UNFPA - United Nations Population Fund
UNFPA works for a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every birth safe, every young person’s potential fulfilled
About
With over half of the world’s population living in urban areas, and one billion people living in urban slums or informal settlements, UNFPA supports the New Urban Agenda by providing data and information on population dynamics, people’s geographic proximity to services and vulnerability to climate change in urban areas. As a leading agency on census, UNFPA supports the collection and utilization of georeferenced census data, to enable “leave no one behind” (LNOB) analysis in urban areas to ensure inclusive environments where human rights are promoted, and resilience is fostered.
In many urban areas, the poor, vulnerable and marginalized people are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards, bear an unequal environmental burden, and are deprived of access to services. Many urban areas are also located in places highly vulnerable to climate change, particularly low elevation coastal zones and drylands at risk of sea level rise and drought. Urban slums are often located in the worst places, where climate change impacts will be the heaviest. Understanding local urban vulnerability, including who is most at risk and how to build their resilience, helps ensure successful adaptation to climate change. Efficient and well planned urban growth is the best way to help both current and future urban populations adapt.
UNFPA has developed a framework on population-oriented vulnerability mapping and assessment, and recently started an initiative to develop, as part of the Population Data Platform, an online population climate change vulnerability dashboard, with a component focusing on urban populations.
Cities attract large numbers of youth seeking access to information, and better education and employment opportunities. Recent UN statistics forecast that by 2030,60 percent of urban residents will be under the age of 18. The disproportionately large youth populations residing in the rapidly growing urban areas present opportunities to generate economic growth, enhance city resilience and promote sustainable urban development, provided that the youth are empowered with better access to health services (including sexual and reproductive health services), science and technology, education and employment. Ensuring social equality including gender equality is a challenge but crucial for a sustainable and peaceful urban development.
The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular migration (GCM), calls for evidence-based policies, including urbanization policies in order to maximize the benefits of agglomeration while minimizing environmental degradation and other potential adverse impacts of a growing number of city dwellers. In an effort to inform interventions that aim to address and reduce vulnerabilities to young migrants in cities, UNFPA has collected data on policy and service needs of young migrants in 7 major gateway cities (Nairobi, Tunis, Cairo, Lebanon, Bamako, Niamey and Ouagadougou) located in sub-Saharan Africa and Northern Africa and Western Asia between 2018 and 2021.
Cities are often at the forefront and “hotspots” of the many crises, such as Covid-19 and Ebola outbreaks. For example, 95 percent of covid-19 cases are found in urban areas. Crises heighten household stress, putting women and girls at higher risk of gender-based violence, and limit their access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services. UNFPA is currently working on case studies mapping people’s proximity to essential SRH and family planning services in Malawi, Zambia, South Sudan, with a lens on urban areas to enhance urban resilience.
UNFPA working closely with UNHCR developed and field tested sexual and reproductive health tool kit for Urban refugees as part of adaptation of humanitarian Approaches and Tools for Urban Areas. The aim of the toolkit is to promote universal access to sexual and reproductive health-care services to reduce newborn child and maternal mortality in urban settings for the most marginalized refugees, internally displaced persons migrants, and people on the move.
The great majority of tools, approaches, policies, and practices for humanitarian responses are designed for rural settings. Although many have been adapted for urban areas, their scaling-up and the development of new tools to fill gaps among humanitarian organizations is essential to enhance the impact of humanitarian assistance in urban areas. UNFPA as member of the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) developed a methodology with indicators across health and protection sectors for understanding and identifying urban vulnerability and resilience in humanitarian programs’ design and delivery in at-risk countries.
UNFPA as the current Champion of IASC on Preventing Sexual Exploitation and Abuse is promoting protection of vulnerable urban populations against sexual violence and exploitation and developed roster and strengthened surge capacity of trained human resources who can support countries facing humanitarian situations address PSEA including in urban settings.
