposals for positive and achievable change. It provides a mosaic of what it means to ‘leave no on behind’ – which has been the key concept in recent global development discussions and frameworks.
A range of exciting speakers will discuss what cities in the global north can learn from experiences in the global south, and vice versa. Participants will hear from practitioners with hands-on experience of implementing successful municipal interventions, alongside researchers who have studied and evaluated these interventions over long periods of time. The event will create a space for an evidence-based dialogue on safe and inclusive cities, amongst high-level policy makers and researchers. The event will also aim to mobilise networks of key actors involved in the co-construction of knowledge around safety and inclusion in cities in order to take the New Urban Agenda forward.
Invited speakers include the following, some of whom will present their local experience:
- Ricardo Gutiérrez, City Manager, Guadalajara, Mexico
- Juma Assiag, Global Coordinator, Safer Cities Programme, UN-Habitat
- Sekai Chiremba, Community Leader, Harare, SDI
- Sally Roever, Director, Urban Policies Programme, WIEGO
- Rev. Moruakgomo, Botswana Association of Local Authorities and Commonwealth Local Government Forum
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Gaëla Roudy Fraser, Senior Policy Officer, UNHCR
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Hugo Slim, Head of Policy, International Committee of the Red Cross
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Phil Williams, Director of Planning and Place, Belfast City Council and President, Royal Town Planning Institute
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Caroline Moser, University of Manchester
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Sophie Hadfield-Hill, Map My Community App, Delhi
Download the agenda and full list of speakers
Follow the event on Twitter #SafeCities.
Watch the live-streamed Press Conference for this event on UN Web TV
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