As outlined in the Global Urban Crisis Charter there is a need to ‘foster collaboration between city, humanitarian and development actors’, to promote ‘area-based approaches’ in urban response and to ‘priorities local municipal leadership in determining response to urban crisis’. The Urban Expert Group’s proposition to establish a Global Alliance for Urban Crisis aims to generate policies and practices that will change the way urban crises are responded to.

Within this framework, and in preparation of the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS), a series of consultations have been organized by IMPACT and United Cities and Local Governance (UCLG) to propose a set of recommendations on how to improve humanitarian responses to crisis in urban contexts. Targeted cities included: Bangui (Central African Republic), Mafraq (Jordan), Gaziantep (Turkey), Tacloban, Guiuan, Bogo (Philippines), and Port-au-Prince (Haiti).

Through these consultations IMPACT and UCLG aim to improve people and organizations’’ understanding of how emergency responses can be better tailored to the nature, scale and complexity of cities, and identify concrete ways in which local systems and actors can be best supported by the humanitarian community throughout a response. The findings from the consultations mentioned above will be presented by IMPACT, UCLG and the Mayors during a Side Event at the WHS in Istanbul.

Through this initiative, partners hope to strengthen of evidence-based humanitarian responses in urban contexts, foster a pro-active engagement of local actors, notably municipalities, and shape key global initiatives to operationalize the Urban Crisis agenda.

Image: IMPACT staff presenting at Mafraq Consultations