TEHRAN – The second Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Housing and Urban Development (APMCHUD) opens today in Tehran and continues to May 14.

Iran’s Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in cooperation with the Iranian Inc. for Contemporary International Conferences and Fairs (IICIC) and participation of the Asia-Pacific ministers of housing & urban development, representatives from the United Nations’ specialized agencies, UN-HABITAT, regional organizations, and housing & urban development governmental & non-governmental organizations participate in this event.
Turkish Minister of Public Works and Housing Faruk Nafiz Ozak, heading a 15-member delegation, departed for Tehran on Sunday to attend the conference.
Ozak’s visit is taking place at the invitation of Iran’s Minister of Housing and Urban Development, Mohammad Saeedi-Kia.
According to IRNA, during his stay in Tehran and on the sidelines of the confab, the Turkish minister is to discuss issues of mutual interest with several Iranian officials, including his counterpart.
The 1st APMCHUD was held in New Delhi in December 2006 to tackle the shelter problems in the Asia-Pacific region, which is home to two-thirds of the world’s slum population.
Ministers from 72 countries were invited and the conference theme was a vision for sustainable urbanization in the Asia-Pacific by 2020, aimed at finding a joint strategy to tackle urban poverty, as well as following closely in the footsteps of the two similar regional conferences of Africa and Latin America.
The attending Ministers seek to develop a uniform mechanism for monitoring and reporting progress in the Asia-Pacific region on the Millennium Development Goals