Global initiatives
Voluntary Local Reviews
Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs) are a process to monitor SDG achievement at the local level and powerful accelerators of the SDG localization process. As their use is gradually adopted by more and more local and regional governments from around the globe, VLRs have become an instrument to orient strategic planning, financing, and initiatives through the SDG lens. That is why UN-Habitat supports the development of action oriented VLRs, connecting monitoring to planning, and fostering horizontal and vertical policy coherence
The VLR global movement is growing day by day: more than 300 local and regional governments have developed VLRs from all over the world. Search the UN-Habitat VLR repository to see all the VLRs produced worldwide:
How UN-Habitat Supports the Global Movement
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The Partnership Platform on Localizing the SDGs
The Partnership Platform on Localizing the SDGs is a collaborative and operational initiative providing support to countries and territories worldwide while convening relevant partner institutions at the global level for continuous exchanges.
It builds on MASE's leadership and expertise in Multilevel Governance and Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCSD), as well as on UN-Habitat's operational capacities and expertise in SDG Localization and urban development worldwide.
The initiative will be aimed at:
- Integrating multilevel governance mechanisms and the PCSD approach into methods and measures for localizing the SDGs, ensuring coherence between national strategies and local action;
- Engaging partners and facilitating mutual learning on existing gaps, challenges, tools, mechanisms and practices, while testing common approaches to common issues – at all levels;
- Providing direct support to partner countries and cities to create multilevel enabling environments to accelerate the localization of the SDGs;
The Partnership Platform on Localizing the SDGs will also contribute to UN-Habitat's vision and work on SDG Localization, reaching 50 countries and impacting the lives of 1 billion people building on the Italian experience.
To achieve this ambitious goal, global-level discussion is key to sharing and identifying methods, tools, and experiences for SDG localization based on multilevel governance and PCSD, while piloting and testing them in partnership with a few countries is critical to revise and further adapt them. The initiative will operate with a focus on providing concrete, cutting-edge, and operational support to countries and cities to advance the localization of the SDGs, while promoting wider exchanges among interested partners on the issue, with particular reference to complementary and ongoing global initiatives including the Local 2030 Coalition, the G20 Platform on Intermediary Cities and SDGs Localization, the Sports and Sustainable Urban Development Initiative and the OECD Territorial Approach to SDGs.
The operationalization of the Partnership Platform will kick-start with a piloting phase of two years (2024-2026) during which the Initiative will articulate its action along three levels:
National Level
To develop SDG Localization Country Frameworks based on shared approaches (see below), with the aim of ensuring coherence between national sustainable development policies and local programs, plans and actions.
Local Level
To accompany cities through a comprehensive SDG localization process – articulated with the national and global ones, and to identify projects and initiatives with the highest social and environmental impact at the local level, including sport initiatives.
Global Level
To socialize issues and define common approaches at the global level while fostering the generation of knowledge, partnerships, and continuous learning on how to advance SDGs localization anchored on Multilevel Governance and PCSD, in coordination with complementary global initiatives.
Partners
Women-led Cities
Women-Led Cities is a joint global initiative by UN-Habitat, UNCDF and EllaImpacta. Its purpose is to promote women's Leadership and Innovative Financing for Safety, Inclusion and Economic and Empowerment in Cities, and ultimately support women leaders to accelerate and achieve the SDGs. Women-Led Cities is a call for women leaders to stand in solidarity as change-makers to accelerate the achievements of the SDGs in cities. The initiative will increase opportunities for women at the local level, which, in turn, will result in establishing new generations of women-led businesses and political leaders.
The goal is to ensure that cities are conducive environments where women live, work, and thrive with dignity and equality, free from the fear of gender-based violence. Uniquely, Women-led Cities is a partnership between women business leaders globally and women mayors worldwide, aiming to foster the growth and development of women in leadership and result in establishing new generations of women business leaders and women political leaders.
Working together, women leaders of cities and businesses will advocate at all levels of government for transformative change in support of human rights, women's rights, and equality, including efforts to combat gender-based violence.
Anchored on the 2nd Habitat Assembly Resolution on Localization of Sustainable Development Goals (June 2023), Women-Led Cities is part of the UN global flagship programme, SDG Cities, which offers a systematic approach to support cities to accelerate their achievement of SDGs and draws on UN-Habitat's digital Her City Toolbox that supports gender-inclusive urban planning and design, Safer Cities that promotes women safety in cities and mitigates violence against women, and UNCDF's IncluCity initiative that promotes local investments for inclusive services and economic opportunities in cities, International Municipal Investment Fund that provides innovative financing solutions for local authorities in developing countries, and a new EFSD+ Sub-National Guarantee Fund.
Women-Led Cities will address gender inequality, and increase opportunities for women by strengthening women leadership at all levels. It will set out to achieve the following outcomes:
Women's Leadership
Improved engagement of women in local decision- making processes, through: empowering women leaders as agents of transformative change; improving gender balance of decision- making bodies; increasing participation and engagement of women in local institutions; and strengthening leadership skills of women at various local governance levels, from grassroots up.
Inclusive & Safe Cities
Improved urban environments free from gender-based violence through: women and child friendly public spaces and shelter homes; safe mobility with affordable and efficient public transportation; accessible and affordable housing and health facilities; safe access to clean water and sanitation; and overall higher standards of living for women.
Women's Economic Empowerment
Improved economic opportunities for women, through: inclusive policy and regulatory frameworks; increased investments in urban infrastructure; and incubating and financing women-led businesses through grants, loans and financing mechanisms including local funds.
Partners
Sport for Sustainable Urban Development Initiative
"Sport is the low-cost, high-impact tool to support all countries – big or small, rich or poor – to build together a more peaceful, healthier, more equal and more sustainable world for everyone – 365 days a year."
(International Olympic Committee President (IOC) President Thomas Bach)
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and UN-Habitat are collaborating to mainstream sport, physical activity, and active recreation in sustainable urban development processes. By bringing together UN-Habitat's SDG Cities and Inclusive Communities, Thriving Cities Flagships and the IOC's Olympism365 strategy, the collaboration will strengthen the role of sport as a tool for inclusive sustainable development in cities, and progress health, social inclusion, and environmental outcomes.
Olympism365
Olympism365 is the IOC's approach to strengthening the role of sport as an important enabler for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which it achieves by collaborating with a range of partners from both within and outside the Olympic Movement. The themes and priority areas for Olympism365 reflect the positive role that sport, and Olympism can play in society for the SDGs by contributing to creating healthier and more active communities, more equitable, safer, and inclusive communities, peacebuilding, and education and livelihoods.
SDG Cities
SDG Cities is UN-Habitat's Flagship Programme that aims to provide a systematic approach to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs in cities and urban areas guided by the principle of "leaving no-one (and no place) behind" and multilevel governance. Its comprehensive strategy focuses on three key areas: data, strategic decision-making, and implementation. The initiative deploys a set of tools to support the local capacities needed to drive sustainable urban development— data, governance, planning, financing, and basic services delivery. SDG Cities is anchored within the SDG Localization and Local Governments Team, under the Urban Practices Branch, which has the mandate of coordinating UN-Habitat's corporate work on localizing the SDGs.
Inclusive Communities, Thriving Cities
The Inclusive Communities, Thriving Cities programme employs urban regeneration as a tool to reduce spatial inequalities and poverty. Supporting the social, economic, and environmental transformation of deprived areas and strategic locations within a city will result in connected, dynamic, diverse and vibrant neighbourhoods. This transformation of urban areas is expected to lead to an increase in equality of outcomes for all. The programme contains a 'Mega events as catalysers for sustainable development" component. In this component, UN-Habitat aims to integrate inclusion, prosperity, and resilience agendas with the transformative potential of urban events, focusing on achieving inclusive, sustainable, and resilient development. Collaboration with Strategic Partners will enhance the socio-economic and environmental impacts, prioritizing SDG localization.
The collaboration
The overall objective of the Initiative is to fully realise the potential of sport, physical activity, and active recreation as an important enabler of sustainable development at scale in cities and contributor to creating more healthy, inclusive, and environmentally friendly urban societies.
This aim will be advanced through two streams of work that draw on the approach and methodology of SDG Cities and Inclusive Communities, Thriving Cities:
Working directly with cities and communities on project implementation and localised institutional capacity building; and,
Working nationally and globally to support knowledge exchange, policy development and resource mobilisation.
It will integrate sport and physical activity metrics into cities' analysis and planning tools, support capacity-building of municipal authorities and sporting bodies, provide seed funding for urban sports infrastructure and programming, focusing on urban communities that are most left behind; and produce tools and guidelines to help local authorities integrate sport more actively into urban development processes. It will thus harness sport, physical activity and active recreation as a driver of sustainable development in cities.
Partners
Local2030 Knowledge and Scientific Network
The Local 2030 Knowledge and Scientific Network (KSN) has been established as an initiative of the Government of Italy in partnership with UN-Habitat and CeSPI ETS, and anchored to the Local 2030 Coalition, with the aim of connecting experts and scholars from all around the world on SDG Localization to bridge the gap between knowledge, research and policy making at the local level.
The KSN objective is to close the gap between university knowledge and real-world policy-making by integrating insights from academia with the practical needs of decision makers. The KSN reaches across the world, involving various continents and fields of study, with a specific focus on interventions in two pilot countries, Jordan and Tunisia. This network doesn't just store information but actively works to bring research-based ideas from local contexts to the big picture of global policy dialogues.
At the core of the KSN's mission
At the core of the mission is engaging with a wide array of researchers. These researchers, especially young people from Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, join forces in global and regional networks to bring new ideas and relevant solutions into policy-making. The KSN supports these efforts with many activities, such as setting up an academic programme on SDG Localization in Jordan and Tunisia and leading research labs that help turn academic discussions into actual policy ideas and concrete proposals to orient strategies.
At the country level, the KSN leads a cluster of 12 PhD students and young researchers from Jordanian and Tunisian Universities. The cluster of researchers participate in a yearly academic programme on SDG Localization composed of 8 modules, and, at the same time, conducts research activities on specific SDG-related themes in collaboration with four cities: Aqaba and Irbid in Jordan, and Kerkennah and Sousse in Tunisia.
Network Partners
