Summary

UN-HABITAT, the United Nations agency responsible for coordinating UN activities related to human settlements, frequently refers to a gender approach in its policies and programs. It stresses the importance of women's full and equal participation in local politics and administration and the development of cities and communities. UN-Habitat also focuses on women's safety and advocates the integration of women's specific needs into crime prevention policies and programs. Likewise, it also promotes an approach that takes gender into account in practical urban planning, development, and management.

UN-Habitat's Safer Cities Programme takes into consideration that women are particularly vulnerable to certain forms of violence due to social inequalities between men and women. The Safer Cities Programme's work related to violence has five basic principles:

• situate city action within a framework or approach that promotes gender equality;
• involve men in solutions to problems;
• use the findings of gender-based analyses of gender-disaggregated data (collected according to sex) to inform the development and implementation of safety walks which support women's perspectives;
• develop partnerships with important actors in the domain of violence (ex., police) and promote a gender approach in work undertaken with them;
• share practices, experiences, evaluations, etc - especially given the importance of the phenomena of violence at the international level.