In a time of rapid urbanisation, cities are experiencing increasing difficulties responding to the needs of their growing populations and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is widening.  Cramped into informal settlements and slum areas, a growing number of urban poor lack even the most basic services and infrastructure, while living under constant threats of crime, environmental degradation and forced evictions.  This concentration of poverty in urban areas has become known as the “urbanisation of poverty.”

However, it is clear that urbanisation is a process that will continue well into the 21^st Century: it has been estimated that the world’s urban population will double to more than five billion by 2025, with 90% of the increase taking place in the developing world.  While this clearly poses a number of policy challenges on local, national and international levels, it should be noted that it is not urbanisation in and of itself which is the source of the problems of urban poverty.  Rather, these are a result of the ineffective or even corrupt way in which urbanisation is often managed by the authorities and the lack of political will to invest in improving the living conditions for those living in poverty.  Corruption and bad governance, weak administrative and institutional structures and lack of financial resources further add to the process of marginalisation and social exclusion of the urban poor.

UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) is striving to become the city agency of the United Nations, dealing with the human settlement challenges of today’s urbanising world. Responding to the social, political and economic challenges posed by urbanisation, Habitat has recently launched a Global Campaign for Secure Tenure.  The Campaign is part of Habitat’s overall strategy to promote Adequate Shelter for All, and is meant to turn the strategy into practice by helping the urban poor break free from the vicious cycle of poverty and forced evictions.

The Global Campaign for Secure Tenure is one of Habitat’s major tools with which to contribute to poverty reduction.  The decision to focus on secure tenure stems from the catalytic effect the extension of secure tenure has. In fact, availability of secure tenure is often considered the most crucial factor for access to and control over land and property.  This is essential, not only because land is a key economic resource in and of itself, but because it is a tool to gain access to other kinds of resources as well.  In other words, in ensuring access of the poor to secure tenure, the Campaign will not only improve their access to shelter and infrastructure, but also lead to improvements in health, employment, economic activity and political empowerment.  Due to all these positive ripple effects, the Campaign can be seen as a bridge to bring the urban poor into the formal city and to reduce poverty in the cities.

Secure tenure can serve to reduce urban poverty in a number of different ways.  First, the legal protection that secure tenure provides allows urban dwellers to adopt a long-term perspective as regards their land or property, giving them the incentive to invest time, labour and capital in order to improve their living conditions or to raise economic output.  In informal settlements, by contrast, the lack of enforceable, justiciable right of access to and control over the land, combined with the constant threat of eviction, prevent any such long-term investment and traps communities in slum conditions. 

Second, because secure tenure can be used as collateral for loans, the Campaign for Secure Tenure will also serve to improve the access of the poor to credit.  In fact, for this section of the urban population, with only minimal disposable income, this security is an essential, and perhaps the only, means with which to gain access to capital, which is an essential resource of economic development and poverty reduction. 

Third, the Campaign for Secure Tenure can contribute to raising the status of those living in informal settlements and improving their access to local and community decision-making.  Such increased participation is a key element of political empowerment, which in turn is a step towards reduced urban poverty.  Bridging the gap between the informal and the formal city, the Campaign can also serve to bring the poor into the formal labour market and improve their chances of employment.

Lastly, when dwellers have access to secure tenure, their land and property become a source of wealth and investment in their own right, with increasing value over time.  Experience has shown that the granting of secure tenure actually increases the value of the land and property, while the insecure tenure of informal settlements keeps the land economically undervalued and prevents dwellers from reaping the economic benefits from the land on which they live. 

In addition, insecure tenure contributes to the marginalisation of women, because women spend more of their time in their homes and are more vulnerable to sub-standard housing, lack of infrastructure and the threat of forced evictions.  Recognising that poverty reduction strategies will fail as long as they do not succeed in empowering women, the Campaign for Secure Tenure has been designed on the principle that access to secure tenure must be centred on gender equality and the specific empowerment of women.  Given the much-publicised process of the feminisation of poverty, it is clear that such an approach must be at the heart of any poverty reduction strategy.

In short, the lack of secure tenure denies the poor access to a key tool with which to improve their own lives, keeping them outside the formal city and further marginalising them from the development process.  Considering the enormous positive impact of extending secure tenure and formalising the right of those living in informal settlements, the Campaign for Secure Tenure has the potential of becoming a useful instrument in the battle against urban poverty.  But there are no magic solutions here: in order to have an impact, an instrument must first and foremost be used effectively. This is a challenge for all the stakeholders, Habitat and other UN agencies, national and local authorities, NGOs and CBOs, and the private sector.  The success of the Campaign depends on whether or not they will take on this enormous challenge.

Anna-Karin Jatfors
Intern, Land & Tenure Unit
Shelter Branch, UNCHS (Habitat)