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Mrs. Tibaijuka to carry Olympic flame in Africa run
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

27/03/2008
Nairobi



UN-HABITAT Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka is one of the high profile individuals selected to take part in the Olympic Torch Relay in Tanzania – the only African country through which the torch will be carried en route to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Among others taking part in the relay holding in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam are Kenyan track legend Kipchoge Keino and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. They will be participating under the banner of the Coca Cola Company which is a worldwide partner of the Olympic Torch Relay for the sixth time in 12 years.

“This is a great honour both to me as a person and to UN-HABITAT. The Olympics symbolizes the unity of humankind and to be chosen to participate in the Torch Relay is a once in a lifetime opportunity which I will greatly treasure,” said Mrs. Tibaijuka who is known to keep herself fit by jogging regularly.

Commemorating the theft of fire from the Greek god Zeus by Prometheus, the torch’s origins lie in ancient Greece, when a fire was kept burning throughout the celebration of the ancient Olympics. The fire was reintroduced at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, and it has been part of the modern Olympic Games ever since.

March 28, 2008 | 7:51 PM Comments  0 comments

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Mrs. Tibaijuka to carry Olympic flame in Africa run
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

27/03/2008
Nairobi

UN-HABITAT Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka is one of the high profile individuals selected to take part in the Olympic Torch Relay in Tanzania – the only African country through which the torch will be carried en route to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Among others taking part in the relay holding in the Tanzanian capital Dar es Salaam are Kenyan track legend Kipchoge Keino and Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. They will be participating under the banner of the Coca Cola Company which is a worldwide partner of the Olympic Torch Relay for the sixth time in 12 years.

“This is a great honour both to me as a person and to UN-HABITAT. The Olympics symbolizes the unity of humankind and to be chosen to participate in the Torch Relay is a once in a lifetime opportunity which I will greatly treasure,” said Mrs. Tibaijuka who is known to keep herself fit by jogging regularly.

Commemorating the theft of fire from the Greek god Zeus by Prometheus, the torch’s origins lie in ancient Greece, when a fire was kept burning throughout the celebration of the ancient Olympics. The fire was reintroduced at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam, and it has been part of the modern Olympic Games ever since.

March 28, 2008 | 7:51 PM Comments  0 comments

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UN-HABITAT exploring youth-private sector partnerships
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

17/03/2008
Nairobi



In a move aimed at helping young people attain better prospects in life, UN-HABITAT is embarking on a new campaign in Kenya to partner with the private sector to achieve this goal.

Spearheaded by the agency’s Partners and Youth section, the initiative will seek to get big business to underwrite activities aimed at improving the lives of young people. And it is not just another project in quest of financial help – it is also seeking resources and mentoring.

“It will be a good investment for example, if a cement manufacturing firm allocated some resources in training masons and plumbers because in the long term, these are people who will be directly involved in using the firm’s products,” said Mr. Anantha Krishnan of UN-HABITAT said.

Consequently, UN-HABITAT has engaged a Kenyan based corporate consultant to explore ways of selling the idea of investing in youth to corporations. Together with the firm, IQ Marketing, UN-HABITAT is seeking means to have some of these businesses join it at the fourth session of the World Urban Forum in Nanjing China later this year and sell to them the idea of being actively involved in capacity building among youth.

According to Ms. Louisa Gikonyo of IQ Marketing, young people were faced with many challenges including differences in upbringing, marginalization due to age, literacy levels as well as lack of forums to interact. UN-HABITAT, she said, had a window of opportunity to address some of these challenges by helping to create forums for interaction and seeking in-house training opportunities for young people in the private sector.

March 20, 2008 | 12:15 PM Comments  1 comments

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Fourth Session of The World Urban Forum in Nanjing now to be held between 3 -7 November 2008.
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

12/03/2008
Nairobi

The Government of the People’s Republic of China has confirmed that the Fourth Session of the World Urban Forum, which is to be held in the city of Nanjing, will now take place between 3-7 November 2008. UN-HABITAT Executive Director Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka thanked the Chinese government saying that it was a great honour to have them host this increasingly popular event in the UN calendar, especially as the meeting is dedicated to discussing urban issues and China is now one of the fastest urbanizing countries in the world.

"We are looking forward to being in Nanjing for this landmark forum, particularly as China has a lot to offer the world at large in terms of lessons learnt in sustainable urbanisation,” she said.

The theme for the forum is ‘Harmonious Urbanization: The Challenge of Balanced Territorial Development'. The Chinese authorities are keen to promote this concept since China’s urban population has risen from 191 million (9 per cent of the whole population) in 1980 to 380 million (30 per cent of the whole population) in 1997, which has imposed significant strains on city administration. Moreover, the number of cities has soared from 223 in 1980 to 668 cities and 17,000 towns in 1997.

“When the world converges on Nanjing, the global urban population will have passed the half way mark and more people will be living in cities than in rural areas,” said Mrs. Tibaijuka. “In this era of rapid urbanization, compounded by the complexities of climate change, we look forward to a stimulating exchange of ideas on how best to make the process of urbanization more harmonious and less divisive.”

The World Urban Forum is a biennial gathering that is attended by a wide range of partners, ranging from non-governmental organisations, community-based organisations, urban professionals, and academics, to governments, local authorities and national and international associations of local governments. It gives all these actors a common platform to discuss urban issues in formal and informal ways and come up with action-oriented proposals to create sustainable cities. For further information about WUF4, click onto the website: www.unhabitat.org/wuf.

The third session of the World Urban Forum was hosted by the Government of Canada in Vancouver in 2006 the second one was staged in Barcelona in 2004; and the first was held in Nairobi in 2002.

The World Urban Forum was established by the United Nations to examine one of the most pressing issues facing the world today: rapid urbanisation and its impact on communities, cities, economies and policies. It is projected that in the next fifty years, two-thirds of humanity will be living in towns and cities. A major challenge is to minimize burgeoning poverty in cities, improve the urban poor's access to basic facilities such as shelter, clean water and sanitation and achieve environment-friendly and sustainable urban growth and development.

for more information visit www.unhabitat.org

March 14, 2008 | 11:04 AM Comments  1 comments

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The State of the World’s Cities 2006-2007:Facts on Youth
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

Youth are employed in the growing informal sector

In cities of the developed world, more jobs are being created in the financial sector and in informal management as a result of globalization, while in the developing world, trends point toward an increasing “informalization” of the urban economy, as the formal sector fails to provide adequate employment opportunities for the number of young people and adults seeking work. According to the International Labour Organization, approximately 85 per cent of all new employment opportunities around the world are created in the informal economy. In some countries, employment in the urban informal sector has risen sharply over the past decade. Lithuania, for example, experienced a 70 per cent increase in urban informal employment as a percentage of total employment between 1997 and 2000. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean estimates that urban informal employment in that region increased from 43 per cent in 1990 to 48.4 per cent in 1999.

The informal economy gives youth opportunities to legitimate work by offering experience and self-employment opportunities. Tracking how many youth participate i