Category: Uncategorized

Felix Nyamedor, Accra City Community Manager

The issue of mental health stigmatization in Accra is of great concern to individuals, families, civil society groups, and many religious bodies. There is stigmatization about the condition, stigmatization concerning the persons with the condition, and stigma is also attached to the people who work in the area of mental illness. These concerns affect the resources and quality of life of the mentally challenged. In addition, its economic and social impact on the person, the family, and the workers are enormous.

In Accra, mental health patients are confined to specific institutions such as Pantang Hospital and Accra Psychiatric Hospital, among others. It is common to see mental health patients with tattered clothes, looking poor, dirty, hungry, neglected, isolated, and some are sometimes even lynched.

The stigma associated with mental health issues stresses some family members, who then fail to associate with such patients even after treatment, making their integration into their families very problematic. Some relatives ultimately abandon their family member in state institutions in order to limit the negative perceptions others will have towards them.

Ghana’s Mental Health Bill, which seeks to increase the rights of the mentally challenged, was passed in 2012. Unfortunately, the provisions made in the Bill have not been fully implemented. Plans are in place at the Ministry of Health to form a permanent board to address issues concerning mental illness stigmatization in the country. In the absence of government action, the mental health advocacy group For All Africa Foundation (FAAF) is pushing to change societal perceptions of persons with mental disorders through education. FAAF’s work includes a variety of different approaches aimed at changing the major structural and attitudinal barriers to achieving positive mental health outcomes in Accra. In addition, it critiques actions of Ghana’s government and encourages policy makers to improve services and treatment of the mentally ill. The Accra Psychiatric Hospital, spearheaded by Dr. Akwasi Osei, has embarked on an integration process of the inmates back to their families. Working together with the Kintampo Health Research Institute, they have also introduced helpers into the communities to educate residents about mental health stigmatization. This process has helped to lessen the level of stigmatization in Accra, and families have been increasingly encouraged to accept and care for patients.

The Mental Health Society of Ghana is an organization that works to educate and advocate for the needs of people with mental health concerns in Ghana. It aims to represent the mentally ill in a unified organization, to protect their rights and wellbeing, and to reduce society’s stigmatization through advocacy projects.

Support for the eradication of mental illness stigmatization through proper education and institutional capacity-building for mental health institutions can go a long way to change the lives of the mentally ill.

Africa’s slums are growing at twice the rate of its cities. By some accounts, sub-Saharan Africa will have upwards of 332 million slum dwellers by 2015. While millions of dollars have been spent improving the conditions in Africa’s urban informal settlements and the lives of the people who live therein, overall these efforts have amounted to little more than a drop in the ocean. Join our six panelists to explore the options for stemming the growth of these sprawling settlements and improving conditions in those slums that already exist: Irene Karanja of Muungano Support Trust (SDI) (Kenya); Claudio Torres of the UN-HABITAT Participatory Slum Upgrading Unit (PSUP) (Kenya); architect, urban planner, and World Bank Municipal Development Program consultant Sara Candiracci (Mozambique); Aditya Kumar of the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC) (SDI) (South Africa); Jhono Bennett of the University of Johannesburg (South Africa); and Marie Huchzermeyer of the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa).

Click on the pictures of the panelists to see each panelist’s perspective below.

Executive Director of Muungano Support Trust, a secretariat of the Shack/Slum Dwellers International Federation (SDI) (Kenya)

Over the last 25 years, slum dwellers from cities in Africa have successfully mobilized into collections of Federations of the Urban Poor.

These federations have collected their own financial resources in the form of savings and data pools, creating citywide profiles and extensive slum censuses. Unknown to the world, slum federations have managed to produce a large volume of documented knowledge about themselves that has transformed how the government delivers important services to its poor citizens and how financial instruments can be innovated by financial institutions to serve the needs of the poor.

Using data collected from the profiles and censuses, Muungano Support Trust, a local NGO working with the federation of Kenya, has provided advisory services to the Government of Kenya and the World Bank, in order to help them intervene and provide housing solutions to over 10,000 families in the Kibera and Mukuru areas of Nairobi.

The trust has also worked with university planning schools from the local and international academia community to influence how transforming planning discourse can untrap informal human settlements from the snares of historically rigid city planning standards.

The private sector has grand opportunities to turn urban poor communities into important players within the city. Financial resources from the poor are beginning to challenge and put pressure on the private sector to innovate solutions. Federations have interventions that are facilitating this to happen.

Data collected by communities with the support and technical capacity of organizations such as Muungano Support Trust, shows that there is a missing link that government interventions are not able to fill and development assistance is failing to cover.

Insecurity of tenure remains one of the biggest challenges to improving the lives of slum dwellers in Nairobi. The government needs to release land for human settlement, whether it be public, private, or contested. If this does not happen, development aid will continue to subsidize the costs required for technical services to innovate various kinds of solutions for what are essentially locked scenarios!

Irene Karanja is the founding Executive Director of Muungano Support Trust (MuST), a secretariat of the Slum/Shack Dwellers Federation in Kenya. She is a specialist in participatory research, community organizing and capacity building for the urban poor. For over six years, she has transformed the use of participatory techniques for data collection into a major instrument for planning the upgrading of slums. She has organized a strong constituency of slum dwellers to assume leadership of these settlements through savings groups, housing cooperatives and women’s associations.

Architect, UN-HABITAT Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP) (Kenya)

African countries represent the majority of the least developed countries (LCD). Taking into account the fact that in most of these countries, the urban population growth is expanding at a faster pace than the national one, it is important to make three considerations in answering the question: “What will it take to make slum upgrading work in African urban centres?”

Governments should be prepared to ‘give away’. National and local governments should weigh out the costs and risks of perpetuating the status quo and should fulfill the right of adequate housing for all at a pace that copes with the increase in poor urban households. They should prioritise, for example, the free provision of land for the urban poor, in the understanding that there will be no real estate profit and that no particular individual will benefit — a challenging task in a context where African post-independence elites have generally improved their own lives with little regard to equity and social justice.

Strategies for the provision of adequate housing for the urban poor should go beyond market logic. In trying to come up with housing strategies that appeal to investors, the focus has shifted from the upgrading of the slum dwellers’ living conditions to the beautification of particularly degraded areas. This unchaining of a series of transaction costs results in a gentrification process that relocates the problem without giving it a solution. Slum upgrading strategies should strictly be conceived through a human rights approach.

Adequate housing strategies should trigger self-relief dynamics in overcoming poverty. The problem of urban poverty is too big to miss the opportunity to engage concerned communities in devising its solution. The Latin-American slum upgrading experience has demonstrated that giving the right initial impulse to poor urban communities actually encourages a progressive and proactive self-upgrading attitude in slum residents, reducing the need for government funds to improve the living conditions of the urban poor. A strong involvement of the community can also help to reduce the risk of benefiting the wrong people, a common shortfall in superficially planned slum upgrading interventions.

Claudio Torres is an architect with 10 years experience in the field of slum upgrading and housing in an African context. His work has taken him from the slums of Nairobi to settlements in Somaliland and South Sudan where he has worked as an architect, monitoring and evaluation expert, project manager, and construction expert. Torres has worked extensively in Nairobi’s Mathare valley slum with the Italian NGO COOPI, helping to set up an office in the field from which he coordinated a series of different programs. He is currently a consultant for the Participatory Slum Upgrading Program (PSUP), a division of UN-Habitat.

Architect, Urban Planner and Consultant, World Bank Municipal Development Program (Mozambique)

Urbanization in Africa is growing and national governments and local authorities are faced with the challenge of guiding cities’ growth while dealing with other constraints, including limited financial resources; weak institutional, management, and technical capacities; lack of proper urban policies and financial mechanisms to mobilize and regulate investments.

To strengthen the ability of African cities to generate wealth, prosperity, and economic and human development, national governments and local authorities need to define a clear vision for the future of their cities and their informal settlements.

Cities must be seen and treated as complex organisms whose elements are interconnected. Informal settlements should be seen as an integral part of this organism, and not as a “sick body” to be fought. They constitute a precious resource for the city and its population and must be included in the urban grid.

Each and every stakeholder, whether it be the national government, local authorities, civil society, the community, the private sector, or the donor community, have a role to play and must be partners in the development and implementation of this vision for the city. In particular, the active participation of the local community is essential in finding lasting solutions, and to guarantee ownership and sustainability, social cohesion, and integration.

The implementation of comprehensive and integrated improvement plans in informal areas would be ideal; however, it takes a long time and requires considerable financial resources. Considering the constraints in local financial and institutional capabilities, it is preferable to adopt an incremental approach, whereby small-scale interventions are first envisioned and planned in an extensive development plan, and then are carried out gradually through community participation.

Priority must be given to the improvement and provision of infrastructure, basic services, accessibility, safety, and the creation of economic opportunities. Concurrently, special attention should be given to outdoor public spaces, where a vital part of the community’s social, cultural, and economic activities is conducted. Improving these spaces would improve the framework of daily life and bring dignity, beauty, and utility to informal and poor areas with minimal resources.

Sara Candiracci is an architect and urban planner with 10 years experience in the design, management, and implementation of several urban planning and slum upgrading projects in Latin America and Africa with different organizations including UN-Habitat, the Inter-American Development Bank, and various NGOs. She is now working at the Municipality of Maputo, Mozambique, as Urban Planning Advisor for the World Bank Municipal Development Program. She is also conducting her PhD research on the potential use of urban cultural heritage in urban regeneration and planning, considering Maputo as case of study.

Deputy Director, Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC), an affiliate of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (South Africa)

Over the last 20 years, the South African government has been hailed as having the most progressive housing and poverty policy environments in the continent. Besides making welfare grants available to previously marginalized communities, it has made provisions to provide housing to any citizen earning under R3,500 ($350)/month.

Although more than 2.3 million subsidized homes have been built across the country, the impacts of the housing policy have fallen short. Informal settlements have gone up by 900 percent (from 300 to 2,700) while there are an estimated 2.1 million people on the waiting list for state-subsidized housing.

Realizing the constraints of the housing program, the State has rapidly shifted its emphasis to informal settlement upgrading. New regulatory frameworks like Outcome 8 have been developed to allow for provision of basic services and tenure rights.

While the aims of Outcome 8 and its aligned policies have been well defined, in my view there are still gaps in addressing the bigger issues. Firstly, how incremental informal settlement upgrading is implemented must be defined: are we trying to address tenure rights or basic services, land or housing, dependency on the state or self-reliance through livelihoods? Secondly, there is the manner in which informal settlement upgrading is being rolled out. Currently it doesn’t account for strong community, civil society, and NGO participation, nor does it address the broader issue of project finance, outsourcing, and party politics.

The process of upgrading is about learning and letting go, about making space for communities to innovate with the state, about creating a city-wide network/movement that can change the spatial patterns of the city and strengthen citizenship.

Aditya Kumar is the technical coordinator and deputy director for the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC), affiliated to Shack/Slum Dwellers International, currently working with informal settlement and backyarder dwellers of South Africa. His previous experience has included post-war reconstruction of Palestinian refugee camps (Lebanon), post-earthquake disaster housing reconstruction (India), affordable and social housing and large urban development projects (Los Angeles and Boston). His work has fostered multi-stakeholder partnerships between local communities, CBOs, government bodies, academic institutions, and International NGOs, with a key focus on strengthening community-driven design, planning, and implementation. The reconstruction of Palestinian refugee camps has also been shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Architect and Lecturer and Researcher, University of Johannesburg

The National Development Plan’s Outcome 8 agreement is behind the South African government’s current shift towards in situ housing upgrading as a means of redevelopment. This goal of upgrading 400,000 informal settlements has been developed under the mandate of the National Upgrade Support Program.

Large-scale construction consortiums are working alongside the government, in collaboration with various planning, architectural, and non-governmental entities on the current Reconstruction & Development Program.

While these initiatives are creating an institutional framework to begin addressing the needs of informal settlement residents in South Africa, there is little focus across the board on training effective practitioners who can play crucial intermediary roles not only in informal settlement upgrading but also in the nation’s spatial redevelopment.

From my experience in this field, it seems that there are a disproportionately small number of practitioners who have the understanding, experience, or empathy required to engage with the dynamics of informal settlement communities and the complexity of working within the social, economic, and political intricacy that exists between grassroots entities and government structures.

A major factor for this condition is related to the lack of opportunities for spatial design practitioners (engineers, architects, planners, etc), to be exposed to these complex environments. As a result, many ‘professionals’, as well as many government officials, often display dangerously simplistic views on how to ‘fix’ the problems at hand.

From my work and experience in academia and the NGO sector, I believe that empathetic spatial design practitioners hold the key position to engage effectively at the ‘community’ level while addressing the larger spatial inequalities of post-apartheid South Africa.

My aim lies in understanding and sharing contextually appropriate training, practice, and precedents through critical engagement with South Africa’s residents of poor and unsafe living conditions in order to further develop this ‘additional role’ for socio-technical spatial design practice.

Jhono Bennett is an architect who works at the University of Johannesburg as a part-time lecturer and Independent researcher, while managing the operations of 1:1 — Agency of Engagement, a non-profit entity which he co-founded to provide a design-based collaborative service between grassroots organizations, professionals, academia, and government.

Masters Program in Housing at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Internationally, there has been unprecedented focus on ‘slums’ in the new millennium. In southern African cities, informal settlements are certainly a concern, although in Anglophone countries the legacy of British colonial planning has to some extent kept these settlements out of middle-class sight. Where informal settlements have intruded into visible locations, as for instance in Lusophone Luanda, recent efforts have been made to remove these to the city periphery. In South Africa, a somewhat reverse government discourse targeted ‘visible’ informal settlements for ‘in situ upgrading’. This approach was adopted by the high profile N2 Gateway Project in Cape Town, which originally targeted all informal settlements that lined the motorway from the airport to the historical city centre for upgrading. In the years that followed, this project morphed into the Luandan approach — the removal of visible informal settlements. In the Cape Town case, removal was to a controlled decanting camp on the far side of the airport. Yet the public was told that the commitment remained to ‘in situ upgrading’. The term was simply given a new meaning, namely for the state to demolish and then build new housing to modern standard for a different clientele.

With this juxtaposition of informal settlement treatment in Angola and South Africa, I’d like to provoke debate on the core meaning of ‘informal settlement upgrading’ as well as the political uses associated to the meaning. For me, the essence of in situ upgrading is the recognition of two important points. One is that the unevenly developing economies in southern Africa, in the absence of radical change, will not facilitate the replacement of all informal settlements with planned and fully serviced residential developments for the households currently in these settlements. This recognition prevents ‘wishing away’ the reality of urban informality. The other is that informal settlements result out of determination, initiative (often collective), creativity, and complex decisions by poor households. These must be respected and supported where possible.

Marie Huchzermeyer convenes and teaches in the masters programme in Housing at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. This base has allowed her to provide support to rights-based struggles from within informal settlement for ‘real’ in situ upgrading. Her recent work includes a 2011 book “Cities With ‘Slums’: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right to the City in Africa,” and a comparison with Brazil in a 2004 book, “Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlements and Urban Policy in South Africa and Brazil.”

Catalina Gomez, Rio de Janeiro Community Manager

As the host of next year’s World Cup, all eyes are on Brazil. The attention on the country’s planning of this event has risen due to the recent protests and concerns about the costs of infrastructure required to host the tournament.

Although the event is still almost a year away, there are already a number of lessons that other countries, cities, and decision-makers can learn from the Brazilian experience:

Understand the investment tradeoffs when hosting major events: Most of the worldwide debates regarding hosting major sports events focus on the economic revenues for host countries, but there is little debate on the tradeoffs of investing in sports infrastructure versus other investments. In Brazil, for example, the total costs of the 12 stadiums of the World Cup host cities totaled R$8.3 billion (US$4 billion). The reforms of Rio’s Maracanã Stadium amounted to R$1.2 billion. Many wonder which other worthwhile investments could have been funded with these resources.

Define realistic project costs and times: Brazil has struggled with both the costs and times associated with key projects. For example, the costs of construction and reform of the twelve stadiums has changed dramatically since they were first planned. Currently, these costs have been reported to be more than 285 percent higher than what the federal government estimated in October 2007, when Brazil was selected as host of the World Cup.

In addition, the lack of adequate planning has generated important delays in infrastructure construction. These delays correspond to the lack of proper project budgeting, procurement, and project management. For example, Brasilia’s stadium has had 19 amendments to the construction contract as emerging needs have come up during its building process. Rio’s Maracanã has also had several amendments, the most recent one being a “minor” price adjustment valued at R$59 million (almost US$30 million).

Determine who picks up the bill: Cities and countries need to better define adequate financial schemes of major infrastructure so that they can ensure funding for the key projects and also maintain other financial responsibilities. In Brazil, 82 percent of the investments for the World Cup have been assumed at the state and city levels. The remaining 18 percent is split equally between the private sector and the federal government. In the case of Rio, for example, the full cost of the Maracanã’s reforms was covered by the state government. The state government is responsible for funding several crucial health and education programs that have historically been underfunded, generating great doubts as to whether it should be funding stadiums and sports facilities instead of focusing on its main social sector priorities.

Plan the long term legacy: Brazil’s experience has taught us that the long-term legacies of major sports events need to be planned. In Brazil, beyond the focus on infrastructure, little has been planned regarding the ultimate legacy of the World Cup. In some cities, like Rio, there are several urban upgrading, transportation, and education initiatives that are linked to the World Cup (and subsequent 2016 Olympic Games), but in reality, these aren’t necessarily long term legacies focused on social transformation. They are merely city investments that needed to be carried out anyway.

Photo credit: Fernanda Almeida

Africa’s slums are growing at twice the rate of its cities. By some accounts, sub-Saharan Africa will have upwards of 332 million slum dwellers by 2015. While millions of dollars have been spent improving the conditions in Africa’s urban informal settlements and the lives of the people who live therein, overall these efforts have amounted to little more than a drop in the ocean. Join our six panelists to explore the options for stemming the growth of these sprawling settlements and improving conditions in those slums that already exist: Irene Karanja of Muungano Support Trust (SDI) (Kenya); Claudio Torres of the UN-HABITAT Participatory Slum Upgrading Unit (PSUP) (Kenya); architect, urban planner, and World Bank Municipal Development Program consultant Sara Candiracci (Mozambique); Aditya Kumar of the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC) (SDI) (South Africa); Jhono Bennett of the University of Johannesburg (South Africa); and Marie Huchzermeyer of the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa).

Click on the pictures of the panelists to see each panelist’s perspective below.

Executive Director of Muungano Support Trust, a secretariat of the Shack/Slum Dwellers International Federation (SDI) (Kenya)

Over the last 25 years, slum dwellers from cities in Africa have successfully mobilized into collections of Federations of the Urban Poor.

These federations have collected their own financial resources in the form of savings and data pools, creating citywide profiles and extensive slum censuses. Unknown to the world, slum federations have managed to produce a large volume of documented knowledge about themselves that has transformed how the government delivers important services to its poor citizens and how financial instruments can be innovated by financial institutions to serve the needs of the poor.

Using data collected from the profiles and censuses, Muungano Support Trust, a local NGO working with the federation of Kenya, has provided advisory services to the Government of Kenya and the World Bank, in order to help them intervene and provide housing solutions to over 10,000 families in the Kibera and Mukuru areas of Nairobi.

The trust has also worked with university planning schools from the local and international academia community to influence how transforming planning discourse can untrap informal human settlements from the snares of historically rigid city planning standards.

The private sector has grand opportunities to turn urban poor communities into important players within the city. Financial resources from the poor are beginning to challenge and put pressure on the private sector to innovate solutions. Federations have interventions that are facilitating this to happen.

Data collected by communities with the support and technical capacity of organizations such as Muungano Support Trust, shows that there is a missing link that government interventions are not able to fill and development assistance is failing to cover.

Insecurity of tenure remains one of the biggest challenges to improving the lives of slum dwellers in Nairobi. The government needs to release land for human settlement, whether it be public, private, or contested. If this does not happen, development aid will continue to subsidize the costs required for technical services to innovate various kinds of solutions for what are essentially locked scenarios!

Irene Karanja is the founding Executive Director of Muungano Support Trust (MuST), a secretariat of the Slum/Shack Dwellers Federation in Kenya. She is a specialist in participatory research, community organizing and capacity building for the urban poor. For over six years, she has transformed the use of participatory techniques for data collection into a major instrument for planning the upgrading of slums. She has organized a strong constituency of slum dwellers to assume leadership of these settlements through savings groups, housing cooperatives and women’s associations.

Architect, UN-HABITAT Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP) (Kenya)

African countries represent the majority of the least developed countries (LCD). Taking into account the fact that in most of these countries, the urban population growth is expanding at a faster pace than the national one, it is important to make three considerations in answering the question: “What will it take to make slum upgrading work in African urban centres?”

Governments should be prepared to ‘give away’. National and local governments should weigh out the costs and risks of perpetuating the status quo and should fulfill the right of adequate housing for all at a pace that copes with the increase in poor urban households. They should prioritise, for example, the free provision of land for the urban poor, in the understanding that there will be no real estate profit and that no particular individual will benefit — a challenging task in a context where African post-independence elites have generally improved their own lives with little regard to equity and social justice.

Strategies for the provision of adequate housing for the urban poor should go beyond market logic. In trying to come up with housing strategies that appeal to investors, the focus has shifted from the upgrading of the slum dwellers’ living conditions to the beautification of particularly degraded areas. This unchaining of a series of transaction costs results in a gentrification process that relocates the problem without giving it a solution. Slum upgrading strategies should strictly be conceived through a human rights approach.

Adequate housing strategies should trigger self-relief dynamics in overcoming poverty. The problem of urban poverty is too big to miss the opportunity to engage concerned communities in devising its solution. The Latin-American slum upgrading experience has demonstrated that giving the right initial impulse to poor urban communities actually encourages a progressive and proactive self-upgrading attitude in slum residents, reducing the need for government funds to improve the living conditions of the urban poor. A strong involvement of the community can also help to reduce the risk of benefiting the wrong people, a common shortfall in superficially planned slum upgrading interventions.

Claudio Torres is an architect with 10 years experience in the field of slum upgrading and housing in an African context. His work has taken him from the slums of Nairobi to settlements in Somaliland and South Sudan where he has worked as an architect, monitoring and evaluation expert, project manager, and construction expert. Torres has worked extensively in Nairobi’s Mathare valley slum with the Italian NGO COOPI, helping to set up an office in the field from which he coordinated a series of different programs. He is currently a consultant for the Participatory Slum Upgrading Program (PSUP), a division of UN-Habitat.

Architect, Urban Planner and Consultant, World Bank Municipal Development Program (Mozambique)

Urbanization in Africa is growing and national governments and local authorities are faced with the challenge of guiding cities’ growth while dealing with other constraints, including limited financial resources; weak institutional, management, and technical capacities; lack of proper urban policies and financial mechanisms to mobilize and regulate investments.

To strengthen the ability of African cities to generate wealth, prosperity, and economic and human development, national governments and local authorities need to define a clear vision for the future of their cities and their informal settlements.

Cities must be seen and treated as complex organisms whose elements are interconnected. Informal settlements should be seen as an integral part of this organism, and not as a “sick body” to be fought. They constitute a precious resource for the city and its population and must be included in the urban grid.

Each and every stakeholder, whether it be the national government, local authorities, civil society, the community, the private sector, or the donor community, have a role to play and must be partners in the development and implementation of this vision for the city. In particular, the active participation of the local community is essential in finding lasting solutions, and to guarantee ownership and sustainability, social cohesion, and integration.

The implementation of comprehensive and integrated improvement plans in informal areas would be ideal; however, it takes a long time and requires considerable financial resources. Considering the constraints in local financial and institutional capabilities, it is preferable to adopt an incremental approach, whereby small-scale interventions are first envisioned and planned in an extensive development plan, and then are carried out gradually through community participation.

Priority must be given to the improvement and provision of infrastructure, basic services, accessibility, safety, and the creation of economic opportunities. Concurrently, special attention should be given to outdoor public spaces, where a vital part of the community’s social, cultural, and economic activities is conducted. Improving these spaces would improve the framework of daily life and bring dignity, beauty, and utility to informal and poor areas with minimal resources.

Sara Candiracci is an architect and urban planner with 10 years experience in the design, management, and implementation of several urban planning and slum upgrading projects in Latin America and Africa with different organizations including UN-Habitat, the Inter-American Development Bank, and various NGOs. She is now working at the Municipality of Maputo, Mozambique, as Urban Planning Advisor for the World Bank Municipal Development Program. She is also conducting her PhD research on the potential use of urban cultural heritage in urban regeneration and planning, considering Maputo as case of study.

Deputy Director, Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC), an affiliate of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (South Africa)

Over the last 20 years, the South African government has been hailed as having the most progressive housing and poverty policy environments in the continent. Besides making welfare grants available to previously marginalized communities, it has made provisions to provide housing to any citizen earning under R3,500 ($350)/month.

Although more than 2.3 million subsidized homes have been built across the country, the impacts of the housing policy have fallen short. Informal settlements have gone up by 900 percent (from 300 to 2,700) while there are an estimated 2.1 million people on the waiting list for state-subsidized housing.

Realizing the constraints of the housing program, the State has rapidly shifted its emphasis to informal settlement upgrading. New regulatory frameworks like Outcome 8 have been developed to allow for provision of basic services and tenure rights.

While the aims of Outcome 8 and its aligned policies have been well defined, in my view there are still gaps in addressing the bigger issues. Firstly, how incremental informal settlement upgrading is implemented must be defined: are we trying to address tenure rights or basic services, land or housing, dependency on the state or self-reliance through livelihoods? Secondly, there is the manner in which informal settlement upgrading is being rolled out. Currently it doesn’t account for strong community, civil society, and NGO participation, nor does it address the broader issue of project finance, outsourcing, and party politics.

The process of upgrading is about learning and letting go, about making space for communities to innovate with the state, about creating a city-wide network/movement that can change the spatial patterns of the city and strengthen citizenship.

Aditya Kumar is the technical coordinator and deputy director for the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC), affiliated to Shack/Slum Dwellers International, currently working with informal settlement and backyarder dwellers of South Africa. His previous experience has included post-war reconstruction of Palestinian refugee camps (Lebanon), post-earthquake disaster housing reconstruction (India), affordable and social housing and large urban development projects (Los Angeles and Boston). His work has fostered multi-stakeholder partnerships between local communities, CBOs, government bodies, academic institutions, and International NGOs, with a key focus on strengthening community-driven design, planning, and implementation. The reconstruction of Palestinian refugee camps has also been shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Architect and Lecturer and Researcher, University of Johannesburg

The National Development Plan’s Outcome 8 agreement is behind the South African government’s current shift towards in situ housing upgrading as a means of redevelopment. This goal of upgrading 400,000 informal settlements has been developed under the mandate of the National Upgrade Support Program.

Large-scale construction consortiums are working alongside the government, in collaboration with various planning, architectural, and non-governmental entities on the current Reconstruction & Development Program.

While these initiatives are creating an institutional framework to begin addressing the needs of informal settlement residents in South Africa, there is little focus across the board on training effective practitioners who can play crucial intermediary roles not only in informal settlement upgrading but also in the nation’s spatial redevelopment.

From my experience in this field, it seems that there are a disproportionately small number of practitioners who have the understanding, experience, or empathy required to engage with the dynamics of informal settlement communities and the complexity of working within the social, economic, and political intricacy that exists between grassroots entities and government structures.

A major factor for this condition is related to the lack of opportunities for spatial design practitioners (engineers, architects, planners, etc), to be exposed to these complex environments. As a result, many ‘professionals’, as well as many government officials, often display dangerously simplistic views on how to ‘fix’ the problems at hand.

From my work and experience in academia and the NGO sector, I believe that empathetic spatial design practitioners hold the key position to engage effectively at the ‘community’ level while addressing the larger spatial inequalities of post-apartheid South Africa.

My aim lies in understanding and sharing contextually appropriate training, practice, and precedents through critical engagement with South Africa’s residents of poor and unsafe living conditions in order to further develop this ‘additional role’ for socio-technical spatial design practice.

Jhono Bennett is an architect who works at the University of Johannesburg as a part-time lecturer and Independent researcher, while managing the operations of 1:1 — Agency of Engagement, a non-profit entity which he co-founded to provide a design-based collaborative service between grassroots organizations, professionals, academia, and government.

Masters Program in Housing at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Internationally, there has been unprecedented focus on ‘slums’ in the new millennium. In southern African cities, informal settlements are certainly a concern, although in Anglophone countries the legacy of British colonial planning has to some extent kept these settlements out of middle-class sight. Where informal settlements have intruded into visible locations, as for instance in Lusophone Luanda, recent efforts have been made to remove these to the city periphery. In South Africa, a somewhat reverse government discourse targeted ‘visible’ informal settlements for ‘in situ upgrading’. This approach was adopted by the high profile N2 Gateway Project in Cape Town, which originally targeted all informal settlements that lined the motorway from the airport to the historical city centre for upgrading. In the years that followed, this project morphed into the Luandan approach — the removal of visible informal settlements. In the Cape Town case, removal was to a controlled decanting camp on the far side of the airport. Yet the public was told that the commitment remained to ‘in situ upgrading’. The term was simply given a new meaning, namely for the state to demolish and then build new housing to modern standard for a different clientele.

With this juxtaposition of informal settlement treatment in Angola and South Africa, I’d like to provoke debate on the core meaning of ‘informal settlement upgrading’ as well as the political uses associated to the meaning. For me, the essence of in situ upgrading is the recognition of two important points. One is that the unevenly developing economies in southern Africa, in the absence of radical change, will not facilitate the replacement of all informal settlements with planned and fully serviced residential developments for the households currently in these settlements. This recognition prevents ‘wishing away’ the reality of urban informality. The other is that informal settlements result out of determination, initiative (often collective), creativity, and complex decisions by poor households. These must be respected and supported where possible.

Marie Huchzermeyer convenes and teaches in the masters programme in Housing at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. This base has allowed her to provide support to rights-based struggles from within informal settlement for ‘real’ in situ upgrading. Her recent work includes a 2011 book “Cities With ‘Slums’: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right to the City in Africa,” and a comparison with Brazil in a 2004 book, “Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlements and Urban Policy in South Africa and Brazil.”

The urban poor in the Global South lack access to banking and financial services, and women are disproportionately affected. They are less likely than men to hold a bank account, to take out a loan, or to borrow money. This is a detriment to development, since women are more likely to spend extra funds on their family, thereby improving food, education, and health. This series of articles profiles approaches to bridging the financial inclusion gender gap in São Paulo, Mexico City, Nairobi, Bangalore, and Dhaka. Read on to learn more, and then join the discussion below.

Catalina Gomez, Coordenadora da Rede em São Paulo

Segundo a Confederação Nacional da Indústria, mais de um terço da população brasileira acima de 16 anos (mais de 50 milhões) não possui conta bancária nem acesso a serviços financeiros de empréstimo e poupança. A maioria daquela população afetada tem baixa renda e pouca escolaridade. Tereza Campello, a Ministra de Desenvolvimento Social tem explicado varias vezes que “ao contrário do que se pensava, os desafios da inclusão financeira não são de distância, de acesso a rede, ou de falta de correspondentes bancários. Na realidade, a população está desinformada com relação ao seus direitos”. Campello também explicou que “muitas pessoas acham que para abrir uma conta corrente é preciso um depósito mínimo, evidenciando seu desconhecimento sobre a rede bancaria”.

Tendo em conta a situação descrita pela Ministra, uma das principais prioridades do governo brasileiro durante vários anos, tem sido a redução de barreiras de informação e o desenho de produtos financeiros adequados para a população de baixa renda. Um dos principais mecanismos de promoção da inclusão financeira, especialmente para mulheres, tem sido Bolsa Família, o programa de transferências que beneficia a 13 milhões de famílias. O programa transfere mensalmente dinheiro para todas as famílias dependendo de seu nível de pobreza e número de crianças. O 93 por cento dos beneficiários direitos são mulheres, o que contribui no seu posicionamento e influencia dentro do núcleo familiar.

“Bolsa” tem uma contribuição importante na primeira etapa da inclusão financeira ao abrir uma conta bancaria e entregar um cartão para cada família. Com o cartão, os beneficiários podem retirar o dinheiro transferido mensalmente pelo programa. Para muitos beneficiários, especialmente mulheres, esta é a primeira vez que tem aceso a uma conta bancaria, contribuindo a seu conhecimento básico do sistema bancario. Infelizmente, muitos beneficiários ainda retiram a totalidade de sua transferência a cada mês e não utilizam a conta como uma verdadeira conta corrente ou de poupança.

Uma pesquisa recente sobre inclusão financeira dos beneficiários de Bolsa Família aplicada nas áreas de maior concentração de benefiarios, incluindo São Paulo e Rio de Janeiro, achou que a grande maioria dos beneficiários ainda não compreendem adequadamente as regras e procedimentos do sistema bancário precisando de maiores informações e educação sobre a matéria. A pesquisa também reportou que 65 por cento dos beneficiários têm celulares e embora o celular seja utilizado para encaminhar atualizações sobre o programa, ainda poderia ser utilizado para administrar o dinheiro e fazer pagamentos de serviços.

Caixa, o Banco de apoio na execução do Bolsa Família esta desenvolvendo uma serie de pilotos nas cidades mencionadas com vídeos educativos sobre planejamento financeiro para multheres e suas famílias e para a operação de pequenas empresas. Também está expandindo a educação financeira das crianças para que elas estejam sensibilizadas sobre a importância da poupança e da administração responsável do dinheiro.

Foto: Ministry of Social Development

Catalina Gomez, São Paulo Community Manager

The Brazilian National Industry Federation estimates that more than a third of the country’s population over the age of 16 (around 50 million people) doesn’t have a bank account and has no access to credit and saving services. The most affected are low-income populations, who have low levels of literacy and education. Tereza Campello, the Social Development Minister, has explained on various occasions that “against all odds, financial inclusion challenges are less related to distance, access to banking services, and lack of bank branches in remote areas, and much more related to the lack of adequate information about people’s rights.” Campello also added that “many low-income populations don’t have adequate information, as they think that opening a bank account requires a complex bureaucratic process and a minimum deposit. They feel that they cannot meet minimum requirements.”

Given the situation described by the Minister, Brazil’s priority in recent years has been to reduce information barriers and to design financial products and services that are appropriate for low-income populations. One of the key mechanisms to support financial inclusion, especially for women, has been the Bolsa Família program — the cash transfer that benefits more than 13 million low-income families. The program transfers monthly stipends to each family depending on their poverty level and their number of children. In 93 percent of cases, women are the main recipients of these transfer, emboldening their voices and boosting their empowerment within the household.

“Bolsa” contributes to the first stages of financial inclusion, as it provides a bank account and a card for each beneficiary family. With this card, beneficiaries can withdraw the cash that has been granted by the program. This is many women’s first time owning a bank account and a card; this initiative provides them with basic knowledge about the banking system and its operation. Unfortunately, most beneficiaries withdraw the full amount from their monthly deposit and don’t use their accounts as proper checking or saving accounts. Some families save the cash at home, while others spend it as soon as they withdraw it.

A recent study of financial inclusion among Bolsa Família beneficiaries found that beneficiaries still don’t fully understand the rules and procedures of banking, demonstrating the need for better information regarding basic banking concepts and practices. The report also highlights that 65 percent of Bolsa Família beneficiaries have mobile phones, and although the phones are currently used to contact beneficiaries about program updates, they should also be used to allow easier resource management of their bank accounts, including to pay bills.

Caixa, the bank that supports the implementation of Bolsa Família, is currently piloting educational campaigns. These include videos with accessible information on financial planning targeted to women and their families, and for the operation of small businesses. It is also extending educational campaigns to children in order to engage them early about the basic concepts of saving and adequate personal finance.

Photo credit: Ministry of Social Development

María Fernanda Carvallo, Gestor Comunitario de Mexico D.F.

En el 2013 el Banco Mundial realizó un estudio junto con Global Findex (el Índice Global de Inclusión Financiera) confirmando grandes brechas de género en el tema de inclusión financiera. De acuerdo al Banco Mundial, las mujeres son 15 por ciento menos propensas de tener una cuenta bancaria, (la cifra es mayor en mujeres en condiciones de pobreza), lo que hace que este grupo sea muy vulnerable ante el tema. Este estudio demuestra que la inclusión financiera va más allá de la apertura de cuentas bancarias, como el acceso a sistemas de préstamo y ahorro, o el pertenecer a sistemas financieros formales que abren las puertas al ingreso proveniente de otras fuentes. Asli Demirguc-Kunt, Directora de Investigación del Banco Mundial afirma que “[s]in una cuenta, a las mujeres les cuesta más ahorrar formalmente y recibir subsidios gubernamentales o remesas de familiares que viven en el extranjero.” Las mujeres son el sustento de los hogares, por lo que la falta de inclusión financiera refleja poca independencia económica y dificultad al obtener ingresos por cuenta propia.

En el estudio del Especial de Inclusión Financiera de Nextbillion y Ashoka Changemakers, CrediMUJER de Perú afirma que la inclusión financiera está relacionada con el reconocimiento de los derechos de las mujeres, el refuerzo de su autoestima, autonomía económica y control de su vida.

En este contexto, Alcance Financiera brinda servicios crediticios a la mujer generadora de ingresos en condiciones de pobreza y vulnerabilidad—a través del apoyo a la actividad productiva se genera transformación en el contexto de las mujeres. El pago de los créditos es realizado a través de la generación de ingresos de la actividad productiva apoyada.

Alcance Financiera y Pro Mujer son organizaciones subsidiarias del programa de educación financiera de la organización Freedom from Hunger (Libre de Hambre). El programa Credit with Education (Crédito con Educación) integra el acceso a las microfinanzas, combinado con enseñanzas educativas para las mujeres. El programa está basado en créditos comunitarios, incentivando a que las mujeres se unan en un grupo para recibir préstamos y así garantizar conjuntamente el pago. (En las reuniones de los grupos se depositan los pagos y los ahorros.) Además, se comparten aprendizajes y conocimientos a través de sesiones dinámicas y lúdicas sobre: mejores prácticas de negocios, diversificación de actividades emprendedoras, contabilidad básica, finanzas del hogar y estrategias de ahorro y préstamos.

Un caso de éxito, se encuentra al norte de la Ciudad de México, en el que Pro Mujer y Credit with Education apoyaron a una pequeña tienda de abarrotes de la Señora Yolanda. La “tiendita” abastece al vecindario y a comunidades cercanas, por lo que la Señora Yolanda descubrió que mientras más productos tiene en inventario, más ganancias se generan y más gente se atrae. Un primer crédito de $167 dólares ($2.150 pesos) lo obtuvo de Pro Mujer para abastecer el inventario de la tienda; al pagar el crédito obtuvo $287 dólares ($3.700 pesos) más para incrementarlo. Como parte del crédito, la Señora Yolanda se incorporó al programa Credit with Education en el que ha logrado pagar los préstamos y ahorrar para la inversión en la educación de sus hijos.

El propósito de estos programas es de incentivar a que las mujeres progresen. Esto requiere que las mujeres tomen decisiones financieras. Por otro lado, requiere que reflexionen acerca de las estrategias de crédito, de las circunstancias que las ameritan, y en las formas de ahorro y sus ventajas.

Foto: Pro Mujer México

María Fernanda Carvallo, Mexico City Community Manager

In 2013, the World Bank conducted a study along with Global Findex (the Global Financial Inclusion Database) confirming the existence of large gender gaps with regard to financial inclusion. According to the World Bank, women are 15 percent less likely to have a bank account (the figure is higher for women living in poverty), making women as a whole more vulnerable to financial exclusion. This study demonstrates that financial inclusion is far more than just opening a bank account. It includes having access to borrowing and lending systems, and being a member of formal financial systems, allowing access to other sources of income. Asli Demirguc-Kunt, Investigative Director at the World Bank, stated that “without a bank account, women have a difficult time saving and receiving government subsidies or remittances from family members living abroad.” Women are the foundation of the home, so the lack of financial inclusion leads to a lack of economic independence.

In a Nextbillion and Ashoka Changemakers study, “Financial Inclusion Special,” CrediMUJER of Peru states that financial inclusion is essential to the recognition of women’s rights, the strengthening of their self-esteem and economic autonomy, and their control over their own lives.

In this context of financial exclusion, Alcance Financiera provides credit services to poor and vulnerable women who are income earners. Women launch income-generating activities that transform their lives and help them repay their credit payments.

Alcance Financiera and Pro Mujer are subsidiary organizations of the financial education program at Freedom from Hunger. The Credit with Education program combines the access to microfinance with educational modules for women. The program is based on community credits, creating incentives for women to join a group in order to receive loans, and thus jointly to guarantee that payments are made. Payments and savings are collected at group meetings. In addition, knowledge and information is shared through dynamic and creative sessions on proper business practices, diversification of entrepreneurial activities, basic accounting, household finances, and saving and lending strategies.

A financial inclusion success story can be found north of Mexico City, where Pro Mujer and Credit with Education supported a small grocery store owned by Mrs. Yolanda. The tiendita (small store) supplies the entire neighborhood and nearby communities with groceries. Mrs. Yolanda learned that by having a fully-stocked inventory, more people shopped at her store, and more profits were generated. She was able to obtain a loan of $167 dollars ($2,150 pesos) from Pro Mujer to restock her store’s inventory. Upon paying off her loan, she obtained an additional $287 dollars ($3,700 pesos) to help her with future costs. As part of the credit terms, Mrs. Yolanda joined the Credit with Education program, where she received help in paying off her loans and information on how to save for the future education of her children.

The goal of these programs is to encourage women to transform their lives. This requires the women to make financial decisions; it requires them to reflect on their financial circumstances and where they stand, on credit strategies, and on saving methods and their benefits.

Photo: Pro Mujer México

Katy Fentress, Nairobi Community Manager

In Kenyan communities that have little of the collateral needed to access credit, a common approach is to set up savings and investment associations known as “Chamas.”

A Chama is an informal group, often composed of women, that follows a system by which everyone contributes money on a regular basis and in turn gets disbursed a fixed amount. The method evolved from the tradition of rural women grouping together and pooling their labor to work on each other’s farms.

Over the past decades, Chamas have increased in popularity: women have embraced them not only to send their children to school, undertake household maintenance, and weather them through major events and crises, but also as engines with which to forward their entrepreneurial skills and invest in income-generating activities.

As women’s priorities have changed, so have Chamas, which in time have evolved into recognized credit-worthy institutions. Major banks like Rafiki Microfinance, K-Rep, Barclays, Kenya Commercial Bank, and Bank of Africa have all begun to recognize the potential of Chamas and to create lending schemes focused on their needs.

Smaller credit institutions that provide financial mentoring, tailor-made solutions, and a more grassroots approach to lending are also getting in on the game. In Nairobi, for example, a company called Creative Capital Solutions (CCS) has since 2006 been providing cash-flow solutions to female-run Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and Chamas.

“We initially used to also target men’s groups,” says Sadiq Dewani, the CCS Operations Director. “Unfortunately, men would all too often use the money for other purposes or turn out to be serial borrowers. We realized that women were more reliable earners and generally had around 60 percent to 70 percent returns on their investments, so we decided to cater our credit solutions specifically around their needs.”

The objective of CCS is to offer fast, flexible and, above all, manageable solutions to women’s Chamas. “We aim to provide alternative, niche solutions for women who cannot find working capital from banks that have stringent requirements, rely on collateral, and do not offer flexible options catered around the groups’ needs,” explains Dewany, who says that although major banks do lend to Chamas, the system can be complicated and groups can easily get disheartened by all the bureaucracy. “With our approach we initially focus on providing a two-week financial training program; following this, we undertake individual group background checks in order to assess their ability to pay back loans, and if they are then accepted, we formalize the group and enable it to borrow from us.”

Similarly to unsecured micro-finance loans, Chama lending usually has high interest rates. CCS has devised a methodology by which if groups pay back loans faster, they can reduce the amount they have to pay. According to Dewany, the system is working, and the fact that their repayment rates stand at around 85 percent is proof of this.

CCS has over the years helped women’s Chamas set up irrigation schemes, flour mills, bakeries, tailors, hairdressers, and tea shops. In Nairobi, they currently work with 12 different women’s Chamas situated in different corners of the city. Their loans go from as low as 30,000Ksh- ($350) to as high as 300,000Ksh- ($3,500). They are currently in the process of mutating into an established Microfinance lending institution.

“We are exploring options for increasing the level of training we undertake with individual groups,” concludes Dewani. “Although this might prove costly for us, we feel that the better trained our members are, the more they can make out of their money and, eventually, the more returns we will see.”

Carlin Carr, Bangalore Community Manager

The poor live in precarious circumstances on a daily basis. Unexpected illnesses or job losses that would put a strain on any family often leave the poor on the brink. With no access to the formal banking system, microloans have not only served to help in emergency situations, but have actually helped these families to build up savings and gain access to important, life-saving products. The loans, mainly to women, have expanded in purpose and scope since Grameen launched its rural banking system in the 1990s. Today, microfinance institutions such as Samasta in Bangalore have used the women’s groups that form the basis of lending to focus loans on other important intervention areas, including insurance, home gas connections, and water purifiers.

Samasta started in Bangalore in 2008 and in just the first two years reached nearly 77,000 clients with a 99.97 percent repayment rate. Originally focusing on India’s southern states, the institution’s goal is to expand north and reach 1.8 million people by the end of this year. The bank’s focus is to “bridge the gap between ambition and achievement for the working poor across India, by providing financial and non-financial services in a sustainable, long-term relationship to enable them to achieve a better quality of life.” Samasta has had to expand its range of products in order to keep its clients as long-term customers.

Some of the new products Samasta has added include:

• Micro Health Insurance: The United Samasta Micro Health Insurance policy protects members and their families from burdensome costs due to unexpected medical emergencies.

• LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) Loan: The LPG loan helps clients to move away from collecting firewood or accessing kerosene, both of which are highly polluting and dangerous to their health.

• Water Purifier Loan: Not only can lack of access to safe drinking water be dangerous, the ongoing health impacts due to water-borne illnesses can take a large financial toll on families. This loan helps families access new safe-water technologies and products for their home.

One client — 49-year-old Victoria, a grandmother — was selling fruit on the roadside. Her first micro loan with Samasta helped her to set up a fruit stall at the market, thereby increasing her income. Once she repaid her first loan, Victoria took out a second loan to invest in her granddaughter’s education. Samasta’s loans have empowered women such as Victoria to take control of her family’s health and well-being in a variety of ways, from education to household improvements to healthcare.

No longer subject to rogue moneylenders, Victoria and thousands of others are taking incremental steps to improve their daily lives and expand opportunities for their own families as well as for the next generation. The growing importance of MFIs in the lives of the poor has moved the institutional role from one of expanding income opportunities to expanding opportunities to improve the overall quality of life. This is the new MFI in India.

Photo credit: McKay Savage

অনুবাদকঃ ফারজানা নওশিন এবং নুসরাত ইয়াসমিন

বাংলাদেশের আর্থসামাজিক উন্নতির জন্য মহিলাদের অর্থনীতিতে অংশগ্রহণ প্রধান চাবিকাঠি। শহরাঞ্চলের মহিলারা বিশেষত যারা ঢাকায় বাস করেন, তারা প্রতিনিয়ত বিভিন্ন জটিল সমস্যার মুখোমুখি হন যেমন নারী সহিংসতা, অপুষ্টি এবং গর্ভকালীন শারীরিক জতিলতা; এসকল সমস্যার অন্যতম কারণ নারীদের অনেকসময়ই পরিবারের অর্থনৈতিক সিদ্ধান্ত নেয়া থেকে বঞ্চিত করা হয়। মহিলারা ঘরের সকল কাজ করে এবং ঘরের বাইরেও তাদের কাজের সুযোগ ও চাহিদা বেড়ে যাচ্ছে; কিন্তু এসকল কাজের বিনিময়ে তাদের উপযুক্ত মজুরি দেয়া হচ্ছে না। সুতরাং, বাংলাদেশ এবং অন্যান্য উন্নয়নশীল দেশের অর্থনৈতিক বৃদ্ধি নিশ্চিত করার জন্য অর্থনীতিতে মহিলাদের অংশগ্রহন অত্যন্ত প্রয়োজনীয় এবং তাদের অংশগ্রহণের জন্য যথাশীঘ্র প্রয়োজনীয় আইন তৈরি করা উচিত।

ঢাকার বস্তিতে বসবাসরত মহিলারা সাধারণত অর্থনৈতিক ব্যাবস্থার ব্যাবহার সঠিক ভাবে করতে পারেন না; অপরুন্তু ডোনার এবং এন জি ও এর কাছ থেকে যে পরিমান অর্থ আসে তা এই বস্তির মহিলারা পান না, কারণ ডোনার এবং এন জি ও এসব বস্তি মূল্যায়ন করে না। এসব মহিলারা কোন ধনশম্পত্তিও পান না এবং তারের কোন ভুমি অধিকারও থাকে নাহ। বস্তুত, খাদ্য এবং কৃষি জরিপ অনুযায়ী বাংলাদেশে কেবল ২% মহিলা ভুমির মালিক, যা প্রতিবেশী দেশগুলোর তুলনায় অত্যন্ত কম। মহিলারা পার্লামেন্টে এবং অন্যান্য কর্মক্ষেত্রে এখন কাজ করলেও ভূমিমালিকাধীন নারীর সংখ্যা এখনো অনেক কম, যা অর্থনৈতিক নিরাপত্তা রক্ষায় অত্যন্ত গুরুত্বপূর্ণ।

মহিলাদের ভুমিঅধিকার তাদেরকে অর্থনৈতিক ভাবে সবল করে তুলবে এবং তাদেরকে আত্মবিশ্বাসী করে তুলবে কর্মস্থলে সহকর্মীদের সাথে কাধে কাধ মিলিয়ে কাজ করার। বাংলাদেশে ব্রাক এবং বাংলাদেশ ব্যাংক মহিলাদের ভূমিমালিকানা নিয়ে সক্রিয় ভাবে কাজ করছে। ঢাকার বস্তিবাসীদের এলাকায় চরম দারিদ্র্য মোকাবেলার, ব্র্যাক “দারিদ্র্য হ্রাস এর সীমানা চ্যালেঞ্জিং” তার প্রোগ্রাম শুরু করছে যা ২০০২ সালের টার্গেটিং আল্ট্রা খারাপ (TUP) এর একটি অংশ।এটির মিশন চরম দারিদ্রে বাস করা মানুষদের অর্থনৈতিক এবং সামাজিক ক্ষমতার উন্নয়ন করা। এটি প্রথমে গ্রামকেন্দ্রিক প্রোজেক্ট ছিল কিন্তু এর সাফল্যর জন্য এটি এখন শহরাঞ্চলেও কাজ করে। টি ইউ পি প্রোজেক্ট মহিলাদের উপর বেশী প্রাধান্য দেয় কারণ ব্রাক বিশ্বাস করে যেহেতু মহিলারা সবসময়ই ঘরের কাজ করে এবং কম অর্থের অধিকারী হয় তাই তাদের কথার সমাজে মূল্যায়ন পাওয়ার সম্ভাবনা বেশী।

প্রকল্প শুরু করার আগে, ঢাকার সবচেয়ে অসহায় মহিলাদের সনাক্ত করার জন্য ঢাকার জুরাইন ও মোহাম্মদপুর এলাকাই একটি জরিপ চালানো হয়। এই দুই বস্তি থেকে প্রাথমিকভাবে ১০০ পরিবারকে বাছাই করা হয়, এবং ২০১২ সালের এপ্রিলে আরও তেরটি ভিন্ন বস্তিকে এই প্রোগ্রামের অন্তর্ভুক্ত করা হয়। এই বস্তিগুলোর মধ্য থেকে টিইউপি প্রোগ্রাম এমন ৩০০ পরিবারকে নির্বাচন করে যার সদস্যরা দীর্ঘস্থায়ী ক্ষুধা, অপর্যাপ্ত আশ্রয়, এবং শহুরে ও মৌলিক সুবিধা থেকে বঞ্চিত। নির্বাচিত নারীদের সম্পদ স্থানান্তর, এন্টারপ্রাইজ উন্নয়ন ও পৃষ্ঠপোষকতার উপর প্রশিক্ষণ দেওয়া হয়। ব্র্যাকের এই প্রোগ্রামের উপর তৈরীকৃত মূল্যায়ন প্রতিবেদন থেকে দেখা যাই, মহিলাদের মধ্যে সম্পদ স্থানান্থরের পরেও সম্পদ ধারণের ক্ষেত্রে উল্লেখযোগ্য উন্নতি হয়েছে। সম্পদ স্থানান্থর, টিইউপি প্রোগ্রামের একটি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ অঙ্গ কারণ এটি মহিলাদের পশু-মালিক হতে এবং ব্যবসায় মূলধন নিয়োগের সুযোগ সৃষ্টি করে দেয়। প্রশিক্ষিত হওয়ার পর মহিলারা টিইউপি প্রোগ্রামের পৃষ্ঠপোষকতায় নিজস্ব ব্যবসা শুরু করতে পারেন।

যদিও আরবান টিইউপি প্রোগ্রাম এখনো প্রাথমিক অবস্থায় রয়েছে, এরই মধ্যে তা সুবিধাভোগীদের জীবনে ইতিবাচক প্রভাবী হিসেবে প্রমাণিত করেছে। উদাহরণস্বরূপ, এক মহিলা চা ব্যবসায়ী টিইউপি প্রোগ্রামের পৃষ্ঠপোষকতায় তার আয় স্বল্পসময়ে ১০০ টাকা থেকে ৪০০ টাকায় উন্নীত করেছে। উপরন্তু, প্রোগ্রামের স্বাস্থ্য বিভাগ মহিলাদের সুস্থ ও সক্রিয় রাখবার জন্য স্বাস্থ্য সুবিধা প্রদান করে যাচ্ছে যাতে কেউ যেন মাঝপথে কাজ ছেড়ে না দেয়। এক কথায়, ব্র্যাকের আরবান টিইউপি প্রোগ্রামের প্রশিক্ষণ ও আর্থিক ইনসেনটিভ শক্তি প্রমাণ করে, আর্থ-সামাজিক অবস্থান ও ঢাকার জমি মালিকানা সুযোগ সৃষ্টির মাধ্যমে নারীর ক্ষমতায়ন সম্ভব।

Photo credit: BRAC Communications

Syeda Ahmed and Rubina Akter, Dhaka Community Managers

Finding ways to financially include women is one of the major keys to socio-economic development in Bangladesh. While women are usually responsible for household labor and increasingly for outside work and wages, they generally do not receive equal recognition or pay for their labor. In fact, according to a Food and Agricultural survey, only two percent of the women in Bangladesh own land, which is very low compared to neighboring countries. Despite women’s notable representation in the workforce, their lack of access to land ownership is one of the fundamental barriers to financial stability. Financial inclusion is therefore a high-priority policy goal for Bangladesh in order to ensure stable and equitable economic growth.

BRAC and the Bangladesh Bank are helping women gain access to financial services and land ownership. Women living in Dhaka’s slums, in particular, have very limited access to financial services, as little aid comes from the government and NGOs because the slums are not officially recognized. These women do not have access to wealth and savings, and land rights are usually totally absent. To address this problem, BRAC initiated “Challenging the Frontiers of Poverty Reduction” (CFPR) in 2010, a part of the Targeting Ultra Poor (TUP) program. Its mission is to strengthen the economic and social capacities of the people who live in extreme poverty. Initially, the TUP program was rurally based, but the huge success of the project led to its expansion into urban areas. The Urban TUP program is focused on women since BRAC believes that women have less access to wealth than men, but a greater potential to influence social standards.

Before starting the project, a survey was conducted to select the areas with the most vulnerable women in Dhaka, resulting in the selection of Jurain and Mohammadpur districts. The pilot program started off with one hundred households from these two slums. By April 2012, the program had grown to include 13 different slums. Within these slums, the TUP program selects 300 families whose members are suffering from chronic hunger, inadequate shelter, and lack of access to basic facilities. The selected women were given training in assets transfer, enterprise development, and support for enterprise. According to BRAC’s impact assessment report of the program, there is a significant improvement in participating women’s holding assets. Asset transfer is a particularly important component of the TUP strategy, as it allows women to own livestock and have business inputs. After being trained, women can then start their own businesses, supported by the TUP program.

Although the Urban TUP program is fairly recent, it already has had a huge impact on its beneficiaries’ lives. For example, one woman who has a tea business supported by the TUP program increased her income from 100 ($1.25) taka to 400 ($5) taka within a short time. In addition, the health module of the program provides health facilities, helping the women remain active and reducing sick days. In all, BRAC’s Urban TUP program demonstrates the power of training and financial incentives in empowering women through socio-economic status and land ownership in Dhaka.

Photo credit: BRAC Communications

Riwanto Tirtosudarmo

Solving the problem of regular flooding (and traffic jams) could be the litmus test of any governor of Jakarta. Since the first day in office, Jokowi and Ahok have given top priority to resolving this flooding problem. They are very aware that the impact of flooding could be lethal and paralyzing for Jakarta. Among many other ways to reduce the impact of flooding, they are restoring the dams that were originally designed to be water catchment areas.

One of the immediate impacts of Jokowi’s policy on restoring the function of dam as water catchment in the rainy season is the relocation of residents that illegally occupied the land that covered the dam. After successfully relocating them from the Pluit dam in the north Jakarta, Jokowi is turning his attention to the Riario dam, in the east of Jakarta. Apart from relocating residents from dam areas, residents residing in the Ciliwung riverbank and in several slum areas like in Mauara Angke in north Jakarta were also relocated.

The Riario dam is much smaller than the Pluit dam but the issues are just as complex. As the move to revive the dam began, the city government notified around 350 families that they had to move into the apartments that had been prepared for them. There was much resistance to the relocation plan, and negotiation has become a critical part of the relocation process. In the case of the Riario dam, a group of families claimed reside in a legal land that belongs to the family of Adam Malik – a former vice president during the Suharto period. Other groups claimed that they had legal rights to the land, and even possessed land certificates. They even have lodged rights violations complaints against the city with the National Human Rights Committee.

In response to these accusation, Jokowi simply handed (in person) to the office of National Human Right Commission all the legal proof that the land belongs to the city government. Such a response shows how Jokowi (and Ahok) have always based their policies on the existing laws and regulations. In this regard, it is interesting to note how Ahok has always argued that as a state official, he has upheld the constitution, not the constituent.

The Pluit project has been very successful as the dam is restored and has been transformed into a green public space. The residents have been finally relocated into low-cost apartments subsidized by the city government. The public has seen how Jokowi has transformed the slum into a nice city garden where everybody can enjoy the fresh air. Jokowi is very optimistic that Riario will follow the experience of Pluit. He believes that what is needed by the people is a proof of the fulfillment of promises. Although at present Riario’s residents still resist relocation, Jokowi is confident that it will be resolved since the new housing complex in Pinus Elok is slowly being redone to be house these relocated residents. The city government also has rearranged the route of public transportation to make it pass by the Pinus Elok apartment, making it easier for residents to move around.

The public has seen Jokowi deliver on his promises; Jokowi is becoming the most popular public figure in Indonesia, as shown by various pooling surveys conducted to rank the most acceptable leader for the next presidential election. The race toward the presidency has already began, although the election isn’t until June 2014. The popularity of Jokowi and the attraction to join the race for presidency is actually worrisome, as some think that Jokowi should to focus his energy on solving Jakarta’s problems. They worry that if Jokowi becomes president – which is likely – nobody will take care of Jakarta.

Jokow is fully aware of this dilemma, but he could not resist running if his party nominated him as the 2014 presidental candidate. Although he has always said that he isn’t interested being president and argued that he wants to focus on solving Jakarta’s problems, he has, in some occasions, seemed to imply that Jakarta’s problems cannot be solved by the governor alone, and that a higher level of government is needed to take care of Jakarta. Some therefore think that if Jokowi became president, he would be in a better position to resolve Jakarta’s problems.

As the press continues reporting almost everything he does, everybody knows that the decision is in the hands of his party chairwomen Megawati Soekarnoputri. So far, no decision has been made, but as public pressure increases, it seem that there is no other alternative to Jokowi being nominated as the 2014 presidental candidate.

Anyone comparing countries can quickly conclude there isn’t a direct fixed relationship between economic growth and quality public services. Per capita income can be terrible while total national income is high. Economic growth can be high yet maintain widespread inequality. This is not a sustainable way to run a country, yet this is how things are and have always been done in Brazil, the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery and today the world’s 7th largest economy where 21% of the population is still under the poverty line. Brazil today is 106th in GDP per capita. We also rank among the worst in inequality, at number 17, although this is a significant improvement over the 1st place position we occupied two decades ago. Read more.

Submitted by Catalytic Communities — Thu, 06/20/2013 – 11:08

For over two decades, Brazil has been actively working to eradicate child labor, especially through legislation and by implementing effective interventions. A key step forward was the approval of the Child and Adolescent Statute in 1990, which sets out the rights of children and adolescents, and the Constitutional Amendment from 1998, which explicitly prohibits work by anyone who is 16 years or younger. Work conducted by a teenager aged 14 to 16 can only be training-related and should ensure the individual’s education, health, and overall wellbeing. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Catalina Gomez — Mon, 06/10/2013 – 00:00

O Brasil vem trabalhando ativamente na erradicação do trabalho infantil, especialmente na formulação da legislação requerida e da execução de programas eficientes. Os primeiros avanços incluem a aprovação do Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente de 1990 que resume os principais direitos desta população e da Emenda Constitucional de 1998 que aumenta a idade mínima para a entrada no mercado de trabalho. Com ela passou a ser proibido qualquer tipo de trabalho até os 16 anos. Entre 14 e 16 anos os jovens só podem exercer trabalhos remunerados na condição de aprendiz e sempre garantindo a proteção integral desta população, especialmente a frequência à escola. Leia mais ou discutir.

For over two decades, Brazil has been actively working to eradicate child labor, especially through legislation and by implementing effective interventions. A key step forward was the approval of the Child and Adolescent Statute in 1990, which sets out the rights of children and adolescents, and the Constitutional Amendment from 1998, which explicitly prohibits work by anyone who is 16 years or younger. Work conducted by a teenager aged 14 to 16 can only be training-related and should ensure the individual’s education, health, and overall wellbeing. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Catalina Gomez — Mon, 06/10/2013 – 00:00

According to UNICEF, roughly 15 million children under the age of 14 were employed in Nigeria’s semi-formal and informal sectors in 2006. The most common forms of employment include street vendors, beggars, shoe shiners, mechanics, bus conductors, and domestic servants. This high incidence of child labor follows Nigeria’s high poverty rate: these children’s labour sometimes serves as the only source of income not only for themselves, but also for their families. Child labour has become an avenue for impoverished families in Lagos to provide basic needs for themselves, at the expense of the child. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Wura — Mon, 06/10/2013 – 00:00

Shubbo, an eleven-year-old boy from Dhaka, welds car parts for a living. Too young and skinny to carry parts, Shubbo carries out one of the most risky and demanding tasks while his boss sips tea. He works from morning until late at night, and earns less than a dollar a day. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Editor — Mon, 06/10/2013 – 00:00

The second day of the New Cities Summit hosted several interesting and thought-provoking discussions. The day started with a panel on participation; highlights included Porto Alegre’s Mayor José Fortunati talking about the city’s renowned participative budgeting exercise which has been in place for 23 years. He attributed the city’s excellent scores on the Human Development Index to the great levels of active and sustained citizen participation in key development issues. Read more.

Submitted by Catalina Gomez — Thu, 06/06/2013 – 14:24

Influential policy makers, academics, innovators, entrepreneurs, and social and urban development practitioners are currently gathered in São Paulo for a two-day summit organized by the New Cities Foundation. The event focuses on the current challenges that cities face becoming more just and inclusive. Read more.

Submitted by Catalina Gomez — Wed, 06/05/2013 – 11:58

Slums are mostly viewed from the outside as alienated environments in which people languish in abject poverty, barely managing to scrape by. Although there has been some progress toward debunking the stereotype of slum dwellers as lazy, criminal, and somewhat ignorant, there is still an overall perception that people who live in informal settlements are different, not like the rest of society and hence not quite able to get ahead in life. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 04/29/2013 – 00:00

On the 4th of March this year, the day Kenyans went to the polls to elect their fourth president, a large part of the mainstream media covering the elections was stationed in Kibera slum, ready to capture any violence that might erupt. At the end of the day, the general impression was that reporters had been disappointed that Kiberans had patiently spent hours on end in long winding queues as they waited for their turn to vote. “I had so many calls just before the election,” Josh Owino, a coordinator for Kibera News Network (KNN), tells us. “International journalists contacted me because they wanted to do stories on how Kiberans were migrating out of the slums to avoid violence; they also wanted me to track down perpetrators from the 2008 post-election violence so they could get direct testimonies from them.” Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Katy Fentress — Mon, 04/15/2013 – 00:00

There are 25 million extreme poor in Bangladesh, a significant proportion of whom live in Dhaka city. However, there has been no comprehensive study of their individual needs. The narrative of the poor is often stereotyped and misrepresented; it is therefore vital that the voice of the poor be heard. The buzzword in poverty eradication must change from “intervention” to “cooperation.” Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Editor — Mon, 04/15/2013 – 00:00

Catalina Gomez, Coordenadora da Rede em São Paulo

O Tietê é o rio mais importante do Estado de São Paulo. Com 1100 km, ele atravessa praticamente todo o estado de leste a oeste. O rio é particularmente importante para a cidade de São Paulo sendo que ele marca sua geografia urbana. Infelizmente o rio se encontra bastante poluído, devido a anos de descuido, principalmente na Região Metropolitana São Paulo que tem um total de 37 municípios e 20 milhões de moradores. O processo de degradação do rio começou na década de 1920 com a construção de algumas obras de infraestrutura na capital. A poluição industrial e esgotos domésticos tem origem principalmente no processo de expansão urbana ocorrido entre as décadas de 1940 e 1970.

A poluição do rio continua devido principalmente às indústrias que ainda lançam no rio materiais inorgânicos, tais como metais e produtos químicos resultantes de processos industriais. Mais atualmente o maior poluente do rio é o esgoto doméstico. Por isso o foco das intervenções de despoluição do Tietê estão focadas na ampliação da rede de tratamento de esgotos para a população que mora em torno do rio. E aquelas intervenções tem apresentado melhoras importantes: Em 1990, apenas 24 por cento do esgoto em São Paulo era tratado. Hoje, é 68 por cento. Em duas décadas a extensão da faixa de rio completamente poluído diminuiu mais de 200 quilômetros e a agua tratada aumentou de 1992 até 2007 de 4.5 m3/s para 13 m3/s, equivalente ao tratamento de esgoto de mais de 5 milhões de pessoas.

Mais estas melhoras significativas tem um preço. A partir de 1992, a Companhia de Saneamento Básico do Estado de São Paulo (Sabesp), empresa encarregada da execução do projeto de despoluição do Tietê, tem recebido do Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento (BID) mais de US$1,2 bilhão no apoio das primeiras três fases do projeto de um total de quatro. Atualmente a terceira fase está em execução; além do BID, o Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES), tem assinado recentemente um contrato de financiamento de US$600 milhões para apoiar a terceira fase do projeto de despoluição do rio Tietê.

Na presente etapa serão construídos aproximadamente 420 quilômetros de coletores e interceptores, 1251 quilômetros de redes coletoras e serão realizadas 200 mil ligações domiciliares de esgotos. Está prevista também a instalação de seis estações elevatórias de esgoto e a ampliação de três estações de tratamento de esgoto (ETEs) do sistema principal.

A primeira lição do projeto de despoluição do rio Tietê, é a importância do trabalho em parceria entre Sabesp e os municípios da Região Metropolitana de São Paulo. Para conseguir bons resultados foi necessario investir no fortalecimento institucional da Sabesp para garantir um adequado gerenciamento e operação do projeto. Tambem tem sido de grande importancia envolver às indústrias que tem operações perto do rio para que participem do processo de despoluição. Finalmente, é importante tomar conhecimento sobre o grande preço para a Região Metropolitana e para a propria cidade de São Paulo que tem o descuido do rio por tantos anos e a falta de atenção por parte dos moradores, das industrias e dos dirigentes locais.

Crédito fotográfico: Mario Ângelo

Catalina Gomez, São Paulo Community Manager

The Tietê river is the State of São Paulo’s most important river. Its runs more than 1100 km and crosses almost the entire state from east to west. The river is particularly important to the city of São Paulo, as it marks its urban geography. Unfortunately, the river has been polluted for years due to the lack of care, especially from the São Paulo Metropolitan Region, which encompasses 37 municipalities and has around 20 million residents. The pollution of the river began in 1920 with the construction of various infrastructure projects in the city. Then, between the 1940s and 1970s, during the city’s expansion, the river started receiving industrial effluents and domestic sewage.

The river’s pollution is still one of the area’s greatest environmental problems: non-organic materials, like metals and chemical products from industrial processing, are discharged to the river. But the greatest contaminant of the Tietê nowadays is domestic sewage. That is why the efforts to salvage the river are focused on the expansion of basic sewage coverage for the population that lives near the river. And in recent years, improvements have been made: in 1990, only 24 percent of the sewage in São Paulo was treated; today there is coverage of 68 percent. In two decades, the highly contaminated area was reduced by more than 200 km, and the amount of water being treated increased from 4,5m3/s in 1992 to 13 m3/s in 2007, which is equivalent to treating the effluents of more than five million people.

But these significant improvements have come at a price. Since 1992, the Basic Sewerage Company from the State of São Paulo (Sabesp), which is the institution in charge of the implementation of the Tietê River Cleanup Program, has received more than US$1.2 billion in support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) for the first three phases out of the project’s four stages. The third phase is currently under implementation and in addition to the IDB, the National Economic and Social Development Bank (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social) has recently signed a loan contract with Sabesp of US$600 million.

The third phase of the cleanup program is expected to build around 420 km of collector mains and interceptors, and around 1251 km of wastewater collection networks. This phase also aims to build around 200 thousand household connections, and for the expansion of three main treatment plants and six smaller treatment plants.

One of the main lessons from the Tietê River Cleanup Program is the importance of the joint partnership between Sabesp and the municipalities of São Paulo’s Metropolitan Region. This has required important investments in Sabesp’s institutional capacity and its consolidation of corporate governance procedures and environmental management practices. Another lesson is the importance of involving the industries that are also polluting the river, so they can be part of its cleanup. Finally, it is important to understand the high price that the Metropolitan Region and the city of São Paulo itself are paying for failing to take adequate care of the Tietê river for so many decades.

Photo credit: Mario Ângelo

Widya Anggraini, Jakarta Community Manager

Undang-undang Dasar 1945 Indonesia secara resmi menjamin kebebasan memilih dan mempraktekkan agama dan kepercayaan tiap-tiap penduduk. Namun demikian pemerintah secara resmi mengakui hanya enam agama yaitu Islam, katolik, protestan, buddha, hindu dan konghuchu. akibatnya banyak terjadi kasus kekerasan terhadap minoritas penganut agama dan kepercayaan. Munculnya kelompok-kelompok militan islam misalnya, kerap melakukan intimidasi dan menyerang rumah-rumah ibadah serta anggota-anggota minoritas agama. Human Rights Watch yang sudah melakukan riset di 10 provinsi dan mewawancarai lebih dari 115 orang dari berbagai kepercayaan, menyatakan bahwa 71 diantara mereka adalah korban kekerasan dan pelanggaran. Begitu juga survey dari LSI yang menyatakan bahwa sejak kepemimpinan SBY tahun jumlah kekerasan diskriminasi meningkat dengan rata-rata 150 kasus pertahun dan 65 persen diantaranya adalah kekerasan agama.Dalam rangka menjaga keharmonisan dan keselarasan kehidupan beragama di Indonesia maka telah dikembangkan perangkat lunak yang dapat memonitor berbagai tindak kekerasan atas nama agama dan isu-isu pluralisme. Perangkat ini telah dikembangkan oleh dua institute di Jakarta, The Wahid Institute dan Setara Institute.

The Wahid Institute (WI) berdiri tahun 2004 yang dibentuk sebagai upaya menyebarkan pemikiran islam moderat mantan presiden RI K.H Abdurrahman Wahid dalam mendorong terciptanya demokrasi, multikulturalisme dan toleransi baik di Indonesia maupun di dunia. Beberapa program yang menjadi wilayah kerja WI adalah advokasi kebijakan publik dan minoritas; kampanye islam demokrasi dan pluralisme; pemberdayaan akar rumput; serta monitoring isu keagamaan. Dalam hal monitoring isu keagaan ini WI telah mengembangkan pernangkat lunak untuk memantau isu-isu kekerasan dan konflik atas nama agama bernama Pemantauan Kebebasan Beragama dan Berkeyakinan. Kategori yang terangkum dalam perangkat tersebut termasuk diantaranya intoleransi dan diskriminasi atas dasar agama; kemajuan jaminan perlindungan kebebasan beragama/berkeyakinan serta pelanggaran kebebasan beragama/berkeyakinan. Jadi pada dasarnya perangkat ini bukan hanya melaporkan tindak kekerasan dan pelanggaran dalam beragama namun juga mencatat inisiatif-inisiatif masyarakat yang berupaya melindungi kebebasan masyarakat dalam beragama dan berkeyakinan.

Perangkat serupa juga dikembangkan oleh Setara Institute yang mendesain Case Tracking System (CTS) untuk memantau pelanggaran kebebasan beragama/berkeyakinan di Indonesia. CTS merupakan bagian dari upaya Setara Institute untuk medorong terciptanya kondisi politik yang terbuka berdasar penghormatan atas keberagaman, pembelaan hak-hak manusia dan penghapusan sikap intoleran. Dalam form pelaporan CTS ini disebutkan kontak data pelapor, nama peristiwa, waktu dan tempat kejadian, korban, kerugian, pelaku baik negara maupun non-negara. Semua laporan masyarakat akan dikompilasi dan diolah menjadi data yang bisa diakses umum. Setiap tahun Setara Institute akan melakukan update berbagai bentuk dan jumlah tindakan pelanggaran, sebaran waktunya, grafik korban dan pelaku pelanggaran, serta jenis undang-undang yang dilanggar. Lebih jauh lagi, informasi dari CTS tersebut akan digunakan sebagai bahan laporan tentang kebebasan beragama (Report on Freedom of Religion and Belief) yang dikeluarkan setiap tahunnya serta sebagai materi penyusunan indeks kinerja penegakan HAM (Human Rights Enforcement Performance Index).

Secara keseluruhan kedua perangkat yang diciptakan WI dan Setara Institute diharapkan akan memberikan gambaran tingkat toleransi masyarakat terhadap kebebasan beragama dan berkeyakinan serta menjadi alat advokasi bagi pemerintah untuk mengeluarkan kebijakan yang melindungi kelompok agama minoritas.

Foto: Muslim Academy

Widya Anggraini, Jakarta Community Manager

Since 1945, Indonesia’s constitution formally guarantees the freedom of each citizen to choose and practice their own religion and beliefs. However, the government only officially recognizes six religions: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Confucianism – consequently giving rise to cases of violence against minority religions and faiths. The emergence of militant Islamic groups, for example, has often been responsible for intimidation and attacks of places of worship as well as members of religious minorities. The Human Rights Watch, which did research in ten provinces and interviewed over 115 people from different faith, stated that 71 of those interviewed were victims of violence and abuse. Another survey from LSI stated that since the current president’s election in 2004, violent discrimination has seen an increase of an average of 150 cases per year, with 65 percent of such cases being those of religious violence. In an effort to maintain the peace and harmonization of religious lives in Indonesia, two software initiatives have been developed to monitor various acts of violence related to religion and pluralistic issues – one by the Wahid Institute and the other by the Setara Institute.

The Wahid Institute (WI) was founded in 2004 to spread the moderate Islamic beliefs of former Indonesian president Abdurahman Wahid, who believed in fostering democracy, multiculturalism, and tolerance in Indonesia and the world. Several programs undertaken by the WI include advocating public policy and minorities, campaigning Islamic democracy and pluralism, grassroots empowerment, as well as monitoring religious issues. In regards to the latter, WI has developed the “Monitoring the Freedom of Religion and Beliefs” software to monitor acts of religious violence and conflict. The categories contained within the software include intolerance and discrimination based on religion, promoting the guarantee of protection offered to religions/ beliefs, as well as the violation of freedoms of religions/beliefs. In sum, this device does not only report acts of religious violence, but also notes community initiatives that seek to protect the freedoms of the public to practice their religions and beliefs.

A similar device, named the Case Tracking System (CTS), was developed by the Setara Institute to monitor violations of religious freedoms. The CTS is part of the efforts of the institute to endorse the creation of open political conditions based on respect for diversity, the defense of human rights, and the elimination of intolerant attitudes. The CTS report form contains contact details, the name of the event, the time and place of the incidents, the victims, the losses incurred, and both the positive and negative contributors to the incidents. All community reports are compiled and processed into data that can be accessed by the public. Every year, the Setara Institute will update the numbers and various types of violations, the distribution of time in between each, the graphs depicting offenders and victims, and the types of laws that were violated. Furthermore, information derived from the CTS will be used as material for reports on religious freedom (Report on Freedom of Religion and Belief) that will be issued each year, as well as for the preparation of the HAM index (Human Rights Enforcement Performance Index).

All in all, both devices developed by the WI and the Setara Institute are expected to serve as both an overview of the level of community tolerance towards religious freedom, and as an advocacy tool for the government to issue laws and policies that will protect members of religious minorities.

Photo: Muslim Academy

Africa’s slums are growing at twice the rate of its cities. By some accounts, sub-Saharan Africa will have upwards of 332 million slum dwellers by 2015. While millions of dollars have been spent improving the conditions in Africa’s urban informal settlements and the lives of the people who live therein, overall these efforts have amounted to little more than a drop in the ocean. Join our six panelists to explore the options for stemming the growth of these sprawling settlements and improving conditions in those slums that already exist: Irene Karanja of Muungano Support Trust (SDI) (Kenya); Claudio Torres of the UN-HABITAT Participatory Slum Upgrading Unit (PSUP) (Kenya); architect, urban planner, and World Bank Municipal Development Program consultant Sara Candiracci (Mozambique); Aditya Kumar of the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC) (SDI) (South Africa); Jhono Bennett of the University of Johannesburg (South Africa); and Marie Huchzermeyer of the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa).

Click on the pictures of the panelists to see each panelist’s perspective below.

Executive Director of Muungano Support Trust, a secretariat of the Shack/Slum Dwellers International Federation (SDI) (Kenya)

Over the last 25 years, slum dwellers from cities in Africa have successfully mobilized into collections of Federations of the Urban Poor.

These federations have collected their own financial resources in the form of savings and data pools, creating citywide profiles and extensive slum censuses. Unknown to the world, slum federations have managed to produce a large volume of documented knowledge about themselves that has transformed how the government delivers important services to its poor citizens and how financial instruments can be innovated by financial institutions to serve the needs of the poor.

Using data collected from the profiles and censuses, Muungano Support Trust, a local NGO working with the federation of Kenya, has provided advisory services to the Government of Kenya and the World Bank, in order to help them intervene and provide housing solutions to over 10,000 families in the Kibera and Mukuru areas of Nairobi.

The trust has also worked with university planning schools from the local and international academia community to influence how transforming planning discourse can untrap informal human settlements from the snares of historically rigid city planning standards.

The private sector has grand opportunities to turn urban poor communities into important players within the city. Financial resources from the poor are beginning to challenge and put pressure on the private sector to innovate solutions. Federations have interventions that are facilitating this to happen.

Data collected by communities with the support and technical capacity of organizations such as Muungano Support Trust, shows that there is a missing link that government interventions are not able to fill and development assistance is failing to cover.

Insecurity of tenure remains one of the biggest challenges to improving the lives of slum dwellers in Nairobi. The government needs to release land for human settlement, whether it be public, private, or contested. If this does not happen, development aid will continue to subsidize the costs required for technical services to innovate various kinds of solutions for what are essentially locked scenarios!

Irene Karanja is the founding Executive Director of Muungano Support Trust (MuST), a secretariat of the Slum/Shack Dwellers Federation in Kenya. She is a specialist in participatory research, community organizing and capacity building for the urban poor. For over six years, she has transformed the use of participatory techniques for data collection into a major instrument for planning the upgrading of slums. She has organized a strong constituency of slum dwellers to assume leadership of these settlements through savings groups, housing cooperatives and women’s associations.

Architect, UN-HABITAT Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP) (Kenya)

African countries represent the majority of the least developed countries (LCD). Taking into account the fact that in most of these countries, the urban population growth is expanding at a faster pace than the national one, it is important to make three considerations in answering the question: “What will it take to make slum upgrading work in African urban centres?”

Governments should be prepared to ‘give away’. National and local governments should weigh out the costs and risks of perpetuating the status quo and should fulfill the right of adequate housing for all at a pace that copes with the increase in poor urban households. They should prioritise, for example, the free provision of land for the urban poor, in the understanding that there will be no real estate profit and that no particular individual will benefit — a challenging task in a context where African post-independence elites have generally improved their own lives with little regard to equity and social justice.

Strategies for the provision of adequate housing for the urban poor should go beyond market logic. In trying to come up with housing strategies that appeal to investors, the focus has shifted from the upgrading of the slum dwellers’ living conditions to the beautification of particularly degraded areas. This unchaining of a series of transaction costs results in a gentrification process that relocates the problem without giving it a solution. Slum upgrading strategies should strictly be conceived through a human rights approach.

Adequate housing strategies should trigger self-relief dynamics in overcoming poverty. The problem of urban poverty is too big to miss the opportunity to engage concerned communities in devising its solution. The Latin-American slum upgrading experience has demonstrated that giving the right initial impulse to poor urban communities actually encourages a progressive and proactive self-upgrading attitude in slum residents, reducing the need for government funds to improve the living conditions of the urban poor. A strong involvement of the community can also help to reduce the risk of benefiting the wrong people, a common shortfall in superficially planned slum upgrading interventions.

Claudio Torres is an architect with 10 years experience in the field of slum upgrading and housing in an African context. His work has taken him from the slums of Nairobi to settlements in Somaliland and South Sudan where he has worked as an architect, monitoring and evaluation expert, project manager, and construction expert. Torres has worked extensively in Nairobi’s Mathare valley slum with the Italian NGO COOPI, helping to set up an office in the field from which he coordinated a series of different programs. He is currently a consultant for the Participatory Slum Upgrading Program (PSUP), a division of UN-Habitat.

Architect, Urban Planner and Consultant, World Bank Municipal Development Program (Mozambique)

Urbanization in Africa is growing and national governments and local authorities are faced with the challenge of guiding cities’ growth while dealing with other constraints, including limited financial resources; weak institutional, management, and technical capacities; lack of proper urban policies and financial mechanisms to mobilize and regulate investments.

To strengthen the ability of African cities to generate wealth, prosperity, and economic and human development, national governments and local authorities need to define a clear vision for the future of their cities and their informal settlements.

Cities must be seen and treated as complex organisms whose elements are interconnected. Informal settlements should be seen as an integral part of this organism, and not as a “sick body” to be fought. They constitute a precious resource for the city and its population and must be included in the urban grid.

Each and every stakeholder, whether it be the national government, local authorities, civil society, the community, the private sector, or the donor community, have a role to play and must be partners in the development and implementation of this vision for the city. In particular, the active participation of the local community is essential in finding lasting solutions, and to guarantee ownership and sustainability, social cohesion, and integration.

The implementation of comprehensive and integrated improvement plans in informal areas would be ideal; however, it takes a long time and requires considerable financial resources. Considering the constraints in local financial and institutional capabilities, it is preferable to adopt an incremental approach, whereby small-scale interventions are first envisioned and planned in an extensive development plan, and then are carried out gradually through community participation.

Priority must be given to the improvement and provision of infrastructure, basic services, accessibility, safety, and the creation of economic opportunities. Concurrently, special attention should be given to outdoor public spaces, where a vital part of the community’s social, cultural, and economic activities is conducted. Improving these spaces would improve the framework of daily life and bring dignity, beauty, and utility to informal and poor areas with minimal resources.

Sara Candiracci is an architect and urban planner with 10 years experience in the design, management, and implementation of several urban planning and slum upgrading projects in Latin America and Africa with different organizations including UN-Habitat, the Inter-American Development Bank, and various NGOs. She is now working at the Municipality of Maputo, Mozambique, as Urban Planning Advisor for the World Bank Municipal Development Program. She is also conducting her PhD research on the potential use of urban cultural heritage in urban regeneration and planning, considering Maputo as case of study.

Deputy Director, Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC), an affiliate of Shack/Slum Dwellers International (South Africa)

Over the last 20 years, the South African government has been hailed as having the most progressive housing and poverty policy environments in the continent. Besides making welfare grants available to previously marginalized communities, it has made provisions to provide housing to any citizen earning under R3,500 ($350)/month.

Although more than 2.3 million subsidized homes have been built across the country, the impacts of the housing policy have fallen short. Informal settlements have gone up by 900 percent (from 300 to 2,700) while there are an estimated 2.1 million people on the waiting list for state-subsidized housing.

Realizing the constraints of the housing program, the State has rapidly shifted its emphasis to informal settlement upgrading. New regulatory frameworks like Outcome 8 have been developed to allow for provision of basic services and tenure rights.

While the aims of Outcome 8 and its aligned policies have been well defined, in my view there are still gaps in addressing the bigger issues. Firstly, how incremental informal settlement upgrading is implemented must be defined: are we trying to address tenure rights or basic services, land or housing, dependency on the state or self-reliance through livelihoods? Secondly, there is the manner in which informal settlement upgrading is being rolled out. Currently it doesn’t account for strong community, civil society, and NGO participation, nor does it address the broader issue of project finance, outsourcing, and party politics.

The process of upgrading is about learning and letting go, about making space for communities to innovate with the state, about creating a city-wide network/movement that can change the spatial patterns of the city and strengthen citizenship.

Aditya Kumar is the technical coordinator and deputy director for the Community Organization Resource Centre (CORC), affiliated to Shack/Slum Dwellers International, currently working with informal settlement and backyarder dwellers of South Africa. His previous experience has included post-war reconstruction of Palestinian refugee camps (Lebanon), post-earthquake disaster housing reconstruction (India), affordable and social housing and large urban development projects (Los Angeles and Boston). His work has fostered multi-stakeholder partnerships between local communities, CBOs, government bodies, academic institutions, and International NGOs, with a key focus on strengthening community-driven design, planning, and implementation. The reconstruction of Palestinian refugee camps has also been shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

Architect and Lecturer and Researcher, University of Johannesburg

The National Development Plan’s Outcome 8 agreement is behind the South African government’s current shift towards in situ housing upgrading as a means of redevelopment. This goal of upgrading 400,000 informal settlements has been developed under the mandate of the National Upgrade Support Program.

Large-scale construction consortiums are working alongside the government, in collaboration with various planning, architectural, and non-governmental entities on the current Reconstruction & Development Program.

While these initiatives are creating an institutional framework to begin addressing the needs of informal settlement residents in South Africa, there is little focus across the board on training effective practitioners who can play crucial intermediary roles not only in informal settlement upgrading but also in the nation’s spatial redevelopment.

From my experience in this field, it seems that there are a disproportionately small number of practitioners who have the understanding, experience, or empathy required to engage with the dynamics of informal settlement communities and the complexity of working within the social, economic, and political intricacy that exists between grassroots entities and government structures.

A major factor for this condition is related to the lack of opportunities for spatial design practitioners (engineers, architects, planners, etc), to be exposed to these complex environments. As a result, many ‘professionals’, as well as many government officials, often display dangerously simplistic views on how to ‘fix’ the problems at hand.

From my work and experience in academia and the NGO sector, I believe that empathetic spatial design practitioners hold the key position to engage effectively at the ‘community’ level while addressing the larger spatial inequalities of post-apartheid South Africa.

My aim lies in understanding and sharing contextually appropriate training, practice, and precedents through critical engagement with South Africa’s residents of poor and unsafe living conditions in order to further develop this ‘additional role’ for socio-technical spatial design practice.

Jhono Bennett is an architect who works at the University of Johannesburg as a part-time lecturer and Independent researcher, while managing the operations of 1:1 — Agency of Engagement, a non-profit entity which he co-founded to provide a design-based collaborative service between grassroots organizations, professionals, academia, and government.

Masters Program in Housing at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)

Internationally, there has been unprecedented focus on ‘slums’ in the new millennium. In southern African cities, informal settlements are certainly a concern, although in Anglophone countries the legacy of British colonial planning has to some extent kept these settlements out of middle-class sight. Where informal settlements have intruded into visible locations, as for instance in Lusophone Luanda, recent efforts have been made to remove these to the city periphery. In South Africa, a somewhat reverse government discourse targeted ‘visible’ informal settlements for ‘in situ upgrading’. This approach was adopted by the high profile N2 Gateway Project in Cape Town, which originally targeted all informal settlements that lined the motorway from the airport to the historical city centre for upgrading. In the years that followed, this project morphed into the Luandan approach — the removal of visible informal settlements. In the Cape Town case, removal was to a controlled decanting camp on the far side of the airport. Yet the public was told that the commitment remained to ‘in situ upgrading’. The term was simply given a new meaning, namely for the state to demolish and then build new housing to modern standard for a different clientele.

With this juxtaposition of informal settlement treatment in Angola and South Africa, I’d like to provoke debate on the core meaning of ‘informal settlement upgrading’ as well as the political uses associated to the meaning. For me, the essence of in situ upgrading is the recognition of two important points. One is that the unevenly developing economies in southern Africa, in the absence of radical change, will not facilitate the replacement of all informal settlements with planned and fully serviced residential developments for the households currently in these settlements. This recognition prevents ‘wishing away’ the reality of urban informality. The other is that informal settlements result out of determination, initiative (often collective), creativity, and complex decisions by poor households. These must be respected and supported where possible.

Marie Huchzermeyer convenes and teaches in the masters programme in Housing at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. This base has allowed her to provide support to rights-based struggles from within informal settlement for ‘real’ in situ upgrading. Her recent work includes a 2011 book “Cities With ‘Slums’: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right to the City in Africa,” and a comparison with Brazil in a 2004 book, “Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlements and Urban Policy in South Africa and Brazil.”