Resident Coordinator's Remarks at the 14th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice

• Brugada, Mayor of Iztapalapa, Mexico City, Mexico,
• Ms. Flora Mworoa, County Commissioner, Nairobi, Kenya,
• Mr. Guillermo Cespedes, Chief, Violence Prevention, Oakland, California,
• Mr. Evgeniy Kolenko, Director, Academy of the General Prosecutor’s Office, Uzbekistan,
• Ms. Ghada Waly,  Executive Director UNODC,
• Ms. Mainmunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director, UN Habitat,
• Mr. Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Director, Division for Policy Analysis and Public Affairs,

Good morning.  Thank you for this invitation, I am pleased to join you all at today’s special event.  At the outset, I wish to commend organizers for their foresight in staging this forum to  discuss ways to strengthen good governance and improve safety and resilience in cities around the world, including those in Small Island developing States (SIDS).   

I intend to share some best practices to address urban safety comprehensively and also to emphasize how the UN system as a whole, approaches these issues. At the outset, I want to reaffirm that the UN is committed to improving the safety and resilience of cities and communities.

Because within the current COVID crisis where vulnerabilities are exacerbated, the failure to do so frontally and with a sense of urgency can serve to derail the achievement of the SDGs.

So First, I wish to stress that the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as the New Urban Agenda offer excellent frameworks to address holistically urban safety; and to increase coherence of how the UN system can better support countries. According to the UN System-wide Guidelines on Safer Cities and Human Settlements:  segregation, economic inequality, gender inequality and loss of positive social cohesion have been shown to be primary drivers of higher rates of crime and violence.

It also established that there is a causal link between addressing crime and insecurity and transparent, effective and accountable urban governance. However, better urban planning and good urban governance alone are not sufficient, to address crime. They must be accompanied by other targeted risk-based and evidenced-based interventions.

On the other hand, A key entry point on this new Urban Agenda  is urban data. There is an urgent need for data collection, management, and analysis, to support understanding of the interconnectivity of urban issues. For example, over the past five years the UNDP with UNODC, through the USAID-supported CariSECURE Programme, has helped to improve evidence-based youth crime and violence policy making and programming , in several Caribbean countries.

As a result, police officers and justice officials across the region are now better equipped to generate and use reliable citizen security data, to solve crime. This is also used to effectively target risk factors to reduce youth involvement in crime, particularly in high-risk urban communities.

Moreover, last December (2020), UNODC conducted a Rapid Assessment in Barbados that sought to shed light on the challenges and opportunities related to urban safety and governance, and show how  external flows ,originating beyond city boundaries, impacted urban communities.  

Barbados is the most densely populated island in the Eastern Caribbean, with just about 31% of the island’s overall population currently living in urban areas. This Rapid Assessment, conducted by UNODC alongside other UN agencies, gathered quantitative and qualitative data from urban communities. from urban communities in popular southern districts of Christ Church and St. Michael.

Informant interviews and focus groups were held in select  communities. Extensive  consultations were also held with national government ministries, relevant law-enforcement and social protection agencies.

Despite some challenges identified, the role of community leaders and community centres shone through, with clear evidence pointing to the vital importance of the positive grassroots work being done in communities across the island.

However Innovative solutions in the areas of sports, education, and social protection, born from within communities, as well as a focus on rehabilitation,  were also cited as having potential to generate sustainable results. The aim , of course, is to foster resilience against criminal elements, while enhancing community spirit.

It also shows that every effort must be made to protect vulnerable citizens at-risk, including youth, many of whom have a valuable contribution to make.  

Going forward, once the results of the Barbados Rapid Assessment are validated by all stakeholders, they will offer more specific insights that may be used to inform policy decisions. The aim is to ensure that the benefits of urbanization are shared, so that no one is left behind.

Overall, I can say that the data generated through UNODC’s urban safety governance assessments, offer a wide range of perspectives which can help strengthen the cooperation of the UN Country Teams to support the new urban agenda and urban Governance in countries.

I finally want to highlight the need to enhance resilience. With Caribbean SIDS being highly vulnerable to natural disasters and six times more likely to experience hurricanes, there is a direct bearing on urban safety governance and prospects for resilient communities.

As we know, risk has become systemic so resilience must be approached comprehensively. Hence Urban resilience and Risk Reduction cannot be decompartmentalized into traditional silos, but both must be mainstreamed across all sectors of policy making, including with safety and security. 

In this regard, I want to highlight a good practice put forward by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction , under the Making Cities Resilient (MCR 2030) approach, which has created a Disaster Resilience scorecard . This tool is already in use in several countries in the region  such as Trinidad, Haiti, as well as in Santo Domingo as the basis for development of a DRR Action Plan.

This examples is simply illustrative of how local governance can and should respond to the increasingly urban complexity.

In conclusion, in order to ensure that the most vulnerable are protected, I would say that adapting a multidimensional approach for urban safety is critical, including through more robust sustainable urbanization policies. To that end the UN can draw of the diversity of its expertise and assets of its various agencies to offer integrated technical and policy support to national or local Governments.

Congratulations again to the organizers and thank you to all participants for their very .

Thank you.