Experts on partnership from around the world were invited to Barcelona to hear about UN-HABITAT´s continued commitment to its Partnership Strategy and to give their input on the progress. A key factor in UN-HABITAT´s Medium-term Strategic and Institutional Plan (MTSIP) is the development of a partnership strategy that is meant to enhance the engagement of partners in achieving global urban sustainability. The meeting was chaired by Professor Oyebanji Oyeyinka, Director of UN-HABITAT´s Monitoring and Research Division, who opened proceedings. "UN-HABITAT believes that the meaningful engagement of partners is key to the achievement of our goal of sustainable urbanization. UN-HABITAT hopes that this Partnership Strategy will act as a road map for us and our partners. This strategy will provide us with guidance on how UN-HABITAT can play a more catalytic role with our partners, enabling our activities to better go to scale, and effect substantive change on the normative and operational level," he said. Key areas discussed were how partners can engage better within UN-HABITAT's different governance organs such as the Governing Council and the World Urban Forum and what criteria should be used to select partners strategically. "We are grateful to UN-HABITAT for its commitment to engaging critical partners such as youth and women," said Ms. Ljubov Yermolaeva, a UN-HABITAT Youth Advisory Board member. "We see the value in this strategy in improving how we can better work together to effect positive change in cities." The Partnership Strategy was developed by UN-HABITAT contractor, the Community Alliance, and the International Centre for Sustainable Cities over the past year. The meeting closed with a commitment by UN-HABITAT to incorporate suggestions made at the consultation.
Meanwhile, UN-HABITAT announced that it had embarked on a new youth entrepreneurship trainning programme in African countries earlier this month. For details, click here.
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