At the 2025 Global Stakeholder Forum, the UN-Habitat Youth Advisory Board (YAB) advocated for the meaningful inclusion of youth in sustainable urban development. As one of the UN-Habitat’s oldest and officially recognized advisory bodies, the YAB emphasized that young people must not be seen solely as beneficiaries or vulnerable groups, but as strategic partners and co-creators of urban futures.
Through thematic contributions on housing, land, services, resilience, climate, planning, informality, and partnerships, the YAB called for concrete mechanisms to institutionalize youth engagement in the Strategic Plan 2026–2029 — ensuring accountability, continuity, and youth-led innovation at every level.
YAB Statement at the 2025 Global Stakeholder Forum
We, The UN-Habitat Youth Advisory Board (YAB), representing urban youth globally, call for:
🏠 Housing
“Adequate housing is foundational to inclusive human development, social equity, and poverty reduction.”
– Recognize youth as a vulnerable and often excluded group in housing policy and rental markets.
– Include youth perspectives in co-designing innovative, affordable housing solutions.
– Support youth-led housing advocacy and rights-based initiatives, especially in informal settlements.
🌱 Land
“Support efforts to advance measures that seek the decommodification of land, including market regulations.”
– Ensure land governance frameworks include youth-specific consultation and tenure options.
– Promote youth land literacy and inclusion in public land allocation processes.
– Embed youth-responsive land rights, especially for displaced, urban poor, and indigenous youth.
💧 Basic Services
“Call for the application of intersectional and gender equality lenses in service provision.”
– Expand “basic services” to include digital access, mental health, and youth-friendly spaces.
– Build the capacity of WASH youth volunteers to co-lead service delivery efforts.
– Institutionalize youth feedback mechanisms in basic service planning and monitoring.
💪 Resilience
“Support building community resilience efforts, recognizing the role of communities in mitigating risks.”
– Recognize youth-led disaster preparedness and peacebuilding as critical resilience infrastructure.
– Provide institutional space and flexible funding for youth-driven climate and civic initiatives.
– Leverage local data collected by youth for risk mapping and early warning systems.
🌍 Climate Change
“Support nature-based solutions, circular economy and resilient infrastructure.”
– Institutionalize youth organizations as partners in national climate strategies and funding frameworks.
– Link climate action to justice and intergenerational equity, with youth as co-designers of adaptation solutions.
– Formalize partnerships with youth data networks for monitoring local climate impacts.
📈 Urban Planning & Finance
“Call for integrated urban and territorial planning and participatory governance.”
– Embed youth as co-planners and data providers in municipal and SDG scorecard processes.
– Enable youth-driven community mapping to inform planning and investment priorities.
– Allocate planning budgets for youth-led spatial design, innovation labs, and social enterprises.
🏘️ Informality
“Transform informal settlements into inclusive, equitable, and resilient cities.”
– Disaggregate monitoring data by age to understand youth-specific vulnerabilities in informal contexts.
– Support youth informal workers and enterprises through legal recognition and access to microfinance.
– Create a global youth knowledge hub on informality to amplify local solutions and cross-context learning.
🤝 Partnerships
“Call for enhanced stakeholder engagement and knowledge exchange.”
– Formalize the role of the UN-Habitat Youth Advisory Board in Strategic Plan implementation and monitoring.
– Ensure youth are co-authors, not just participants, in local and global declarations and stakeholder platforms.
– Build and fund youth-led coalitions as equal partners in SDG localization and governance processes.
– Affirm that for Indigenous peoples, especially those living in cities and towns globally, ancestral autonomy and community justice systems are rooted in principles such as reparation, consensus, and mutual respect—offering alternatives to punitive models and extractivist development.
– Indigenous peoples are not only protectors of cultural heritage but active agents shaping sustainable and plural urban futures through intercultural dialogue, community mediation, and living cultural expressions
