UN-HABITAT Governing Council opens
Nairobi, 4 April, 2005 – The 20th session of the
Governing Council of UN-HABITAT opened on Monday with a special tribute
to the late Pope John Paul II and a call on governments to beef up support
for the Millennium pledges to fight poverty with all its ramifications
for slum dwellers and other poor people around the world.
That call was echoed by the keynote speakers, President Mwai Kibaki of
Kenya who formally opened the proceedings, Ms. Wangari Maathai, the 2004
Nobel peace laureate and Kenya’s Assistant Minister of the Environment,
Mr. Klaus Toepfer, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Director-General
of the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON) who also serves as Executive-Director
of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka,
United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-HABITAT.
Mrs. Anna Tibaijuka, warned the government ministers and representatives
of the 58 countries on the Governing Council that Target 11 of Millennium
Development Goal 7 - improving the living conditions of at least 100 million
slum dwellers by the year 2020o – was not ambitious enough and had
to be revised upwards. This quest would be a high priority on the agenda
of the meeting, which will last until Friday.
“The death of Pope John Paul II has gripped us all,” she
said citing the example of non-violence and peace he set, not only for
Catholic Christians, but the world as a whole. She read a message from
UN Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, hailing the late John Paul as someone
who enshrined through his voice the principles of the United Nations and
its goals.
In his formal message to the Governing Council which meets every two
years to oversee UN-HABITAT and set its work programme, Mr Annan referred
to the eight Millennium Development Goals: “This Governing Council
will play a crucial role on an important part of that agenda: keeping
the promise that world leaders have made to improve the lives of 100 million
slum dwellers by the year 2020. Today, more people live in urban areas
than ever before. And nearly 30 percent of that population – 1 billion
– are slum dwellers. Cities hold great potential as engines of growth
and social development. Yet they are also bastions of inequality –
in terms of health and living conditions, employment opportunities and
the crime and insecurity people routinely face.”
He added: “As you set the work programme and budget for the 2006-2007
biennium, I urge you to do your part to strengthen the capacity of local
authorities, and to involve civil society in policy-making and implementation.
I hope you will also see the wisdom in strengthening the UN Habitat and
Human Settlements Foundation, which can contribute to our struggle against
urban poverty.”
After his message was read, Ms. Maathai took the floor, following brief
remarks by Mr. Paul Okwaro, President of the United Nations Nairobi Staff
Union. She said governments and communities themselves had to take collective
responsibility for protecting the built and the natural environment.
“The Governing Council of UN-HABITAT has the responsibility of
initiating measures and steering humankind towards action-oriented solutions
on the challenges that we are facing relating to our built up environment.
.You are charged with this responsibility as part of a larger mission
to ensure the substance and development of humanity,” she said.
Ms. Maathai said it was time the organisation steered towards a clear
path in which its normative and operational activities make an effective
contribution towards the challenges of the day.
“As you take stock of what has been achieved since you last met
and as you charted the way forward, it is important to take cognisance
of the fact that more than ever before UN-HABITAT cannot afford to remain
in the margins of change. The agenda of the man-made environment, or what
you call human settlements, impinges on most of the priority issues of
the day: Be it disaster and post-conflict reconstruction; poverty reduction
strategies; democratic governance or financing urban development,”
Ms. Maathai said.
“The agency has to take its rightful position in shaping these
agenda issues and in contributing to modalities of interventions,”
she added. “UN-HABITAT, and you as members of the Governing Council
have a major responsibility. You have been entrusted with the dreams of
millions of people in the world – the dream of adequate shelter
for all and of sustainable human settlements development in an urbanising
and a globalising world. It is a gigantic task, but it all part of our
collective responsibility within a larger movement of saving humanity
and uplifting our collective welfare.”
Mr. Toepfer, citing the huge impact of cities on their surrounding environment,
said conservation had to be at the centre of decision making if the world
was to confront what he called the biggest threat to environment.
In today’s rapidly urbanising world, he said, “the natural
habitat depends on cities. Cities do not exist in a vacuum.” Urging
the Council to support UN-HABITAT and its many joint projects with UNEP
around the world, he reminded the gathering that Mrs. Tibaijuka had recently
been honoured as a Foreign Member of the prestigious Royal Swedish Academy
of Agriculture and Forestry, and as a Commissioner of the Commission for
Africa established by the British Prime Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, to bring
African concerns to the agenda of the Group of Eight industrialised nations.
In her keynote addresses, Tibaijuka said the MDG target on slums was
simply not realistic because it would require improving the lives of not
just 5 million slum dwellers per year until 2020, but more than 30 million
per year if the international community is to reverse the developing world’s
headlong plunge into urban poverty.
“Clearly, Target 11 of the MDGs is far too modest an absolute number
and presents only a single global figure without country benchmarks. Individual
countries have no way of determining what is their share of the targeted
100 million people,” she said.
“It is for practical reasons that you will be considering this
week a revision to Millennium Development Goal 7, Target 11 – a
revision that would make it proportionate to the slum problem in each
country. We are proposing the target be revised to say: “halve,
between 1990 and 2020, the proportion of slum dwellers in the urban population.”
This wording makes Target 11 equal, in effect, to other MDG targets and
allows each country to understand the scope of its responsibility, after
first determining the scope of the problem. I trust that, after proper
deliberation, this august assembly will forward my recommendation to the
CSD 13 and to the MDG Summit + 5,” she said.
Mrs. Tibaijuka also said MDG target 10 on halving the number of people
without adequate water and sanitation, was no less important because human
health and life depends on clean drinking water and proper solid waste
and sewage management and that a large part of the agency’s work
programme was centred on water and sanitation improvements in Africa and
Asia.
“As the developing world becomes urbanized, the struggle to achieve
the MDG targets for slums, water and sanitation will have to be waged
in human settlements – in our cities, towns and villages –
where priorities are set and action can be coordinated and managed. It
is at this level that national policy becomes an operational reality.
Local authorities are both closer to the problems and closer to the people
affected. This argument is fundamental to our continued advocacy for subsidiarity
and decentralization to the local level. This is also the message that
we brought to the twelfth session of the Commission on Sustainable Development
(CSD12) last year and will bring to CSD 13, which will again be addressing
the theme of water, sanitation and human settlements. Following your deliberations
this week, it is my desire that CSD13 will receive a clear message from
this Governing Council that UN-HABITAT – the United Nations Human
Settlements Programme – must be intimately involved in the follow-up
to policy recommendations of CSD13,” she said.
UN-HABITAT’s work in helping create cities without slums was taking
the agency and its partners deeper into the lives of the urban poor than
ever before. At this level, UN-HABITAT was confronted with the impact
of local and national policy, trade and aid on peoples’ lives, Mrs.
Tibaijuka said.
Alluding to the G8 and other forthcoming international meetings of the
United Nations and other international bodies, she added: “Our target
is the urban poor. But our main audience remains the policy-maker at each
level who bears the power and authority to improve the lives of the poor
by providing resources and by removing barriers.”
The last keynote speaker, President Mwai Kibaki, told the audience that
Africa was faced with the additional challenge of civil conflicts and
the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which he said, was threatening to reverse previous
gains in health and economic sectors.
“I am gratified to note that one of the special themes during this
session of the Governing Council of UN-HABITAT will focus on post conflicts
and disasters mitigation. I hope that the outcome of the deliberations
will contribute significantly towards reducing the impact of disasters
particularly in developing countries,” Mr. Kibaki said.
He appealed to development partners to help achieve some of the objectives
of reducing poverty, and reminded donor nations of their commitment at
the UN conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico in
2002 when they pledged 0.7 percent of their GNP for official development
assistance.
“In addition, the international community should implement debt
relief, debt swaps and debt cancellation where appropriate, as a means
of mobilizing resources towards accelerating realization of the Millennium
Development Goals on water, sanitation and human settlements,” he
said.
In its first order of formal business on Monday, the Governing Council
thanked the outgoing Chair, Ambassador Bo Goransson of Sweden. Mr Petr
Kopriva, who serves as Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Kenya and UN-HABITAT,
was elected the new chair for a two-year term.
Those serving as vice-chairs are: Ambassador Rosalinda Velenton of the
Philippines for Asia, Ambassador Jose Luis Casal of Argentina for Latin
America and the Caribbean, Ambassador Bernd Braun of Germany for Europe.
Ambassador Edna Deimi Tobi of Nigeria was elected as the African vice-chair
and Rapporteur of the Governing Council.
For further information, please contact: Sharad
Shankardass, Spokesperson & Head, Press & Media Relations Unit,
or Ms. Zahra Hassan, Media Liaison, Tel: (254 20) 623153, 623151, Fax:
624060, E-mail: habitat.press@unhabitat.org,
Website: www.unhabitat.org
|