Sustainable development cannot be achieved without ensuring safe and sustainable cities. There are many powerful urban leaders and actors raising the bar for smart cities, women-friendly cities, youth-friendly cities and environmentally friendly cities. Today’s urban areas are engines for experimentation, transformation and development. This session will bring together mayors, city activists, local leaders and thought leaders from around the world to discuss the power and potential of urban action.

Whose rights and choices have been fulfilled, and which groups and individuals have been left behind? Twenty-five years after the landmark agreement in Cairo, equality is still a goal rather than a reality. This is especially true for girls and women and people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities, who often face barriers to their sexual and reproductive health and rights and heightened vulnerability to gender-based violence. This conversation will highlight the experiences of human rights defenders and their insights on what it takes to ensure radical and transformative change in the lives of those facing discrimination and exclusion. Expect provocative questions and proposed solutions to finally and fully realizing an inclusive ICPD Programme of Action.

Of the 143 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, more than one in four are women and adolescent girls of reproductive age whose rights, safety and dignity are often violated and must be protected. This special session will highlight a feminist approach to humanitarian action as a means of addressing challenges and accelerating progress to achieve the ICPD and 2030 agendas.

Without dependable population data, whole communities of people remain invisible and their needs and rights ignored. In order to leave no one behind, high-quality disaggregated data are required at national and local levels. Meeting the growing data needs of decentralized governance is critical. Population trends will shape national development and investments effectively only when population and household data are widely accessible and utilized as a public good, while safeguarding the rights of respondents to privacy. This session focuses on making data a public good in order to guarantee zero invisibility and to leave no one behind.

How can governments equitably address the needs, rights and choices of older persons, especially older women? This dialogue will explore different national ageing strategies that focus on human rights, inclusion and gender equality. Participants will reflect on and exchange success stories and solutions that take an all-government approach to addressing this demographic mega-trend.

What is at stake? What do men and boys need and demand when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and rights? What are the barriers, where are the gaps in resources and progress, and how can these obstacles be addressed? This open dialogue will enable participants to reflect on the role of men and boys as clients, partners and agents of change for gender equality. The conversation will explore why and how the sexual and reproductive health and rights needs and demands of men and boys can be addressed, and will highlight the social norms that need to transform in order to enable this change.