Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2026
Time: 16:00 - 17:30 (UTC+4, Baku time)
Location: ONE UN venue - Baku, Azerbaijan
WUF13 ONE UN Event | Organised by UNDRR, UN-Habitat (CRGP), UNDP, and UNEP/GlobalABC
About the Event
Housing is the main infrastructure of cities and one of the first systems to fail when risks cascade across urban life. Disasters now affect over 150 million people annually and cause hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure losses, with housing disproportionately impacted. Rapid urbanisation, climate change, increasingly frequent disasters, environmental degradation, and socio-economic instability are converging to undermine housing systems worldwide, affecting not only physical structures but also land governance, infrastructure networks, basic service provision, environmental health, institutional capacities, and community well-being.
This ONE UN event, organised by UNDRR, UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Global Programme (CRGP), UNDP’s Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery for Building Resilience Team, and UNEP and the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC), positions housing not as a standalone sector but as a core urban system linking risk, climate, governance, services, and social cohesion. It applies the concept of the urban resilience cycle — anticipation, risk reduction, crisis response, and recovery — to translate global frameworks and agency actions into concrete decision points for cities and national governments.
The event will also launch the joint UN initiative on resilient housing, creating further synergies between participating agencies and upscaling existing activities on science, policy advice, and technical assistance to countries and cities. It will draw on UNEP and GlobalABC’s work on climate-resilient building design, sustainable materials, retrofitting, nature-based solutions, and the Belém Call for Action on Sustainable and Affordable Housing launched at COP30; UN-Habitat’s CRGP implemented in 80+ cities supporting 40+ million people; UNDRR’s Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) initiative; and UNDP’s Resilient Urban Futures flagship initiative active in 25–30 cities and countries.
If you have any questions or would like more information about the event, please contact maliya.lazli@un.org.
