The Global Parliamentarians on Habitat (GPH) and UN-HABITAT are jointly organizing a regional conference of the GPH African Council on Sustainable Urban Development. The Conference will take place on Tuesday, 12th April 2011 at UN-HABITAT Headquarters at Gigiri in Nairobi, Kenya from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM in Conference Room 10 during UN-HABITAT's 23rd Governing Council.

Parliamentarians may recall, the Governing Council is a high-level biennial meeting of governments which oversee UN-HABITAT's work programme and budget.

As you may already be aware, the Global Parliamentarians on Habitat is an international organization of parliamentarians. Its objective is to pursue sustainable urban development in the fields of housing and governance through the formation and implementation of sound legislation at the local and the national levels. Further information is available on the homepage of GPH (www.gph-habitat.de/en).

The main objective of this conference is to bring the African Parliamentarians together to network, share best practices, and lessons learned in terms of legislation and policies addressing the rapid urbanization of African nations, particularly with respect to pro-poor housing policies that bridge the urban divide. The election of the Board of Directors of the GPH-Africa is scheduled to take place during this conference.

We welcome all Parliamentarians at this meeting. We are also most keen to hear members with a special interest in sustainable urbanization. Our one proviso is that Parliamentarians joining us each give a 15-minute presentation on how they deal with pro-poor housing, slum reduction, infrastructure development, and related basic services. We would be most grateful if parliamentarians would kindly come with copies of the legislation, bills and policies for presentation at the conference so that we can share lessons learned.