CAD, in consortium with Tornos Abogados, has been the winner of an international project bid to support Cities Alliance, organization hosted by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), to place the Urban Agenda in the spotlight and promote the role of cities in sustainable development. The assignment will be carried out in three stages culminating with the Habitat III Conference that will take place on July 2016.

The Cities Alliance (CA) was initially created as a platform comprising national governments, bilateral donors, multilateral organizations, associations of cities and NGOs to advance the agenda of Habitat II.

In 2013, in order to influence the Post 2015 Agenda and in preparation to the third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III), various CA members formed a Joint Work Programme (JWP) to conceive and communicate a common set of priority messages.

The Joint Work Program is formed by strategic leaders driving the Urban Agenda such as the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat), the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development – Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer International Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the United Cities and Local Government (UCLG), the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development (MFA), the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), and Habitat for Humanity International.

As part of this project, CAD will support CA members represented in the JWP to choose the aforementioned key advocacy messages to promote the role of cities as key drivers for sustainable development. CAD will also assist the JWP elaborating a three year action plan to disseminate these fundamental ideas among targeted audiences and it will provide PR services in its implementation at global and regional events previous to the Habitat III conference in 2016.