Background and objectives:

The Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) are faced with the pressing need to respond to emergency and development problems in its human settlements. A comprehensive human settlements and housing policy, with a commensurate implementation strategy, is needed toaddress the acute housing shortage and serious human settlements problems and to provide a framework for human settlement interventions.

The objective of the project is to support the Palestinian Authority to enhance its capacity to prepare coherent housing and urban polices, implementation strategies and to create processes conducive to housing construction.

Activities:

The main activities of Phase I include:

• Provide the necessary technical assistance needed to structure the formulation of the human settlements and housing strategy.
• Collect and analyze the necessary primary data needed for the creation of policy frameworks in order to confirm problem diagnosis and against which to benchmark future progress.
• Identify themes and key elements needed for policy formulation.
• Reinforce the participatory processes and facilitate coordination between the related ministries and stakeholders.
• Prepare studies and make recommendations through national and international experts in the field.

Results:

Expected results will include:

• Human settlements and housing policies identified and distributed in a book -- “The Human Settlements and Housing Policies in Palestinian territories” -- and related manuals,
• Necessary instruments for implementation as well as general rules and regulatory frameworks identified,
• Capacity in the human settlements and housing sectors built and enhanced through policy formulation exercise and specialized training courses,
• The base for coordination mechanism between the various ministries and related bodies strengthened.