More than a billion people live in slums or inadequate settlements worldwide, and the number is growing. That stark figure frames the agenda at the thirteenth World Urban Forum, which opened in Baku, Azerbaijan, bringing together ministers, mayors and urban planners to grapple with a housing crisis affecting nearly 2.8 billion people globally. Over the past decade, around 160 countries have adopted or begun developing national urban policies, and more than two-thirds have introduced housing affordability programmes. Yet according to UN-Habitat, these efforts remain far short of what is needed. More than 120 million people have moved into slums over the last ten years alone.

The scale of the challenge spans the spectrum of national wealth. In Homs, Syria, 400,000 residents have returned to a city ravaged by conflict, facing ruined infrastructure, damaged housing and unreliable electricity. In New York, homelessness has reached levels that even Americans accustomed to inequality find troubling. Lance Jay Brown, founder of the Consortium for Sustainable Urbanization, noted that during his lifetime the world’s population has nearly quadrupled while affordable housing for the poor has become increasingly scarce.

Climate change compounds the crisis. The construction sector is one of the world’s largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and those in informal settlements are among the first to suffer from the floods and heatwaves made more frequent by warming. The opening day of the Baku forum was itself marked by heavy rain that flooded city roads, an unusual event for Azerbaijan in May. The discussions taking place are anchored in the New Urban Agenda adopted in Quito a decade ago, which will come up for official review at the UN General Assembly in July.

Source: UN News, Nargiz Shekinskaya, 17 May 2026