The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) is mandated by the UN General Assembly  to promote socially and environmentally sustainable cities and human settlements with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.

The Government of the I.R. Iran and UN-Habitat signed an agreement on the establishment of the ‘UN-Habitat Disaster Mitigation Office’ in Tehran on 21 December 2006 and the UN-Habitat Tehran Office was officially opened in 2009. After the completion of its period in July 2014, the agreement was extended to another 5  years until June 2019. According to the amended agreement, the activities of the office have been expanded from disaster mitigation to all activities addressing all focus and thematic areas such as urban planning and design, social inclusion, risk reduction, and rehabilitation, urban infrastructure, legislation and governance,  urban research, urban economy, housing, and slum upgrading.

A number of discussions were held with Government I. R. Iran in 2019 and after the negotiations of 6-9 October  2019 at the Secretariat of the National Habitat Committee, concerning the preliminary framework for new agreements an interim period of two years (from 31 July 2019 to 31 July 2021) has been mutually agreed.  The Government of I.R. Iran requested that UN-Habitat Tehran Office should not only maintain its functional status and continue its activities in the Islamic Republic of I.R. Iran, but given the experiences of the I.R. Iran in the area of Natural Disaster Mitigation, the Tehran Office should expand its activities at the sub-regional level and throughout the neighboring countries as well as countries in Central Asia.