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Implementing the Habitat Agenda: Towards Child-centred Human Settlement Development in Developing Countries EDMUNDO WERNA, ANDRE DZIKUS, LYNETTE OCHOLA and MANO KUMARASURIYAR, 1999 Aldershot: Ashgate and Nairobi: United Nations Centre for Human Settlements 138 pp.; L32.50 hardback ISBN 1 84014 841 1
Implementing the Habitat Agenda is based on a series of meetings in preparation for the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) which convened in Istanbul in 1996, a workshop on child-friendly cities at the conference itself, and a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements in Nairobi in 1997. The purpose of these meetings was to ensure that the Habitat Agenda, the Programme of Action agreed upon in Istanbul, and plans for its implementation would adequately respond to children's rights and needs as they had been identified by the Convention on the Rights of the Child that was adopted by the United Nations in 1989 and rapidly ratified by most of the world's countries. Much of the book reads like a transcription of notes and statements from these meetings: with the advantages and disadvantages that characterise official international gatherings of this kind. The book is bold in the issues that it covers, sweeping in...