Newsletter de la Global Alliance : édition de Novembre 2016
Global Alliance for Urban Crises Newsletter : November 2016 Edition
Welcome to the November 2016 Edition of the Global Alliance for Urban Crises Newsletter. This edition features a round-up of Alliance events during HABITAT III, an update on the Alliance governance structure, response to Hurricane Matthew by Alliance members, updates on new research from members, and more.
HABITAT III Round-Up (Quito, 17-20 October 2016)
The New Urban Agenda has been adopted and includes important references relating to the Alliance agenda. Find our recommendations here.
The Global Alliance for Urban Crises was well-represented during the HABITAT III Conference, with nearly 20 partners present and 21 events organized on urban crises. The Alliance hosted two main events : "Fostering Collaboration for Effective Urban Humanitarian Response² and ³Cities in Crisis/Crisis in Cities², involving IRC, IIED, IFRC, World Vision International, UNHCR, the European External Action Service, the General Assembly of Partners HABITAT III, ISOCARP, UCLG, UN-Habitat, WFP, and ICRC (See also : twitter.com/gaurbancrises and the hashtag, #ThinkUrban). A new advocacy microsite (www.urbancrises.org/thinkurban) and a new network of built environment professionals (UK-BEAG) were also launched in Quito.
The Alliance was referenced several times by senior representatives of Alliance members during their interventions in Quito as an important vehicle through which to drive forward the urban crises agenda.
The Alliance secretariat would like to thank everyone involved in organizing Side Events for the Alliance.
Alliance Governance Structure
The Global Alliance for Urban Crises interim secretariat convened a meeting of representatives from key constituencies from 8-9 November 2016, in Paris, France, to discuss an Alliance governance and secretariat structure, with a focus on the interim timeframe (2017). Discussions were informed by the "Consultant's Report", penned by Sarah Methven, for which interviews with key constituents were conducted. Governance and secretariat structure options were presented accordingly. This report was sent via e-mail to constituents on 4 November 2016.
During the two-day meeting, the group worked towards a consensus on the governance structure, to be finalized by the end of 2016. We will continue to update constituents on the progress in our upcoming monthly newsletters.
Key Messages and Alliance Response to Hurricane Matthew
Alliance members met during the sidelines of HABITAT III to strategize and coordinate on-the-ground response to Hurricane Matthew, which hit Haiti in early October 2016. Alliance membership organizations are currently in Haiti conducting neighborhood assessments, providing integrated response, surge capacity, technical support and expertise to local authorities, gathering data, and monitoring the situation, in accordance to the key messages found here.
Alliance members currently in Haiti include (but are not limited to) UN-Habitat, IMPACT, United Cities and Local Governance (UCLG), and its UCLG Taskforce on prevention and territorial management of crisis, Cites Unies France, CANADEM, , IFRC, J/P HRO and UNDP.
UCLG will host a workshop focusing on response in Haiti, drawing on lessons-learned from both the response to the 2010 earthquake and Hurricane Matthew, and establish a dialogue between international actors and local authorities in Haiti to define more relevant and coordinated response for reconstruction. The workshop will take place in Barcelona, Spain, during January 2017. The concept note and provisional agenda can be found here. For more information on the workshop, please contact Simone Giovetti : s.giovetti@cites-unies-france.org.
Further News
Stronger Cities Initiatives Desk Reviews
The Stronger Cities Initiative - a consortium of the International Rescue Committee, Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and World Vision International (WVI) has released two new desk reviews of the strengths, weaknesses, and gaps of existing humanitarian tools for context analysis, multi-sectoral needs assessment, targeting, and response frameworks for responding to urban crises.
A review of context analysis tools for urban humanitarian response can be found here. A review of the needs assessment tools, response analysis framework and targeting guide for urban humanitarian response can be found here. To find out more about the desk reviews, you can read more on the IIED blog entitled, "Towards a humanitarian's handbook for cities in crises."
For more information about the Stronger Cities Initiative please see the information sheet, found here.
5th Congress of United Cities and Local Governments World Conference for Local and Regional Leaders (Bogota, 12-15 October 2016)
United Cities and Local Governments' (UCLG) Executive Bureau endorsed the Global Alliance for Urban Crises during the 5th Congress of United Cities and Local Governments World Conference for Local Regional Leaders.
Please find a note here, which was presented and adopted by UCLG's Executive Bureau during this meeting.
Event : Sustaining Peace in an Urban World
Sustaining Peace in an Urban World
December 14, 2016, 3-6pm
Conference Room 6 at UNHQ
Urban Perspectives for Sustaining Peace will bring together member states, academics, policy makers and UN officials to link the results of Habitat III and its outcome document The New Urban Agenda, with the outcomes of the recent reviews and processes, most notably on sustaining peace, peace operations, and sustainable development. Sustaining Peace in an Urban World builds on the insights and conclusions from The Nexus of Urbanization, Violence and Conflict : Linking SDG 11 and SDG 16 event held in April 2016 at UNDP in New York. The outcome document could be found here.
The core objective of the event is to uncover how urban perspectives and approaches can be used to facilitate efforts to sustain peace in cities, tapping into their constructive potential to overcome current global challenges regarding a variety of interlinked issues, namely : promoting safety and inclusion, building and sustaining peace, addressing protracted displacement, and better peacekeeping in cities.
For further questions and to RSVP, please contact Mr. Deen Sharp : deensharp@gmail.com and Ms. Gizem Sucuoglu : sucuoglu@nyu.edu.
