‘Embrace local wisdom’, Rose Molokoane, national coordinator of the Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (FEDUP), implored Member States at the UN High-Level Meeting on the Midterm Review of the New Urban Agenda, Multi-Stakeholder Panel 4: Activating Future-Ready Cities through Governance, Capacity, Data, Innovation and Digital Transformation on 17 July 2026 at the UN Headquarters in New York.
The panel asked how communities living in informal settlements can be meaningfully engaged in urban governance, data generation and decision-making. Through SDI’s Know Your City campaign, slum dweller federations have been collecting their own data, mapping their own settlements and negotiating with their own city governments for decades. This local wisdom is priceless infrastructure.
Watch Mam’Rose at the UN Headquarters in New York:
The New Urban Agenda (NUA), adopted in 2016, set out a vision for sustainable urbanisation as a driver of inclusive and resilient development, contributing to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and other global commitments. The 2026 High-Level Meeting marked the midpoint of the New Urban Agenda’s 20-year implementation period (2016–2036). SDI federations contributed submissions and participated in the stakeholder processes that informed development of the New Urban Agenda.
Ten years since the Agenda’s adoption, progress on implementation has been slow. Rose warned that time is running out and that talk of partnerships is not enough. Her message was to go beyond partnerships and recognise organised communities as institutions of urban governance. SDI has long advocated that the New Urban Agenda must bridge the gap between the informal and the formal world. Yet progress has been uneven. Rose also suggests that SDI affiliates identify where we have worked well with governments and where UN-Habitat has contributed to our projects. That record should then be put in front of member states.
This same gap was on the table at the midterm review itself, held at UN Headquarters on 16 and 17 July 2026, where the General Assembly adopted a new Political Declaration renewing commitment to the Agenda. The vote passed 148 in favour to two against, with several states distancing themselves from specific provisions. A decade after the Agenda was adopted, the scale of what is left to do remains stark: roughly 3 billion people still lack safe, adequate housing and more than 1 billion live in informal settlements.
See New Urban Agenda National Reports here. Second national reports for 2022–2026 (countries which submitted) include:
