AS WRITTEN

Statement by Dr. Wally N'Dow
Secretary-General Habitat II
United Nations Conference on Human Settlements

at the World Summit for Social Development 
Copenhagen, Denmark 9 March 1995


Mr. Chairman,
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

 It is a great privilege and honour for me to appear before this important 
meeting of distinguished world leaders gathered here to address some of the 
most critical issues that will carry over from this century to the next. 
Indeed, what you say and do here will have a profound influence on the 
course of events for generations to come.

 Before I continue, however, I want to add my voice to the many before me -
- and I am sure the many that will follow -- in paying tribute to His 
Excellency Juan Somavia and to Under- Secretary-General Nitin Desai and 
Under-Secretary-General Ismat Kittani for the uniquely distinctive roles 
they have played in giving life and meaning to this Conference. They have 
truly been the catalysts for this World Summit for Social Development, and 
I congratulate them, as I do all of you.

 I also want to say a word about my pleasure in being here in this 
beautiful city of Copenhagen. There is something poetic about it being the 
site of a Conference dedicated to helping people the world over lead 
better, happier lives. For Copenhagen, after all, is the home of Hans 
Christian Andersen and the fairy tale, the lovely, imaginative stories that 
enchanted so many of us when we were growing up. Today, however, most 
children may never hear of Hans Christian Andersen, certainly not in the 
poverty-stalked villages and hamlets or squalid urban ghettoes and 
shantytowns where more and more of them are now being born. How to change 
that -- how to bring the magic and beauty of a Hans Christian Andersen and 
a fulfilling future into their lives -- is our job, and history will judge 
us by what we do about it.

 I need not tell this Conference the scope of its challenge, nor need I 
repeat the harsh statistics that have contributed to the urgency of the 
task before you. But I do want to reiterate that unless we take the steps 
essential to help reduce and ultimately eradicate the grinding poverty that 
afflicts so much of humanity, unless we start a process that will 
significantly expand productive employment, unless we move vigorously and 
decisively to do away with the disaffection that now tears at society, we 
may well doom the new century to even greater alienation, more social 
conflict and wider human suffering than anything we have experienced up to 
now. In a world irrevocably bound up in every aspect of its planetary life 
-- from the economy to information to the environment -- failure is an 
outcome we dare not chance.

 I speak to you today in my capacity as Secretary-General of Habitat II, 
the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, that will be held in 
Istanbul, Turkey in June 1996. And I know I speak for our host country in 
extending a most cordial invitation to everyone here to join us 16 months 
from now in what will be both the last of a remarkable continuum of United 
Nations Conferences held in the decade of the 90's and, indeed, the last UN 
Conference of the century.

 Put together, these Conferences are providing us with a more holistic, a 
more humane message about our global problems and about the co-operative 
solutions they require if we are to succeed in implementing the Agenda for 
Development that Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali has made a 
priority for the United Nations and that, in essence, is at the heart of 
what this Conference is trying to accomplish

 It is in Istanbul that the challenges we face in these closing years of 
the century will, literally, all come home. The actions already adopted in 
Rio at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, in 
Vienna at the International Conference on Human Rights, and in Cairo at the 
International Conference on Population and Development, the decisions that 
you make here at this World Social Summit, and the ones still to be made in 
Beijing at the Fourth World Conference on Women -- our aim is to integrate 
them all with what we finally do in Istanbul at Habitat II. For together 
they are our road map to the future.

 Habitat II is where humanity's interrelationship with nature and the 
environment, its commitment to Agenda 21 and sustainable development, will 
be at the centre of attention, where two overriding themes -- adequate 
shelter for all and sustainable human settlements development in an 
urbanizing world -- will set the stage for realizing a central hope of the 
United Nations Charter: a better life in larger freedom in a world of peace 
and equity .

 Mr. Chairman, the backdrop against which we must view our labours is that 
of a world unlike any history has ever known. In just another decade, it 
will be a world in which most of us will, for the first time ever, be 
living in overcrowded cities and other teeming urban centres, too many 
with- failing infrastructures, too many massive agglomerations of a size 
never before known, too many with ugly ghettoes and sprawling shantytowns 
packed with more people than the original cities to which they are 
attached.

 By the year 2015 more than half the population of developing countries 
will be urban, doubling from the 1.7 billion of today to more than 3.5 
billion by the year 2020. The rural population of developing countries, 
meanwhile, will decline as more and more stream to the city finding little 
employment opportunity or even a place to call home. With land prices 
soaring, the cost of housing is beyond the reach of most, and the poor are, 
in every sense of the word, locked out. In short, while the cities of the 
past were symbols of progress and prosperity, the cities of today are 
increasingly becoming the living environment of the poor, a process best 
characterized as the urbanization of poverty.

 In saying this, I must caution against any lessening of our concern for 
all who live in inadequate, unsafe shelter, no matter where: in burgeoning, 
overcrowded cities or in decaying, economically stagnant rural areas. 
Whether it is homelessness, life and health threatening housing conditions, 
a lack of basic services such as piped or potable water, elementary 
sanitation, or health care -- everywhere, urban or rural the poor are at 
risk; everywhere, urban or rural, women suffer the most.

 Already more than one billion people are affected, and despite the efforts 
of national and local governments, the private sector, non-governmental 
organizations, community-based organizations and international 
organizations over the last decades, the absolute number of homeless and 
those living in dwellings unfit for human habitation keeps going up. From 
what we see in many countries of the developing world, the indication is 
that the housing supply is not even able to cater to half the annual 
demand. The irony here is that even as we seek an end to disaffection, we 
are laying the foundation for even more. Shelter is much more than a roof 
over your head -- it is a centrepiece of social stability. Shelter is a 
human right fundamental to civilization itself.

 But the grim forecast is that when the 21st century ends there will be 
more people compressed into teeming urban areas than are alive on the 
entire planet today. We cannot wait until then. That would be a serious 
mistake, one threatening the poor and the homeless more than any other 
element of society. It is a threat as big as the new urban world order, and 
unless we act to avert it, it may well trigger a global division between 
rich and poor, with implications at least as dangerous as any we faced 
during the Cold War. We have crossed a critical threshold and if left 
unaddressed, the deteriorating social structure in all too many urban areas 
can only lead to political paralysis and the abject failure of economic as 
well as social development.

 There are no quick or easy answers to our dilemma. But I would like to 
suggest that governments may wish to consider intervening decisively to 
remove some of the constraints that keep the poor poor. And perhaps the 
first target should be a revisiting of property rights. In the past there 
have been calls for land reform to improve the lot of the rural poor. Now 
we need land reform in urban areas as well. And when we consider the masses 
of people involved, the issue takes on an urgency that will not be denied.

 It is here in particular that the eradication of poverty is not only a 
matter of morals or the avoidance of conflict. It is also a matter of 
economic logic. The existence of unemployment, underemployment, illiteracy, 
poor health and social exclusion implies under utilization of productive 
resources. Nowhere is this more evident than in the human settlements in 
which the poor live -- the human settlements that, in the final analysis, 
are the setting for all of our developmental concerns and efforts.

 And I know you will forgive me if I take pride here in the unique 
partnerships that we in Habitat have entered into with cooperating 
programmes and agencies of the UN system. The rational and sustainable 
management of urban development is at the centre of a global effort in 
which Habitat, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank 
provide municipal governments in all the developing regions with the 
expertise they need to meet many of their critical problems. In addition, 
the World Bank and Habitat have joined forces in setting up a programme of 
urban indicators as a diagnostic tool for their housing and urban 
development policies.

 In much the same manner, we are working with the International Labour 
Organization, United Nations Volunteers and UNDP in an innovative Urban 
Poverty Partnership Programme in which we seek to provide policymakers 
practical solutions to employment creation and poverty eradication. I also 
take pleasure in announcing a new publication, "Shelter Provision and 
Employment Generation" that ILO and Habitat are launching here as a major 
contribution to the World Social Summit. We hope it will help illuminate 
your discussion -- and decisions.

 Mr. Chairman, we stand on the brink of a world as radically changed as 
that which confronted the framers of the U.N. Charter when they met in San 
Francisco in the waning days of the Second World War. Our task at this 
Conference is to make sure that the United Nations, as it celebrates its 
fiftieth birthday, remains adequate to the task of confronting the rising 
threats to human security, real security, that face the world today.

 It is this same human security that motivates us as we prepare for Habitat 
II. And if we are to achieve it, we can no longer just talk about 
deteriorating cities and decaying rural areas, we have to act. If all we 
will do at Habitat II is decry the situation, we may as well not go to 
Istanbul. The job confronting us -- even as the job confronting this Social 
Summit - cannot be done by cursing the darkness, or by telling the world 
what it already knows about the terrible crises confronting it.. The UN is 
sponsoring Habitat II -- even as it is sponsoring this Social Summit -- to 
find solutions in a global marketplace of shared ideas.

 This sharing of information, together with the building of partnerships 
between the public and private sectors and the community, is the moving 
force behind what we envisage as a Global Data Bank of Best Practices to 
which central and local governments, as well as the corporate and community 
sectors, can draw on as they search for new ideas, new forms of cooperation 
and workable solutions to the problems that confront them. And I hereby 
invite all governments, all municipalities, all communities to join with us 
in setting up this Data Bank. It will succeed only to the extent that you 
contribute to it.

 I want to close by telling you that the problems we face are critical, but 
they are not insurmountable. Hard, yes. Impossible to solve, no. The 
reconceptualization of the global agenda that is called for by the impact 
of a global urban civilization, however, is not a task that can be 
completed by Habitat alone. We will -- we must -- draw on the efforts of 
those such as yourselves, who, although perhaps starting from different 
perspectives, engage many of the same issues and offer valuable insight as 
well as program and policy innovations for us to consider if we are to 
successfully address all the dimensions of this issue, if we are to live 
together in our neighbourhoods -- in megacity or tiny hamlet -- in human 
solidarity.

 The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements is just 16 months away. 
As we start down the road leading to it -- the road that began in Rio -- we 
must begin the journey in our own cities, the same cities, towns, 
townships, and hamlets where our journey will end. On the way, all our 
individual lives will be touched in one way or another. For together these 
settlements are the sources of civilization, propelling not just our 
economic development, but our social interaction and cultural attainments, 
the very humanity that helps give meaning and hope to life itself.

 Mr. Chairman, Your Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and 
Gentlemen, this not a North-South issue. It is in the interest of every 
nation, no matter where in the world, rich or poor, to see to it that our 
human habitats -- from the smallest to the largest -are made safe and 
liveable. That is the only way we will be able to pass on to our children 
an urban world that can sustain them in harmony, an urban world rid of the 
shameful poverty, the inequality, the discrimination that still pervades 
its ghettoes, an urban world at peace with the environment and with itself.

 This is our collective challenge.