The World Urban Forum (WUF) was created to drive real change in cities by connecting global goals with local action. The WUF12 program appears to have decontextualized the core purpose of the World Urban Forum, disconnecting from the local reality in Egypt, where it is being hosted—a country facing widespread real estate-driven evictions—as well as from neighbouring countries impacted by war, resulting in large-scale domicide and urbicide.
WUF12’s theme, “It All Starts at Home,” redefines “home” as more than a place to live; it’s the heart of culture, community, and sustainability. This year, in Cairo, WUF12 aims to showcase how local initiatives can build safer, more inclusive, and resilient cities through stronger multilateral collaboration.
The language is inspiring—but ignores our reality.
WUF12 could have presented a unique opportunity to rethink how effective the forum really is in pushing for urban progress, and call for ceasefires in neighbouring war torn countries. However, Egypt has relentlessly cracked down on freedom of expression for years, with at least four high-profile journalists and researchers detained in the months before WUF12. This makes it clear that dissent is not tolerated. Indeed, the WUF session titled “The Loss of Home” features a Ministry of Foreign Affairs employee, rather than a representative from civil society, as is the case in other countries’ sessions.
The forum serves as a vital platform for addressing global housing insecurity and finding solutions to urgent urban challenges. Among the most harmful trends are unchecked real estate development and the commodification and financialization of housing, which have negatively transformed communities across the region. Global capital flows favour high-profit projects over local needs, leading to luxury developments and speculative real estate markets that may benefit investors but deeply widen inequalities and disrupt communities.
We see this in cities like Cairo, Istanbul and Beirut where there has been rapid urban expansion intensifying issues such as housing affordability and displacement. Public lands are sold to private developers, reducing public spaces and green areas, while pushing lower-income communities to substandard housing. In the countries where war erupts, the most alarming trend is domicide—the deliberate destruction of homes to depopulate specific groups, clearing the way for others—a practice amounting to genocide.
International agencies are uniquely positioned to address these issues, and it is indeed part of their mandate. Many – including UN-Habitat – are signatories of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes the 17 Sustainable Development Goals prioritizing affordable housing, sustainable cities, and resilient communities, among others. More importantly, UN-Habitat is bound by resolution 16/7 on ‘the realisation of the human right to adequate housing.’ However, we find the role that international agencies play in defending the region’s urban and housing rights troubling.
UN-Habitat, the co-convenor of WUF, has aided the Egyptian government over the last 10 years through funding exclusive urban plans that have led to the displacement of thousands in Cairo and along the Mediterranean coast. Not only that, but UN-Habitat champions these leaders by awarding the government’s leading real estate developer, the New Urban Communities Authority or NUCA, with its highest honour in 2021 and by then holding the WUF 12 in Cairo. We can already see how the government will use the event to promote its real estate achievements—the same developments that have led to the eviction of millions from their homes and plunged the country into its worst debt crisis in recent history.
WUF12 couldn’t have chosen a more inappropriate place to convene or more trivial topics to discuss, in a region desperately in need of housing security and international solidarity.
- Less than 300 kilometres northwest of its grand premises, residents on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast were only two days ago fighting for their lives against eviction by armed military personnel to make way for a luxury tourist resort.
- Around 400 kilometres to the northeast, 1.9 million Palestinians have been violently displaced as Israel continues bombing their homes in targeted acts of domicide—actions the UN Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing has called to be classified as war crimes.
- More recently, Israel has turned its sights on Lebanon, where it has bombed 406 villages, and cities including Beirut, forcing 1.3 million people to flee their homes.
- Directly to Egypt’s south, 7.6 million people in Sudan have been forced out of their homes from war, hundreds of thousands of which have sought an uneasy refuge in Egypt.
As state leaders and international organisations convene once again at WUF, we make an urgent appeal to international agencies to examine their complicity in systematically withholding the right to housing from those in the Global South. We must examine urban and housing injustices through the lens of the long legacy of colonialism and land occupation, which are exacerbated by neoliberal urban policies implemented by international development agencies.
The right to housing is not just an ideal—it’s a fundamental human right that must be prioritized over profit, colonial practices, and neo-liberal policies. It’s time to challenge status quo development and ensure that the voices of communities in the region are not just heard, but empowered. That is the only way to build truly resilient, just, inclusive, and sustainable cities, while safeguarding the most vulnerable communities’ right to housing.