UN-Habitat

UN-Habitat [|UN-Habitat]

About UN-Habitat The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, is the **United Nations agency for human settlements**. It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with **the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.**

In 1950, one-third of the world's people lived in cities. Just 50 years later, this rose to one-half and will continue to grow to two-thirds, or 6 billion people, by 2050. **//Cities are now home to half of humankind//**.

**In developing countries, slum dwellers number more than 50 per cent of the population and have little or no access to shelter, water, and sanitation, education or health services.**

The goal of Un-Habitat is to create //Cities without Slums//. This strategy consists of //advocacy of global norms, analysis of information, field-testing of solutions// and //financing//. These fall under the four core functions assigned to the agency by world governments - monitoring and research, policy development, capacity building and financing for housing and urban development.

**The highest priority for UN-HABITAT's //Water and Sanitation programme// is improving access to safe water and helping provide adequate sanitation to millions of low-income urban dwellers and measuring that impact**.

The UN-Habitat aims to //**reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water by 2015**//.

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