ABSTRACT
Safe cities in the 2030 Agenda and the New Urban Agenda are understood as access to public space free of physical violence, to be implemented by a variety of actors through multi-stakeholder partnerships. Placing the substantive content of SDG 11.7 in the wider context of the UN’s human settlements agenda, this contribution argues that the focus on the planning and design of public space is the result of slow normative change that has partly been shaped by operational activities of UN entities and their direct interaction with city governments. An examination of operational activities on safer cities by the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) and the UN Entity on Gender Equality (UN Women) shows that operational activities have an impact on norm evolvement within the UN system. Operational activities might be supervised, but are not primarily guided, by state-composed governing structures. This does not imply that UN entities have replaced states as the main drivers of normative change. But their role is not limited to implementing international standards. Rather, they are important actors in normative interpretation and development. The result is an interplay between interpretation and standard-setting, between executive agencies and their principals, with implications for international institutional law.
