In an exciting new project, IHC Global aims to map SDG 11, Target 7, Indicator 2 in cities worldwide, to measure how safe women and vulnerable populations are in urban public spaces, and what local government and on-the-ground organizations are doing to make cities safe and inclusive for everyone.

Making Cities Safe: A Localization Project
IHC Global is committed to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 11 and making cities safe, resilient, inclusive, and sustainable. As a global coalition of private sector and civil society organizations working in the urban space, our network holds a rich breadth and depth of on-the-ground knowledge and experience, and one of our main goals at IHC Global is to facilitate the sharing and transfer of that knowledge and bring local solutions and realities into broader policy conversations. We are thrilled to announce a new project we are working on to monitor progress and share knowledge around implementation of SDG 11 at the local level.
About IHC Global’s ‘Making Cities Safe’ Project
The UN Statistical Commission’s Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators (IAEG) has been working hard to define targets and indicators for tracking progress on SDG 11. While some of the SDG 11 targets are easy to define and measure, other lack agreed upon methodologies and available data. For these targets especially, it is crucial for localized and contextually rooted knowledge and experience to ‘filter up’ in order to increase understanding of how the targets can be met.
One of the more difficult-to-define measures–SDG 11, Target 7, Indicator 2–focuses on making public and private spaces in cities more safe and inclusive to women and other vulnerable populations. In order to help aggregate experiences and amplify best practices related to this indicator, IHC Global is creating a survey for the public good, which can be distributed to on-the-ground employees working on issues related to safety in public and private urban spaces.
About the Survey
Through this survey, we will aggregate information on how on-the-ground development actors and the local communities work and deal with issues of safety in urban spaces such as public transport, formal and informal workplace settings, and sanitary facilities. Our survey is designed to have maximum compatibility with other UN documents and datasets, particularly UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) and the UNODC Victimization Survey manual, to make understanding and achieving SDG 11.7.2 as easy as possible. The result of the survey will be a report that will be distributed to our coalition members, the development community, policy makers, and potential funders, where we will be highlighting specific best practices and successes from your organization.
For more information on this project or to get involved, email Natalie Gill at ngill@ihcglobal.org