The Florence Conference achieved the following results:
1.1 Introduction
At its first session on Monday 10 November 1997, the International Conference on "Governance and Participation: Practical Approaches to Urban Poverty Reduction", established a Task Force on the International Forum on Urban Poverty, and assigned to it the task of preparing the terms of reference for the future agenda of the Forum, including its objectives and appropriate structure to guide its activities. To this end, the Task Force was composed of a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Italy, Ms. Marina Vaccari; of the Municipality of Florence, Ms. Paola Pannini; of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ms. Françoise Lieberherr; of the World Bank, Mr. John Flora; of UNDP Mr. Mohand Cherifi; of UNICEF, Ms. Ximena de la Barra; of Habitat International Coalition, Mr. Kirtee Shah; of Huairou Commission, Ms. Anne Michaud; of the working group on urban violence, Mr. Claude Vezina and Ms. Sizakele Nkosi; of the working group on informal city, Mr. Edmundo Werna and Ms. Maria Arce; and of the working group on urban transport, Mr. John Howe and Ms. Geetam Tiwari. The Task Force was serviced by UNCHS (Habitat).
After a total of six meetings which debated the mission of the International
Forum on Urban Poverty, the policy principles of the Forum, its future
activities, alternative proposals for its structure, as well as future
perspectives for the Forum, the Task Force submits the present report to
the Conference.
1.2 The Mission of the International Forum
on Urban Poverty
The central mission of the Forum is to promote and provide international, national and local support to partnership action by its members at the local level, in order to empower people living in poverty to overcome their conditions and to enable governments at all levels to support this process. For this purpose, the International Forum provides a framework for consultations, consensus-building, exchange of experience, provision of technical advice, capacity-building and monitoring. A core function of the Forum is to raise international awareness on the need to reduce and eradicate poverty in urban areas, and advocate for the priority adoption of progressive policies on urban poverty, based on the policy principles of the Recife Declaration on Urban Poverty and the Habitat Agenda.
Accordingly, the key objectives of the International Forum on Urban Poverty are:
There was broad agreement that the multiple dimensions of urban poverty and the wide range of factors which cause and affect poverty in its different forms preclude the adoption of a global definition. Members of the Forum working at the local level are best qualified to determine the conditions of urban poverty. Also, the Task Force was aware that consequences of urban poverty affect people differently in terms of their deprivation and social exclusion. As an example, 70 per cent of persons living in poverty are women and girls.
Factors such as intra-urban disparities and gender inequalities are of fundamental importance in shaping policies for different groups: women, children, youth, ethnic minorities, the elderly and the disabled.
Democratic governance and participation are key policy principles for the future agenda of the Forum. Its focus shall be to include people living in poverty in all aspects of urban development, instead of operating charity-orientated programmes for the poor. Respect for human rights, empowerment and the democratic sharing of resources are fundamental principles for the goals of overcoming social exclusion and disparity. The achievement of gender equality is an essential condition for the reduction and eradication of urban poverty.
The policy principles of the International Forum on Urban Poverty are based on the Recife Declaration of March 1996 which recognized that ongoing processes of global economic restructuring strongly affect people living in poverty in urban areas. Therefore, policies on urban poverty cannot be formulated and applied at the city-level alone.
1.4 Activities of the Forum
The Forum has an action-oriented agenda which emphasizes tangible achievements. It is conceived as a structured network for the exchange of ideas and the promotion of policy reforms.
The Forum will seek out active partners to implement concrete activities, it is determined to have an impact on the lives of those living in poverty areas, and it is serious about evaluation of its own performance.
The Forum will pursue the above through undertaking activities consistent with its mission outlined in section 2, that is, awareness-raising, global exchange of knowledge and policy formulation.
Capacity-building is one of the most important elements of the Forum's activities and will target national and local government, CBOs, NGOs, and the private sector. One of the important ways it will do this is by working with capacity-building entities, engaging them as anchor institutions to assist target groups in undertaking their activities, and encouraging them to gear their training programmes to address urban poverty issues. Existing training networks will be utilized and they will be spurred to assist newly emergent institutions. These actions to support capacity-building institutions will apply across all the focus areas mentioned below.
In line with discussions held in Florence, the Forum will promote the use of gender and age perspectives in the action undertaken by its members in all areas. It proposes to support specific activities over the next 2 years in the following substantive areas.
Urban Safety and Crime Prevention
Activities will concentrate on specific partnership urban safety initiatives and specific measures targeting the prevention of violence against women and children, and youth violence; explore, through research and concept papers, the relationship between crime prevention, the role of the police, and governance; support the African Forum of Mayors on Urban Safety and the Johannesburg International Conference on Urban Safety; and use Safer Cities projects in Johannesburg (South Africa) and Cordoba (Argentina) for developing similar initiatives in other cities.
Access to Transport
Activities will focus on changing current practices to favour those which will promote the rights of people living in poverty, particularly women and children, in order to achieve equitable levels of accessibility. This will be done by ensuring the active participation of the poor in the transport planning process. The activities will include capacity-building of local groups by enhancing and extending Sustainable Transport Action Network for Asia and the Pacific (SUSTRANS) information exchange network; through provision of resources and technical assistance; and by developing gender-aware methodologies for planning and evaluating investment in transport infrastructure and other access promoting initiatives.
Shelter, Employment and the Informal City
Action to be undertaken will include integration of shelter and employment into a shared conceptual approach and operational format; promoting increased access to credit for women, small-scale producers and communities; and encouraging more progressive legal frameworks and administrative action relating to land, shelter, enterprise and lending institutions. It proposes to promote these initiatives through a strong advocacy role supported by a variety of innovative implementation initiatives. These may be carried out in Bangkok, Dakar, Delhi, Cape Town, Kampala, Kumasi, Nairobi, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.
Urban Children
To strengthen the existing Child-Friendly Cities Network, the Forum will promote the creation of a Child-Friendly Cities Resource and Information Facility which could act as the anchor for children, adolescents and youth in the Urban Poverty Forum.
In addition, the Huairou Commission proposes to emphasize the advocacy aspect of the Forum, particularly by building up the capacity of grassroots women's organizations and networks to participate as equal partners in urban poverty reduction initiatives. It will assist the Forum by campaigning for women's groups and CBOs to implement practical initiatives; for cities to undertake training to strengthen women's local leadership; and to encourage cities to engage in dialogue. National enabling legislation will be promoted.
1.5 Structure of the Forum
The Forum is a member-driven and member-owned organization that intends to be instrumental in making a real difference to the lives of those living in poverty. The Forum's membership will initially consist of the organizations and groups attending the Florence Conference but will be immediately open up to new members after its launch. This represents a wide constituency of support and a specific commitment to the policy principles and agenda for action described in sections 3 and 4 above.
A Coordinating Committee will be established from among representatives of the members, and will reflect a fair representation of stakeholder groups. It will include representation of NGOs (including the Huairou Commission), WACLAC, cities hosting the Forum's conferences, national and city governments from around the world, donors, and international poverty programmes. It will have a maximum of 12 members.
The Committee will endorse plans for the activities of the Forum, oversee membership criteria and arrangements, overview and validate urban poverty reduction policy formation, promote a specific agenda of advocacy on urban poverty issues to be pursued by its members, and facilitate effective networking.
A Focal Point will be established to service the needs of the Forum's members. It would report to the Coordinating Committee. Its role would be to help build the knowledge, and thus the capacity base of the Forum's membership. It would do this through facilitating communications between members and through exchange of experience. It can actively assist members in their lobby and advocacy on urban poverty issues. It will aim to become a dynamic centre of excellence in undertaking urban poverty reduction policy analysis and development, based on analysis and synthesis of experience of implementation activities undertaken by Forum members and evaluated by anchor institutions.
The Focal point will initially be established within Habitat in Nairobi, but not necessarily as a permanent facility. The location of the Focal point will be reviewed at the next international conference in two years time. One Habitat professional staff member will provide full time support, although additional resources will be provided by anchor institutions.
Anchor Institutions are essential actors in the process of capacity enhancement through policy development. Having an existing national, sub-regional or regional standing and capacity for policy analysis, they will have a close involvement in the design and evaluation of innovative implementation activities carried out by the Forum. Their findings will be the building blocks for urban poverty policy and tool development by the Forum's Focal Point. The anchor institution will modify and contextualize generic policy conclusions made by the Focal Point. These modifications and improvements will feed into operational activities at local level that will incorporate the new approaches.
Anchor institutions will supply staff to work in the Focal Point on
developing generic policy solutions, thus enhancing local input, ownership,
and likely utilization of findings.
1.6 Next steps
A number of issues remain to be resolved. Principles for expansion of membership, fees for membership, budgets, funding requirements, membership of the Coordinating Committee, and a detailed action plan are a few of the outstanding matters. Habitat will prepare a programme document that will address these matters and circulate it to all Forum members for comment. The programme document will adopt a modest, achievable and evolutionary approach that will provide a launching pad for the development of the Forum, rather than the finished article. The document will be the basis for mobilizing any required donor funding. A meeting of the Coordinating Committee will be held during the first half of 1998.
A state-of-the-art conference will be held in two years time, possibly
in Côte d'Ivoire (the venue is subject to confirmation). It will
concentrate on reviewing the experience of the activities described in
section 4. It will also set the scene for the Forum's activities for the
following 2 years.
2. The Project Document
UNCHS (Habitat) is coordinating the formulation of a project document to be reviewed by the co-ordinating committee. The document attempts to operationalize the ideas put forward by the task force, elaborating on the plans of action drafted by the different thematic groups and consolidating the organizational structure of the International forum. The document will be finalized during the second quarter of 1998, after which it will be submitted to the donors for funding. The important issue that the document is trying to resolve is where the topical Forum articulates its comparative advantage. The different networks that attended the Florence Conference highlighted the importance of avoiding duplication with other forums of networks and the need to be clear about what the Forum is contributing. The experience of other networks suggest a number of possible ways that the forum can organize itself and these are being actively examined by the secretariat.
The first possibility is to have the Forum organized around a formalized secretariat in UNCHS (Habitat) which takes the responsibility for supporting the different thematic groups and networks. Resources have to be mobilized for such a secretariat which utilizes existing skills in UNCHS (Habitat) to provide the substantive skills on the different thematic areas. The main criticism of this model is that it is too closely linked to the fate of UNCHS (Habitat) and is top down vis-à-vis the networks and the anchor institutions.
The second possibility is to have the Forum much more regionalized (Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, North America) and utilize the infrastructure of existing networks and programmes. For example, the UMP regional structure could form an important springboard for the Forum and utilize both the networks already developed. Many other programmes could possibly offer similar facilities and would be willing to support the Forum. The problem with this model is ensuring it is co-ordinated and porous enough to allow free entry of all potential networks and programmes.
The third possibility linked to both, focuses on the thematic groups as the nerve centres of the forum and their action plans reflecting the work plan and programme of the Forum. In many ways this is positive and ensures that the Forum is not a talking shop but poses a serious danger of each thematic group being a forum(which they are in many ways) and failing to justify the whole idea of an International Urban Poverty Forum. There is therefore a need to resolve the thematic versus the regional and versus the centralized forum. A choice has to be made which blends the positive aspects of each. The project document will resolve this very important issue.
3. Lessons for Governance and participation: practical approaches to urban poverty reduction
The four thematic groups - Urban safety and crime prevention; transport; shelter, employment and the informal city; and urban children developed plans of action which reflected on the practical options for addressing urban poverty. In all the cases the importance of good governance and participation was considered crucial to the actions of central government, local government and the other key stakeholders. The basic question which all the groups had to address was how the poor could benefit from their actions and the ways to involve the poor in shaping their destinies.
For improving urban safety the existence of a democratic and participatory system of governance was acknowledged as a precondition for managing crime prevention. Crime prevention at the local municipal and city levels required establishment of coalitions and partnerships between the local government, the police, the community and other interest groups. Only when all the key interest groups are involved is it possible to develop and implement crime prevention strategies. In many countries involvement of national government is crucial because of the centralized nature of the police, the judiciary and the management of the legal system as a whole. The goal of safer cities is closely intertwined with functional cities which have systems of governance that work, and where the communities are fully involved in the process of decision-making. This goal is also closely linked to poverty reduction in that poor cities are likely to breed crime as the majority of the population struggle to make a living.
In the area of shelter, employment and the informal city, the same precondition exists in terms of a democratic and participatory system of governance, in order to address the needs of the poor in terms of affordable shelter, creating employment and creating an enabling regulatory environment for the informal economy. First and foremost there is a need for an authority or authority in general which supports the creation and maintenance of the basic infrastructure needed by the poor. The workshop highlighted the importance of home-based enterprises, which are a reflection of the home being both a place of work and a place of living. These interrelationships had major implications for the planning and management of towns and cities. Since the 1960s the informalization of cities in the developing world was a major trend and the responses by governments and municipalities varied from complete tolerance of the phenomena to kick of intolerance resulting in regular harassment and demolitions of the residents and the settlements. Governance was therefore a key issue in defining the relationships between the state and authority and the civil society engaged in the informal sector.
Transport is a crucial element in determining the functionality of towns and cities. In a physical sense transport determines where people live and where developments and employment are likely to go. The poor are significantly affected by all these decisions because the cost of transport significantly affects their budgets. Governance is therefore crucial in determining all these key variables. In most cases decisions on transport are influenced by both the public and private sector, and the nature of regulation that exists affects safety, cost and affordability. The working group on transport clearly highlighted these issues and called for greater involvement in decision-making by the poor. The group also highlighted the need to take into account the different modes of transport and making sure that policy makers and planners supported them. The issue of maintenance was raised and the group highlighted the need to involve local community groups in the maintenance programmes of small-scale urban infrastructure.
Concerning children and urban poverty, it was noted that many thematic approaches tend to overlook the needs of children, who in most cases are not considered stakeholders. A child friendly strategy at city levels that promotes good governance has to promote local level partnerships where the needs of children are given top priority and local plans of action are developed. Participation of children in local development and governance has to be promoted through targetted civic education and ensuring that a certain minimum level of welfare is guaranteed.