Urban Equity in Development – Cities for Life
The seventh World Urban Forum (WUF7) is currently being hold in the city of Medellín. The WUF is a Forum organized by UN-Habitat every two years to gather people to discuss urban issues and share experiences. In addition, this Forum serves to prepare for both the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and the Habitat III in 2016. The forum gathers experts from different disciplines, as well as policy and decision makers, international organizations, civil society organizations, universities and research institutes, private sector actors and in general people with an interest in urban issues. In adjacent to the Forum there is an exhibition and a large number of side events and extra events, as well as culture events around the city. I feel extremely happy to work with the media team of the WUF7 Secretariat of UN-Habitat.
Temporary office
The interest for the Forum has increased enormously since the first one in Nairobi in 2002. At the first one there were 1 200 participants. For this year´s Forum, 25 000 people were registered online, and on the Wednesday, already 20 0000 people were badged from 142 different countries!
This year, the theme of the Forum is Urban Equity in Development. I find the theme very suitable since Colombia is considered to be one of the most unequal countries of the world, with extremely large gaps between rich and poor. The Gini Coefficient measures absolute equality as 0 and absolute inequality as 1. Colombia has decreased inequality from 0,572 in 2002 to 0,539 in 2012 but the numbers still express a very large inequality. Although Colombia has managed to decrease poverty the last years, there are still large groups which are poor. Due to its violent past and present, Colombia has between 3,5 and 5 million Internally Displaced Persons which contributes to the difficult unequal situation of the country.
To follow the conference, there is WUFTV (http://wuf7.unhabitat.org/wuftv)
Twitter @WorldUrbanForum, @UNHABITAT, @RebeckaReb
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/worldurbanforum?fref=ts
and stories from the Forum at http://wuf7.unhabitat.org/press-releases and http://unhabitat.org/
Children Assembly
Juanes and young people from the campaign ”I´m a city changer” / ”Puedo cambiar el mundo”
Jeanette presenting Joseph Stiglitz
Sources:
http://www.abcolombia.org.uk/mainpage.asp?mainid=76
https://www.dnp.gov.co/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=6gJu7j4dcPk%3d&tabid=337
http://www.regeringen.se/content/1/c6/01/39/58/67d78df3.pdf
http://www.landguiden.se/Lander/Sydamerika/Colombia/Sociala-Forhallanden
Rebecka Hallén 