PAKISTAN
KARACHI
January 2006

To build Lyarie Expressway, they have already demolished 11,000 houses, all bearing legal titles. Several thousand tax-paying commercial enterprises will also be destroyed. These, however, are just figures. Behind them, there is a human tragedy. HERE

Lyarie Expressway
Sindh High Court (SHC) orders government to redesign Lyari Expressway to Minimise Evictions  MORE
More on this on the URC Karachi web site here

INDONESIA

Freeway Evctions in Jakarta August 29 2007 here

- SHORT MEMORIES - UN-HABITAT -
How on earth does Jakarta's notorious Governor Sutyoso deserve a scroll of honour award from UN-HABITAT?
Go Here to refresh memories on his
War on the Poor in Jakarta
2001 to 2004  --  50,000 people evicted

INDIA    EVICTIONS
JANUARY 27 HERE
 
JAPAN   EVICTIONS
NAGOYA  JANUARY 24 HERE
 

Calcutta India
75,000 people evicted on Dec 15 2003  

Evictions and LAW

Cause for hope in the battle for living space in Asian cities

Fifteen years ago, 800,000 people were forcefully evicted from their homes in Seoul to "beautify" the city for the Olympic Games.  It was the worst situation the city's urban poor and their supporters had ever faced.   In the middle of this eviction crisis, a large number of grassroots groups and housing rights activists from all over Asia gathered in Korea to focus attention on these and other forced evictions happening in cities around Asia.  It was the first attempt to find ways for a regional network to assist a local housing struggle like this one.  It led to the first fact-finding mission, which opened the plight of Korea's urban poor to international attention, and it inspired the formation of ACHR.

Since then, a lot of serious work has gone into the eviction issue, helping millions to secure land, housing and infrastructure, and getting government and development institutions to acknowledge that the poor have to be part of the urban development process in Asian cities. 

But that doesn't mean the evictions have stopped.  Sadly, they are increasing algebraically, causing a colossal displacement of people around the globe.  Here in Asia, hefty contributions to the global eviction statistics are being made courtesy of speculation, market forces, urban development and infrastructure projects.   There is more than ever an urgent need to find workable alternatives to this most impoverishing practice, which is the antithesis of development. 

As professionals,  we can gather and disseminate information about evictions, organize letter-writing and media campaigns to express outrage, citing all the UN covenants.  But what do poor communities do?  How do they manage when the bulldozers come?  And how, when they are supported, linked together and given a little space to think about it, can they cultivate  long-term strategies for fighting eviction and finding long term answers to their housing problems?

1.  Preventing eviction with information
  Instead of waiting for them to be evicted, the Philippines Homeless People's Federation is surveying vulnerable communities living in environmentally dangerous areas and using their information to negotiate resettlement or upgrading options with local governments.  In several cities around the country, these surveys have led to major breakthroughs in land and support for community-managed resettlement.

EVICTION

IS

PREVENTABLE

A series of strategies and practical examples of people preventing evictions.

Stories from the
ACHR newsletter

starts here

2.  Preventing eviction with alternative planning  
In Karachi, community organizations, NGOs, professionals and civic groups are joining forces to stop the Lyari Expressway, a mega-project nobody wants which would cause the city's largest-ever evictions of poor communities. But instead of just shouting no, their best weapon against this fantastically expensive and ill-conceived boondoggle has been a series of alternative plans, prepared by the OPP, the URC and local engineers.

 

3.  Preventing eviction with collective action
The big lesson Mumbai's footpath dwellers learned, after years of watching their houses being torn down and their belongings confiscated, was that as individual families, or as individual settlements, they had no power to arrest this hopeless cycle of demolition and impoverishment.  But when they joined together into a movement with critical mass and began developing better alternatives to that cycle, the city gradually began to listen.