Mr. Tom Grant, Chair
t-grant1@northwestern.edu


As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, addressing the situation of its urban poor becomes ever more urgent. According to the World Bank, urban poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon. Overall, poverty has impacted over a thousand million urban dwellers throughout the world. The urban poor live with many deprivations. Their daily challenges may include;

• limited access to employment opportunities and income,
• inadequate and insecure housing and services,
• violent and unhealthy environments,
• little or no social protection mechanisms, and
• limited access to adequate health and education opportunities.

The International Forum on Urban Poverty (IFUP) was created in 1996 to address the issue. Among its objectives were:

• To raise international awareness on the need to reduce and eradicate poverty from the cities, and to improve the existing level of understanding of the mechanisms of exclusion and its consequences
• To promse integrated policies for the reduction and eradication of urban poverty, based on the principles of the Recife Declaration on Urban Poverty and on the UN-HABITAT Agenda.
• To develop the capacity to initiate, formulate, negotiate, and implement urban poverty reduction policies and activities among the members of the Forum.

In 2001, UN HABITAT sponsored a conference titled “Productive and inclusive cities, towards cities for all.” This conference addressed concerns about a “concentrated demographic growth” found in cities that attributes to accelerated urbanization, neglected infrastructures, and deficient urban financing.

At that conference a number of recommendations were made:

• The necessity of building coalitions and alliances in the struggle against poverty, as well as policies which favor partnerships integrating economic development, urban services and governance
• The importance of policies centered on the human person, such as campaigns launched by UN-HABITAT on good governance and on property and residential security
• The reinforcement of technical assistance offered by the international community to local municipalities and governments. In this field, UN-HABITAT- in its role as coordinator- encourages the coherence between public policies aimed at providing decent housing for all, and sustainable urban development.

This problem has been discussed and debated. Now, the challenge falls to you- what actions will you take in order to ensure the growing problem of urban poverty is addressed? How will you go beyond what UN-HABITAT has already done?



1. The World Bank
2. “Report of the Fourth International Forum on Urban Poverty.”