By Yves Cabannes
Cities
are expanding and so is urban poverty. However, emerging regional trends
indicate that the profile of poverty is different today from what it
was 10 or 20 years ago. These new trends have to be taken into account
when adjusting human settlements development policies and poverty eradication
programmes to intra-regional differences. One of the key issues for
the urban poor in Latin America and the Caribbean is the notion of exclusion.
In October 2000, some 300 representatives from 33 countries, mostly
from Latin America, met in Mexico City for the World Assembly of Urban
Dwellers to "rethink the city from our perspective and to have
our voice be heard". In addition to the lively exchanges, visits
to neighbourhoods, dances and spontaneous bursts of laughter, the meeting
was very different in style from conventional conferences in that it
provided urban poor leaders an international forum to present ideas
from their own perspective.
 |
| Photo/Horst
Rutsch |
The World Assembly of Urban Dwellers made it clear that most of the
representatives of social movements in the region reject the term poverty
and prefer to speak of exclusion. According to Martin Longoria, member
of the Continental Front of Community Organizations and the Continental
Cry of the Excluded (see box on page 46), the difference is quite clear:
"Poverty for us refers to a level of access to goods, while exclusion
refers to the level of access to our rights".
First priority is not the struggle for access to land or housing, but
for "citizens' rights" as a whole. Still, individual members
of the movement are generally active in one or more specific dimensions
of exclusion. They fight for the voice of the excluded to be heard,
especially when policies at the local or national level are defined.
Mr. Longoria continues: "You know what is the opposite of exclusion
for us? It is not inclusion, but participation. Active participation
is what makes you a full citizen."
Experience clearly indicates that poverty eradication starts with listening
to the poor, giving them a chance and supporting their initiatives.
The Regional Office of the Urban Management Programme (UMP), executed
by the United Nations Development Programme and UNCHS (Habitat), has
developed a set of activities that aim to secure the active participation
of the excluded.
Participation in the Regional Consultative Forum. Movements representing
the interests of the excluded and the urban poor participate in the
Regional Consultative Forum of UMP, where they are equal partners with
UN specialized agencies, international organizations, such as the International
Union of Local Authorities and the Confederation of Credit Unions, and
the most active regional networks of universities, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and researchers. UMP reports to the Forum, which
guides the Programme's activities. All partners have underlined the
importance of this unique forum because of the diversity of views expressed.
Urban Pact. In each of the 40 city consultations and many other projects,
organized expressions of the urban poor are formally part of the inter-partner
agreements. This kind of "urban pact" defines the objectives,
activities and obligations of the local governments, as well as those
of the peoples' organizations and other partners; these may vary from
city to city.
Entering practical partnerships. The joint objective of all partners
is to explore, legitimize and strengthen forms of participatory urban
governance as a means to formulating policies and initiating projects
which fight poverty and exclusion. So far, dialogues at regional and
city levels have led to some concrete partnerships:
o Setting up in Santo André, Brazil an inclusion and exclusion
map as a management tool for reducing social and physical inequities;
o Co-managing funds for microcredit in Ecuador, leveraging municipal
resources in Quito, Belem and Maracaibo;
o Improving land management and regularization in cities with
a high proportion of migrants or displaced people, in Leon and Belize;
o Developing multicultural and pluralistic action plans that
include indigenous people (in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala) or youth (in
Cotacachi, Ecuador, and Barra Mansa, Brazil).
Service institutions as regional partners. Various service NGOs, such
as FEDEVIVIENDA in Colombia, are actively involved with grass-roots
organizations and communities to tackle poverty and have become the
regional partners of UMP in the region. The role of UMP is to strengthen
their capacities, give legitimacy to their common practice and widen
their dialogue with local governments, so that the development programmes
in the region are sustained, ultimately, by the activities of the poor
themselves.
| The
Excluded Are Finding a Voice |
Despite
the deepening economic crisis, the excluded have never been
so organized, both at local and global levels, as today. Some
drastic changes are occurring, not only in terms of their numbers,
but also with regard to concrete proposals, resistance strategies
or forms of organization. Moreover, there is a radical questioning
of the notion of poverty by the people themselves. Following
are some of the most powerful voices from the excluded poor:
o The Continental Cry of the Excluded (Grito Continental
de Los Excluidos). This is the most powerful and innovative
initiative in the region. Starting in the 1990s as a campaign
in Brazil, the "Cry" is increasingly heard by the
excluded throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, as well
as the United States. One of the most innovative features of
the movement has been to unite diverse organizations with different
areas of focus under the same motto: "Work, Justice and
Life". This broad-based union of urban people, peasants
and indigenous groups has already managed to mobilize no less
than 12 million people.
o The Continental Front of Community Organizations (Frente
Continental de las Organizaciones Comunales). The urban force
behind the Cry of the Excluded is the Continental Front of Community
Organizations (FCOC), which since 1987 has been working to strengthen
the communication among grass-roots organizations in the region.
Representatives from most Latin American countries meet every
two years to share experiences, analyze emerging trends and
define new platforms for struggle.
o The Latin American Secretariat for "Peoples"
Housing (Secretaría Latino Americana de Vivienda Popular).
Another initiative, which since the mid-1990s focuses on access
to housing and access to land, is the Latin American Secretariat
for "Peoples" Housing (SELVIP). Uniting housing and
tenants' movements in the region, mainly from large cities,
such as São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Bogotá,
SELVIP gathers a range of members with a long history of "social
housing development", and regularly serves as a forum for
the exchange of ideas and strategies for action and lobbying.
o The Habitat International Coalition. Since the first
Habitat Conference in Vancouver in 1976, the Habitat International
Coalition (HIC) has been particularly active in the region and
has gone beyond its original focus on housing and land to include
activities at city level. HIC serves as an innovative forum,
connecting national and international non-governmental organizations
with community-based organizations and social movements.
o GROOTS, a collective of grass-roots women, focuses
on the gender dimensions of urban poverty, in particular its
consequences on women and children.
|
|
|
|
Yves
Cabannes is Regional
Coordinator of the UNDP/UNCHS Urtban Management Programme in
Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Quito, Ecquador.
|
|
Who are
the Poor in Latin America?
 |
| Photo/Horst
Rutsch |
Emerging trends
in Latin America and the Caribbean indicate that the profile of
the urban poor is changing:
o A majority of the urban poor in the region are of African
descent. In Brazil, for instance, there are some 70 million Afro-Brazilians-most
of them urban and poor. Less than 2 per cent of them attain university-level
education.
o Indigenous populations constitute 25 per cent of the
poor, despite the fact they represent only about 8 per cent of
the region's population. Often those who live in cities are "invisible"
to official statistics and policies. Mexico City, the region's
largest city, is home to an estimated half a million indigenous
people who still speak over 50 different languages. In Chile,
400,000 of an estimated 1 million Mapuches live in the capital
city of Santiago.
o There is an emerging class of "new poor"-people
who once had a formal job and a middle-class lifestyle, but now
exist outside the formal and welfare systems. This massive exclusion
is the result of dramatic modernization and privatization processes,
which caused many of the "new poor" to lose the solidarity
networks that existed in cities for survival and sustenance. Recent
reports indicate that Argentina, once a model welfare State, now
has at least 10 million poor people.
|
|
