The main
outcome of the 1996 Recife International
Meeting on Urban Poverty meeting was the
adoption of the "Recife
Declaration", which called for a
fundamental change in attitude and policy to
confront urban poverty and received the
backing of mayors, ministers, spiritual
leaders and representatives of multilateral
and bilateral development institutions. It
was further endorsed at the Habitat II
Conference. The proposed follow-up mechanism
to the "Recife Declaration" was
the International Forum on Urban Poverty. It
was conceived as an international network
for the discussion of the causes,
characteristics and consequences of urban
poverty, and of the policies and strategies
needed for its reduction. The Forum was
designed as a partnership of the key
stakeholders at the local, national,
regional and international levels. The Forum
organised the international conferences of
Florence (1997) and Nairobi (1999).
Objective
The general objective of the Forum is to
empower people living in poverty to overcome
their conditions with the support of civil
society and governments at local, regional
and national levels. The specific objective
are:
a. To raise international awareness on the
need to reduce and eradicate poverty from
the cities, and to improve the existing
level of understanding of the mechanisms of
exclusion and its consequences.b.
To promote integrated policies for the
reduction and eradication of urban poverty,
based on the principles of the Recife
Declaration on Urban Poverty and on the
Habitat Agenda.
c. To develop the capacity to initiate,
formulate, negotiate and implement urban
poverty reduction policies and activities
among the members of the Forum.
Modus operandi of the Forum
The IFUP is a non-hierarchical organisation
owned and driven by its members. Though not
structurally part of the UN system, it
expresses a new form of relationship and
work style involving UNCHS and that part of
the international community that, while
working for the eradication of poverty,
choose the human settlements as the entry
point for this endeavour.
Members of the Forum could be a group, a
city, an institution, an NGO, an
organisation such as Habitat, a
municipality, etc. Common grounds for
membership are subscription to the
"Recife Declaration" and
commitment to its implementation through the
Forum's agenda. The Coordinating Committee
includes representatives from NGOs, the
Huairou Commission, WACLAC, of cities
hosting the Forum Conferences, national and
city governments, bilateral and
international organisations such as the
World Bank and UNDP, Regional Forums. The
Focal Point, located at UNCHS (Habitat),
coordinates the work of the Forum.
The 4th meeting will analyse,
inter alia, recommendations made by the UN
Economic and Social Council and UN
Commission on Human Settlements to merge the
International Forum on Urban Poverty and the
Urban Environment Forum into a consolidated
Urban Forum to be launched in 2002.
|
