2015 Progress Report UN-Habitat Human Rights Mainstreaming

UN-Habitat has as its human rights mainstreaming objective to promote the strongly human rights-based United Nations New Urban Agenda, including through strengthening and systematizing its engagement vis-a-vis global policy developments including the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the Human Rights Up Front Initiative of the UN Secretary General. In addition, the objectives of human rights mainstreaming are to improve the capacity of UN-Habitat staff and partners to apply human rights considerations in project implementation, to strengthen the effective integration of the Human Rights-based Approach into the UN-Habitat project cycle, and to spur the development of tools that guide a human rights-based implementation of UN-Habitat projects.

Human rights mainstreaming builds on existing knowledge and will enable an increasingly uniform approach toward effective mainstreaming through a three-pronged integrated approach: i) A Help Desk/Advisory Services Function that include project reviews and Housing Rights and Human Rights Briefs, ii) a Training and Capacity Building Components for staff and external stakeholders, iii) Mainstreaming Human Rights at country level by reinforcing the Human Rights component as an operational activity across UN-Habitat’s different focal areas of work.

This report details progress and activities related to human rights mainstreaming in 2015.