Highlights and images for 8 June 2023

Delegates spent the fourth day of the Second Session of the UN-Habitat Assembly (UNHA2) focused on finishing and approving the many draft decisions and resolutions. Despite best efforts, procedural snags resulted in only five decisions being adopted in plenary. Nine resolutions await translation into all official UN languages before their proposed adoption on Friday, while the Drafting Committee agreed to resume work in the evening on the draft Ministerial Declaration and a resolution on urbanization and climate change resilience.

Want to dig deeper? Read the full Earth Negotiations Bulletin daily report.

After a morning plenary devoted to national statements, the Committee of the Whole (COW) met to consider five draft decisions and eight draft resolutions referred to it by the Drafting Committee. All were forwarded to the plenary without amendment. The plenary later convened to adopt the five decisions that:

• extend the Strategic Plan for the period 2020-2025 until 2025;
• set the date of the resumed UNHA2 for 29-30 May 2025, and approve of a provisional agenda whose main operational element is approval of the Strategic Plan for the period 2026-2029;
• extend the term of office for the current members of the Executive Board and the Assembly Bureau until the closure of the resumed UNHA2;
• entrust the Executive Board with the further development of the stakeholder engagement policy with a view to possible approval at the resumed UNHA2 in 2025; and
• note the report of the Joint Inspection Unit and that a performance assessment is planned for 2024.

The UN-Habitat Executive Board held its Second Session of 2023, where it agreed to extend the term of Bureau officers by two years until 2025 to align with UN-Habitat’s other governing bodies. The Board also agreed that the elected Bureau will decide an appropriate date and duration for their third meeting of 2023 as soon as possible, and set an appropriate agenda, taking into account UNHA2 outcomes. It took note of a due diligence assessment of the Sustainable Human Settlements Foundation but decided to consider it more in depth at the next Board meeting.

At a midday high-level session on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Localization and Financing, panelists discussed mechanisms for closing financing gaps, and the importance of localization for effective change. Key takeaways from the high-level session included: a deeper understanding of the various aspects, processes and benefits associated with SDG localization; opportunities, mechanisms, and schemes for overcoming financing barriers; and defining characteristics of attractive financial environments for investment.

In the afternoon, the Drafting Committee continued discussions on bracketed preambular and operative paragraphs of the draft resolution on the interlinkage between urbanization and climate change resilience, failing to agree on how to reference various global frameworks, such as the political declaration on the Midterm Review of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. It was agreed that discussions on this resolution, as well as the Ministerial Declaration, would continue into the evening.