Voices from slums

For the first time ever, in October 2014, two important milestones of the UN urban calendar coincide in the same month. As every year, on the first Monday of October, the world is celebrating World Habitat Day which this year is around the theme ‘Voices from Slums’ and on 31 October, the world will celebrate for the first time World Cities Day approved by the United Nations General Assembly during its 68th Session in 2013.

The choice of the theme ‘Voices from Slums’ for this year’s World Habitat Day, which falls today, is to remind us of the urgent need to provide the space for voices from slums to be heard and to be listened to.

Often, such voices are faint and inaudible because slums have not often been recognised as part of the urban fabric. The reaction to slums has been to pretend that they do not exist or that they will go away or to paint brush them all as illegal. This denial results in inadequate or no resource allocation to improve the living conditions of those living in the slums and the inability to formulate appropriate policies to address slum conditions and to prevent new slum formation.

Slum voices are faint and inaudible because in general, statistics show that urban populations tend to enjoy more access to services and generally perform well on a range of human development indicators than rural populations. This partly explains the skewed nature of national development priorities in favour of rural development. Although poverty remains a primarily rural phenomenon, urban poverty is becoming a severe, pervasive – and largely unacknowledged – feature of urban life. UN-Habitat analysis in developing country cities shows that the incidence of disease and mortality is much higher in slums than in non-slum urban areas and in some cases such as HIV prevalence and other health indicators is equal to and even higher than in rural areas. These disparities are often not reflected in national statistics, which mask the deprivation experienced in slums.

Slums are by definition places of exclusion; places of poor access to basic services, including improved water, improved sanitation, durable housing, land, education, health care and employment opportunities within cities. Voices from slums are calling for inclusive rather than exclusive cities where all can enjoy a good quality of life. This is a ‘win-win’ situation.

Inclusive cities are the only means to build safer and equitable cities. The world’s most unequal cities are also the world’s most violent cities.

Inclusive cities are the only means to build prosperous cities where the energy and skills of all who live in the city are utilised in creating wealth and better living environments. The world’s most equitable cities are also the world’s most prosperous.

Up to two million Malawians (69 percent of the urban population) live under slum conditions and even if only one Malawian lived under slum conditions, it would still be one too many.

Slums absorb the failures of public policies – they provide land and housing to millions of people who are failed by the official system. They absorb the majority of the poor who are failed by existing public policies and practices.

Slums house those who build our cities and who work our factories, who make our workplaces and cities clean, who provide food in urban food markets – in other words, slums house those who make our cities functional.

This is not to say that we need more slums! Rather it is to highlight the contribution those who live in the slums are making to the urban economy and social fabric. It is also to highlight the fact that slums are part of the urban fabric and should be recognised as such. It is to highlight the urgent need for adequate resources to upgrade existing slums and prevent formation of new ones as well as appropriate policies to address the underlying causes of slum formation.

The voices from slums are about access to these basic services so that more and more people are taken out of living under slum conditions and start enjoying a better quality of life. As Malawi urbanises rapidly, addressing urban poverty (whose manifestations are the informal settlements – slums) becomes an urgent task.

—The author is United Nations Human Settlements Programme.