Strengthening City Capacities for Housing, Safety and Community Wellbeing through the Human Security Approach

This training session will provide cities with practical, ready-to-use tools to apply the human security approach to housing, urban safety, and community wellbeing. Responding to the growing demand for actionable and evidence-based methodologies, the session will demonstrate how human security can be operationalised to address interconnected urban challenges in a coherent, people-centred, and preventive way. The training will begin by briefly framing why housing is a strategic entry point for human security, highlighting how housing conditions shape multiple dimensions of people’s lives simultaneously, including safety, health, livelihoods, social cohesion, and exposure to environmental risks. Building on this framing, the session will move beyond conceptual discussions to focus on how cities can design, implement, and monitor integrated strategies that respond to these multidimensional challenges. Participants will be introduced to concrete tools and instruments that are already available and can be immediately adopted by local governments. These include the virtual course on Urban Safety and Human Security in Cities, developed by UNTFHS and UN-Habitat under the Safer Cities Programme, as well as human security monitoring and measurement tools and indicators that capture risks, vulnerabilities, and progress from a people-centred perspective. Drawing on practical examples from human security appraisals and locally led human security plans implemented in Ciudad Juárez and Durban, the training will illustrate how cities can assess local conditions, identify priority risks, and design context-specific responses that integrate housing, safety, and wellbeing. The session will also explore how human security indicators and indices, such as the Glocal Human Security Index developed by Security4Peace, can support policy design, monitoring, and decision-making by making visible differentiated experiences across gender, age, and geography. The training will conclude by highlighting how the human security approach offers cities an actionable framework that helps move beyond siloed interventions and supports more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable urban development.