It was established in 1977 as an outcome of the first United Nations Conference on Human Settlements and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat I) held in Vancouver, Canada, in 1976.

It is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.

The mandate of UN-Habitat is further derived from other internationally agreed development goals, including those contained in the United Nations Millennium Declaration (Assembly resolution 55/2), in particular the target of achieving a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers by 2020; and the target on water and sanitation of the Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, which seeks to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.

[7] The second decision-making body of the programme is the executive board, which is made up of 36 member states elected by the UN-Habitat Assembly with representatives from every regional group.

Convened by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the forum is a unique non-legislative platform and one of the most inclusive international gatherings on urban issues.

The campaign brings together a diverse range of partners, including governments, civil society organizations, private sector actors, and academic institutions, to collaborate on urban development issues.

It focuses on a number of key themes, including affordable housing, sustainable mobility, resilient urban planning, and social inclusion.

It aims to acknowledge initiatives that have made outstanding contributions in the field of human settlements, provision of housing, highlighting the plight of people living in poverty or who have been displaced, developing and improving human settlements and the quality of urban life to leave no one behind echoing the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 with emphasis on Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities.