UN-HABITAT held its first Civil Society Organization (CSO) Dialogue Series event on Friday, June 5, 2009. The series is intended to be an arena for Nairobi-based CSOs to discuss matters that are important to the global civil society organizations in an informal environment. To ensure that CSOs based outside Nairobi have an opportunity to be a part of the discussions the CSO Unit is in the process of creating a discussion forum on the UN-HABITAT website (www.unhabitat.org). This discussion forum will allow CSOs from around the world to give their views and opinions on the issues discussed during the Dialogue Series as well as at any other meeting. This Dialogue Series was initiated as a result of Civil Society’s request that UN-HABITAT engage them more than once a year, for either the Governing Council or the World Urban Forum. The purpose of the event is for CSOs to discuss the topics relating to sustainable urbanization issues, with UN-HABITAT simply providing the space and the background material if required. The second Discussion Series event took place on December 16, 2009. The theme for this event was ‘Social Justice and The Right to the City’ which corresponds to the theme of Fifth session of the World Urban Forum (WUFV) - ‘The Right to the City: Bridging the Urban Divide’which is taking place in Rio de Janiero, Brazil in March 2010.
For further information on CSO activities, please email the CSO Unit at cso.unit@unhabitat.org or visit the UN-HABITAT website at www.unhabitat.org |
