This report synthesises the conference Reviewing the State of Safety in World Cities: Safer Cities +20, held in Geneva from 6-8 July 2016.

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) established the Global Safer Cities Programme in 1996. Twenty years later, holistic approaches to urban safety and security have become an ongoing activity not only of UN agencies and national and local governments, but also criminal justice institutions, civil society organisations, academic experts and research institutions. For the first time, a Special Session on Safer Cities will take place at the third meeting of the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat III) in Quito. What has been established during the last two decades as to research- and programme-driven lessons for promoting urban safety and security? What too of emergent issues, and the new challenges and opportunities these will present for work on urban safety and security?