New York – National governments made clear last week that they are not interested in creating a new UN body to coordinate global action on sustainable urbanization.

Representatives of governments, UN agencies, city leaders and other stakeholders met in New York last week to discuss implementation of the New Urban Agenda and reform of the UN Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) during a high-level meeting of the UN General Assembly.

At the meeting’s opening, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed warned that the global body is not delivering sufficiently in cities. 

“The proud history of urban work at the UN must be harnessed at this vital time, and the UN must be seen again as the lead convener and catalyser for partners, funders, private sector and civil society organisations to scale up their work in urban areas,” she added.

According to Ms Mohammed, this requires reforming the UN’s current lead agency on urban issues, UN-Habitat. Its future has been called into question in the wake of last year’s Habitat III conference, which approved the New Urban Agenda.

In August, the UN released a proposal called UN Urban, which calls for the creation of a new entity to stimulate interest in cities across the UN system, as Citiscope reported at that time. UN-Habitat, in contrast, would focus more setting of urban planning norms through rules and legislation.

But according to Citiscope’s Gregory Scruggs, national governments were nearly unanimous in rejecting the UN Urban proposal last week, with rich and developing countries alike expressing concerns over funding, structure, scope and necessity.

However, no decisions were made at last week’s meeting and a diplomat close to the process said that the earliest a proper decision will be taken on UN Urban is April. Top UN officials, including Secretary-General António Guterres, favour the proposal.