UNCHS - HAbitat: global facilitation of human settlements efforts.

• Position: United Nations Centre for Human Settlements, includes a related article announcing an April 1996 Washington, D.C. conference on Habitat II

The United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS)--widely known as Habitat--was established in Nairobi in 1978, two years after the first Habitat Conference. It formulates and implements relevant UN programmes and serves as a think-tank within the UN system, assisting Governments in improving the development and management of human settlements.

Habitat activities are based on the concept that human settlements "are the physical articulation of the social, economic and political interaction of people living in communities", states a UNCHS brochure. "Whether the communities are urban or rural, their development involves a transformation of the environment from its natural state to a built one. The elements required to meet basic human needs include housing and its related infrastructure, places of work, social services and recreation, and the institutions to produce and manage them."

UNCHS was instrumental in drawing up the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 to coordinate global efforts to facilitate the provision of adequate shelter by the end of the century. Adopted by the General Assembly in 1988, the Strategy has provided the framework for human settlements policies and the Centre's work.

UNCHS serves as the secretariat for Habitat II and is expected to remain, along with the Commission on Human Settlements, the institutional focus for implementing the action plan to be adopted at the Conference, which will be known as the Habitat Agenda.

Since the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, Habitat has also been in charge of following up the implementation of human settlements-related recommendations contained in Agenda 21. It occupies a key role in Agenda 21 because human settlements are the locus of many complex, cross-sectoral socio-economic issues, including poverty, equity, unsustainable consumption patterns and others.

To meet such challenges, UNCHS has initiated a number of worldwide programmes, among them:

* The Sustainable Cities Programme--operating on the premise that cities face a scarcity not of capital, but of management capacity--works at the local, national and regional levels to build...