Background to the Urban Safety Toolkit

The Safer Cities Programme, launched in 1996, provides support to local authorities to better respond to and prevent violence and associated insecurity. Part of the Safer Cities Agenda is to strengthen and empower local authorities and community-based organizations to develop urban safety initiatives. The project aims to raise awareness on issues of urban safety related to violence and insecurity for the poor in Asia-Pacific, through analysis, collection of information and identification of promising or good practices in promoting safety.

The Asia-Pacific Region is both the largest and most populous of the world’s regions. Unlike Latin America/Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa, the official languages of its countries are rarely English, French or Spanish (the languages most commonly used in UN publications). In the past, violent crime in the public realm has been less of a priority issue than in Latin America/Caribbean or Africa. The norms of governance, including urban governance, are both different to these other two regions and remarkably varied. All of these factors raise challenges in relation to developing a toolkit that will meet the needs of the region. This Toolkit focuses on three broad sub-regions: South Asia (including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka), South-East Asia (including Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Thailand), and the Pacific (including Fiji, the Philippines).

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