Annex 6 to OIC/COMCEC/36-20/REP
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Policy Recommendation 4: Improving urban governance capacity and strengthening
resilience to shocks (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic)
Rationale:
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated economic downturn are expected to worsen
the urban poverty in the Member Countries. Although COVID-19 is a global shock, its
adverse consequences are more severely felt by the poor, who are more likely to live in
overcrowded neighborhoods and slums. Therefore, improving urban governance capacity
by establishing a viable long-term national strategy aiming to effectively tackle urban
poverty, improving resilience to unexpected events such as COVID-19 pandemic, natural
disasters, large population movements, and health shocks; strengthening policy coordination
between national and local authorities, enhancing legal and institutional capacity, and getting
connected to the international policy network in a more effective way are recommended.
Minimizing the risks associated with the pandemic necessitates good governance practices
especially with respect to the coordination of policy actions at national and sub-national
levels and bilateral, OIC-level and finally global levels.
Policy Recommendation 5: Conceptualizing urban poverty and
developing/improving data collection and measurement practices to achieve evidence-
based policy making
Rationale:
Urban poverty is highly multidimensional, and those multiple dimensions need to be
systematically internalized to improve the understanding of the main policy issues.
Conceptualizing and defining urban poverty within a multidimensional and region-specific
context is also very important since those concepts and definitions crucially affect
humanitarian policy and the nature of other basic services provided such as health, water,
sanitation, sewage, etc. Without a well-structured conceptualization, national and local
authorities will be ill-equipped to address the key urban poverty challenges. Moreover,
improving data collection practices and developing new instruments to enhance
measurement of urban poverty is of particular importance for evidence-based policy
making. In this regard, it is recommended to utilize the relevant ICT tools and techniques
more effectively to conceptualize, collect data and monitor slums and accurately identify the
urban poor.