After the New Urban Agenda was adopted at the Habitat III conference in Quito, the 24-page document went to the UN’s main legislative body, the General Approval, for formal approval. It did so on 21 December – and set in motion the process needed to monitor implementation of the New Urban Agenda.

The United Nations Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is the UN agency for human settlements and sustainable development. Before it can be tasked with ensuring how the New Urban Agenda is implemented, it has to undergo an independent assessment. as citiscope reported.

The General Assembly’s resolution calls on the UN’s new secretary-general António Guterres to “take all appropriate measures to ensure that the evidence-based and independent assessment of UN-Habitat is carried out in a fair, objective, impartial and representative manner.”

The resolution also confirms that the secretary-general will have to report on the implementation of the New Urban Agenda every four years, beginning in 2018. According to the article, this timing will coincide with developments on the implementation of Goal 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which calls for cities and human settlements to be made inclusive, safe, resistant and sustainable.