Juma Assiago is an urbanist and social scientist and a graduate in Sustainable Urban Development from the University of Oxford. He currently coordinates the Global Safer Cities Programme at UN-Habitat.

Juma has over 20 years of experience working in programme development with national and local governments and in the development and implementation of municipal-wide crime prevention and urban safety strategies in Africa, Latin America Caribbean, Asia Pacific and Eastern Europe. He has developed a vast network of implementing partners under the Global Network on Safer Cities (GNSC). A significant achievement of this work has been the adoption by member states of UN systemwide Guidelines on Safer Cities and Human Settlements in 2019, validating the working approach practiced at the city level.

Juma is currently focused on the provision of technical advisories to cities and in the piloting of an urban safety monitoring tool aligned with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the New Urban Agenda.