Organisational structure

The Executive Director of UN-HABITAT is United Nations Under Secretary-General, Mrs Anna Tibaijuka. Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, with a team of some 200 international and local staff, the agency has regional offices for Asia and the Pacific in Fukuoka, Japan, for Latin America and the Caribbean in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and for Africa and the Arab States in Nairobi. The regional office for Eastern Europe and Transition Countries is also based in Nairobi.

The agency has three main divisions which each oversee a set of programmes:

• The Shelter and Sustainable Human Settlements Development Division coordinates the agency’s global advocacy functions. Its departments are the Shelter Branch which focuses on the Global Campaign for Secure Tenure; the Water, Sanitation and Infrastructure Branch which promotes access to basic services and raises awareness on water and sanitation mainly through the Water for African Cities programme, and the Water for Asian Cities programme; the Training and Capacity Building Branch which helps strengthen local authority and civil society management capacity through training and organisation development; and the Urban Development Branch which runs UN-HABITAT’s Global Campaign on Urban Governance. It also runs the Safer Cities Programme, the Sustainable Cities Programme, the Urban Management Programme, the Risk and Disaster Management Programme, and a programme called Localising Agenda 21 which seeks to ensure crucial environmental issues are brought into urban development planning.

• The Monitoring and Research Division. Also known as the Urban Secretariat, this division runs three programmes. The Monitoring Systems Branch that keeps a closely documented watch over the conditions of human settlements ranging from rights and policy issues, to the lessons learned through the Best Practices Programme and the Local Leadership Programme; the Policy Analysis, Synthesis and Dialogue Branch, which focuses on enhancing the agency’s policies and produces its two flagship reports; and the Urban Economy and Finance Branch which looks at employment issues in urban areas, especially the informal sector in developing nations, and ways of developing municipal and housing finance systems.

• The Regional and Technical Cooperation Division responsible for implementing the agency’s technical cooperation programmes and projects around the world. It oversees the regional offices.