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The 'United Nations Human Settlements Programme' ('UN–HABITAT') is the United Nations agency for human settlements. It was established in 1978 and has its headquarters at the UN office in Nairobi, Kenya. It is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.
According to its 2006 Annual Report, sometime in the middle of 2007, the majority of people worldwide will be living in towns and cities, for the first time in history; this is referred to as the arrival of the "urban millennium". The year 2007 will also see the number of slum dwellers hit 1 billion. As regards future trends, it is estimated 93% of urban growth will occur in Asia and Africa, and to a lesser extent Latin America and the Caribbean. By 2050 over 6 billion people, two thirds of humanity, will be living in towns and cities.
The main documents outlining the mandate of the organization are the Vancouver Declaration on Human Settlements, the Habitat Agenda, the Istanbul Declaration on Human Settlements, the Declaration on Cities and Other Human Settlements in the New Millennium, and Resolution 56/206.
It has three regional offices, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro, and Fukuoka.

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Controversies

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Controversies

UN Habitat has supported the slum clearance project in Durban, South Africa which has been widely critized for being carried out in a violent and illegal manner and which has been protested by shack dwellers in marchers of as many as 20 000 people.[1]

External links

★ Official website

★ BBC News Special Report - Urban Planet

★ South Africa shack dwellers' organisation