To reposition the New Urban Agenda strategically as a road map for accelerating sustainable development, climate action, and building peace, and to recognize the importance of cities and transformative actions for ensuring a more just, sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, a High-Level Meeting on the Implementation of the New Urban Agenda was held on 28 April 2022. The President of the General Assembly in collaboration with UN-Habitat convened this meeting at the UN headquarters in New York.  

Now, the President of the General Assembly's summary report of the high-level meeting has been made available.

The summary identifies the meeting’s key messages from discussions among Member States, the United Nations system, and other stakeholders, including highlighting transformative and impactful initiatives to urgently advance sustainable urbanisation. The summary’s annexe captures declared actions and commitments made by Member States during the meeting and can serve to support further coalition building to raise ambitions.

Declared actions and commitments of the high-level meeting

87 Member States reaffirmed their commitment to the implementation of the New Urban Agenda by submitting statements on progress achieved. All submitted statements were analysed to highlight actions taken by Member States over the past six years to implement the New Urban Agenda and commitments made on future actions.

These are grouped under six thematic areas:

1. Importance of the NUA in achieving the SDGs
2. The provision of adequate and affordable housing is among key social security measures during and after the COVID-19 pandemic
3. Contributions by cities to mitigate climate change, adapt equitably to the effects of climate change and halt environmental degradation
4. Urban Displacement and Cities
5. Urban Prosperity and Sustainable Finance
6. Multi-Level governance and localisation

Missed the High-Level Meeting?

You can watch the recordings of the High-Level Meeting to better understand the New Urban Agenda and the challenges of advancing sustainable urbanization here:

• High-level meeting - Part 1

• High-level meeting - Part 2

The meeting comes at a critical juncture for urban development. Africa and Asia are rapidly urbanizing, while urban populations in other parts of the world are stagnating or shrinking. Dramatic events continue to unfold in Ukraine and the global economy is heading into a recession. Cities are faced with substantive challenges on how to ensure a livable future for urban residents in social, economic, and environmental terms. Sustainable urban development has the potential to address many of the negative trends.

The New Urban Agenda, adopted at Habitat III Conference in 2016, contains recommendations that can enable governments across the world to fight inequalities, take transformative climate action and improve the quality of live for all. Results-oriented discussions at the high-level meeting will be captured through a summary of the President of the General Assembly. The summary will contain an annex that consolidates the current actions and future commitments towards implementing the New Urban Agenda.

A number of side events were being held in the lead-up to the high-level meeting. Please see the side-event programme here.

More information about the event and additional documents available on the here.