Urban solutions to the childrenʹs problematique : Comments on UNICEFʹs urban policy agenda

This paper reviews the ideas and policy recommendations contained in UNICEFʹs1 urban policy agenda launched in 1993. Most urban development studies focusing on multilateral2 agencies have not included UNICEF — despite that agencyʹs wide range of urban activities. Thus, this paper has the purpose of presenting UNICEFʹs agenda. The paper shows that UNICEFʹs document is very comprehensive, and links the problems of urban children with a variety of urban issues. This is important because those problems cannot be separated from a wider context. However, although a large number of useful points are addressed, they lack elaboration and/or a cohesive framework. The paper concludes by noting that UNICEF has adopted the same approach to urban development used by other multilateral agencies. Thus, some recommendations regarding this general approach are put forward.