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Habitat III Preparatory Committee

The United Nations General Assembly decided to establish a preparatory committee for the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development “Habitat III” to carry out the preparations for the conference, open to all member states of the UN and members of specialised agencies and of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Preparatory Committee (PrepCom), headed by a bureau of ten elected members (including the Czech Republic), had three meetings before the opening of the conference.

The first session of the PrepCom was held in New York, at UN Headquarters, on 17-18 September, 2014. The second session was held in Nairobi, Kenya, on 14–16 April, 2015 and the third session was held in Surabaya, Indonesia, on 25–27 July, 2016.

Following UN procedures for inter-governmental conferences, the PrepCom Bureau represented the member states in coordination of the preparatory process of the Habitat III Conference.

María Duarte (Ecuador)
Maryse Gautier (France)
Eric Miangar (Chad)
Jaime Silva (Chile)
Daniela Grabmüllerová (Czech Republic)
Tania Roediger-Vorwerk (Germany)
Purnomo A. Chandra (Indonesia)
Mamadou Mbodj (Senegal)
Elena Szolgayová (Slovakia)
MajidHasan Al-Suwaidi (United Arab Emirates)

The goal of the PrepCom meetings was to negotiate the text of the New Urban Agenda (NUA), which was finally approved by all 193 UN member states during the “Habitat III” global conference. In May 2016, the Bureau published a draft NUA. This was followed by intergovernmental consultations, informal discussions and meetings with partners, which were held at UN headquarters in New York. Consultations with the states took place mostly through informal discussions in smaller groups of stakeholders – for example regarding the thematic issues “Follow-up and review” and “Right to the City”.

After hearings with civil society members and local authorities, the Bureau published the revised NUA in June 2016. At the beginning of July 2016, another modified version was sent as a formal basis for PrepCom3 negotiations.

The PrepCom3 meeting was held on 25-27 July, 2016 in Surabaya, Indonesia. The Czech delegation was led by the Minister of Regional Development, Karla Šlechtová. In her speech, she presented the results of the successful regional “European Habitat” conference, which was held in Prague in March 2016. The goal of PrepCom3 was, ideally, to find consensus on the revised version of the NUA so that UN member states could agree on the final wording of the document in October 2016 at the “Habitat III” UN conference. That did not happen as there were some outstanding issues, particularly in the final part of the “Follow-up”.

The NUA was approved at the UN global conference in October 2016. The NUA establishes urban development policy and financing for the next 20 years, and serves as an important motivating element for implementation of the global “Agenda 2030”, mainly in terms of achieving the commitments contained in the 11 housing and urban development objectives.

Documents:
NUA
Council conclusions on the EU and its Member States' objectives and priorities for the 3rd UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development