As a small UN agency with global responsibilities, UNCHS (Habitat) has had to find ways of maximizing its impact by focusing its resources and by adopting a strategic approach that promotes certain policy principles to guide city management all over the world. These principles are derived from Habitat's own experience of what works, and also from its partners. Habitat's overriding goal now is urban poverty reduction, which is being advanced through two global campaigns, one for secure tenure and the other on urban governance. These two areas are pivotally important for pursuing the principles and strategies encapsulated in the Habitat Agenda and provides Habitat and its partners with different entry points to address the urban development challenges of the new millennium.

Since 1996, Habitat has been monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the Habitat Agenda using a variety of tools, including best practices, urban indicators and statistics. Comprehensive analysis of human settlements conditions and trends and data on a wide array of urban issues are presented in the Centre's flagship publications, Global Report on Human Settlements and State of the World's Cities Report every two years.

In addition to its advocacy and monitoring functions, Habitat also plays an important role in providing technical assistance to countries and cities in the areas of governance, environmental management, disaster mitigation, post-conflict rehabilitation, urban safety, water management and poverty reduction. 

United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat)
P.O. Box 30030 Nairobi, Kenya 
Tel: (254-2) 621234 
Fax:: (254-2) 624266/624267/624264/623080/624060 
E-mail: habitat@unchs.org 
Website: http://www.unchs.org