The New Urban Agenda for the CIS countries

The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) includes 10 permanent members and one associate member. The CIS is an important mechanism of interstate consultations and negotiations aimed at reaching agreement on various areas of multilateral cooperation within the Commonwealth and putting them into practice. The CIS countries have shared challenges, which were outlined in the report “CIS Cities: Towards Sustainable Future”, prepared by UN-Habitat and the UNECE for Habitat III. These challenges include among others: high concentration of population and industrial production in the largest and major cities, stagnation of small and medium human settlements; exacerbation of traffic problems; growing pressures on urban infrastructure; unfavorable environmental setting in the areas neighboring with large industrial centers; lack of effective management and maintenance system for multi-apartment buildings; and lack of social and affordable rental housing.

The proposed initiative on “The New Urban Agenda for the CIS countries” will consolidate, scale-up and build on several years of the effective collaboration in the sub-region. The initiative aims to address the above key challenges to sustainable urban development in an integrated manner.

The networking event will provide a platform for stakeholders from the region to highlight the key areas that the initiative should address, as well as identify and solidify partnerships for the initiative. The networking event will discuss the development of an UNECE-UNESCAP-UN-Habitat joint initiative on “The New Urban Agenda for the CIS countries”. It will be organized as an interactive panel discussion of high level officials representing national and city governments from the CIS countries, representatives of academia, civil society and international organizations. The panelists will discuss challenges and trends in urban development in the CIS region and provide their views to strategic directions of the initiative.