The Urban Housing Practitioners Hub in MENA is a platform for housing practitioners in the region, convened by Habitat for Humanity International.
The hub was birthed out of the first MENA Housing Forum, which took place in November 2022 in Cairo, Egypt. The conversations that took place during the forum, as well as the closed-door meetings with strategic partners, highlighted that there is an appetite within the region for a community of practice where such discussions could continue on a more long-term basis. As a result, three major institutions in the region agreed to be core partners with Habitat for Humanity International in setting up an Urban Housing Practitioners Hub in the MENA region: UN-Habitat Regional Office for Arab States, Catholic Relief Services in Iraq, and the Beirut Urban Lab at the America University in Beirut. Since then, the UHPH-MENA has been collaborating with its partners and allies on events and activities.
Taking the Latin America and Caribbean Urban Housing Practitioners Hub (UHPH-LAC) as inspiration, the UHPH-MENA seeks to create a platform through which to influence the MENA housing sector towards increased adequate, affordable, and resilient housing for all, especially lower-income and vulnerable populations.
The Hub’s target audience are practitioners, donors, researchers, innovators, and policy-makers whose work relates to adequate, affordable, or resilient housing.
The goal of the UHPH-MENA is to influence the housing ecosystem in MENA to be inclusive of low-income and vulnerable households and populations, towards the vision of adequate, affordable, and resilient housing for all in MENA.
The Hub aims to achieve this influence through seven different strategic priorities, showcased below:
- Engage in advocacy around inclusive housing policies, whether through direct advocacy with policy-makers and government officials, or through leveraging and aligning with advocacy campaigns that align with this goal;
- Collaborate and build coalitions with the purpose of mobilizing champions of adequate and inclusive housing;
- Produce evidence-based and data-driven research that documents the status of adequate housing, explains problematic issues, promotes inclusive approaches, and facilitates innovation;
- Propose and advocate for policies and solutions that increase access to adequate housing by low-income households and populations;
- Be a convener and facilitator for housing practitioners and researchers in the region to engage in conversations, discussions, collaborations, and collective learnings;
- Consolidate and manage knowledge that exists on the MENA housing sector, to make it organized and easily accessible for practitioners and researchers