6 October 2020: Minister of Infrastructure, Honourable Claver Gatete participated in the virtual launch of the Urban Agenda Platform as part of the Global Observance of World Habitat Day celebrations.

The Urban Agenda Platform is an online portal facilitated by UN-Habitat for sharing progress and knowledge on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. The event brought together national and local government representatives, civil society, knowledge partners and the UN System to discuss evidence-based policy making, reporting on progress and accelerating actions through multi-stakeholder engagements. 

Minister Claver Gatete commended the Executive Director of UN-Habitat and the UN-Habitat team for the successful organization of this platform towards enabling and facilitating the reporting on implementation progress on the New Urban Agenda. Highlighting the impotence of                                   “reporting progress on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, Infrastructure Minister emphasized that, it  matters a lot to any Member State because it is through the reporting that we can be able to assess and evaluate our performance progress level on the stipulated commitments, goals and indicators.

This platform is vital for Rwanda as a Member State that has already integrated the New Urban Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into National Development Agenda documents like National Strategy for Transformation (NST 1, 2017-2024), Urbanization and Rural Settlement Sector Strategic Plan for NST1 and related strategies at different levels all the way through the Vision 2050.

The enhanced role of the cross-sectorial coordination cannot be ignored here through this platform. Different Sectors including Transport, Water and Sanitation, Energy, Education, Environment and Agriculture have a big contribution to urbanization hence the need to monitor and report on how key sectors contribute to the new Urban Agenda. 

The agenda answers questions of how urban sanitation can be improved, environment protection from pollution and how green and smart cities can maintained. The platform is a core tool that has renewed the increased momentum towards accelerated implementation of the New Urban agenda and related dimensions of the SDGs while fostering new partnerships for effective implementation and reporting mechanisms.

It also directs the level of accountability by Member States and other stakeholders in honoring their commitments on New Urban Agenda as is expected. This time around, stakeholders will be focused on action- and impact-oriented performances in a bid to achieve the specified targets.

The Urban Agenda Platform is a multi-stakeholder global platform and forum launched by UN-Habitat to capture collective work to achieve SDGs goals and to encourage dialogue and exchange.

Approximately 1.8 billion people were living in slums and inadequate accommodation worldwide before the pandemic began.  The ambitions to tackle inadequate living conditions are set out in Goal 11 of the UN SGDs, Sustainable Cities and Communities.