SDI News   Slum / Shack Dwellers International

Activities calendar of SDI

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Slum Dwellers International is a loose network of people's organisations from an increasing number of countries in the South. The network is made up of Federations of community organisations and other grassroots initiatives that are in the process of developing Federations. Linked to this network is a group of professionals who are committed to supporting Federations of the urban poor. For more detials on SDI activities go to the SDI website: HERE 2005 From Joel Our friends and colleagues in Asia (ACHR as well as SDI) have responded swiftly to the Tsunami disaster. The two networks are active in all the affected countries. Here are some insights from Somsook and Arif. “The disaster I hope will open our eyes to the fact that if we rob and steal our natural assets, nature will punish us.”                        - Arif ‘Most fisherman villages stay on unclear land, kind of public land. Most of them are very insecure and many have threat of eviction most of the time.  In the case of Thailand I would say about 90% are under this category.  I would think it would be the same in Indonesia, Srilanka, India, Burma etc.,.  When land become expensive and highly commercialize like in the case of Thailand, most of these communities are under the threat of eviction or currently facing some form of eviction.  So this is the key issues hiding.  So Tsunami may help evict these communities from their former sites if they are not strong enough.  This will be the second Tsunami to communities if we do not plan to work it out properly.’                       - Somsook ‘Having worked with earthquake rehabilitation and famine and drought (though not even a fraction of the disaster you have suffered), I have always marvelled at the remarkable energy and strength that communities put into rehabilitating themselves. A lot of aid agencies do not realize this. Aid could be far more meaningful with this realization. ‘                            -Arif ‘It is very important that poor people, the victims themselves have to start speaking on their behalf what they want, as a group.  Otherwise,cases like this, poor victims will be just objects of assistance by others from outside and since they are so powerless, they always be decided what to do, how to live, where to go all by others.  So this experiment to get people together and to work out what they want as a group and to be support and back up by several community networks is very interesting and very important.’            -Somsook   2004 The South Africans will begin to plan a follow up exchange to Indonesia and the Secretariat is re-scheduling a visit to Brasil to be followed by a short exposure to savings groups in Bolivia. July The Ghana savings groups are preparing for an enumeration as a response to a threatened eviction. July 9 – 11 - The South African Federation plays lead role in summit for the Coalition of the Urban Poor. July 14 onwards – SA and Kenya to Uganda. July 15. Provisional date for completion go SDI CD-Rom. June 28 – 30 – Pamoja Trust Kenya holds strategic planning meeting. June 20 - 26 th South Africans to to the Philippines Focus: ADB (Asian Development Bank) seminar and exchange with the Philippine federation. The Africans reported it was a great learning experience especially in terms of planning a national budget for the federation and successful partnership negotiations with ADB. SDI VISIT TO THE MALAWI FEDERATION The Federation model began to be adapted to the Malawian context in late 2003, when a young city planner, Skulile Nkhoma, moved to Lilongwe from her home in Harare, Zimbabwe.   Earlier that same year she had served as a volunteer for Zimbabwe Dialogue on Shelter and had worked closely with the Victoria Falls and Harare Federations. Less than a year has passed and there are now over 60 savings groups in Lilongwe and more than 20 in Blantyre - More at the SDI site February Indonesian savings groups to South Africa and Zimabawe May 2003 African groups involved in community based upgrading shared with 5 other countries in Phnom Penh at the Anniversary of Cambodia's Urban Poor Development Fund celebrations.   April 2003 India Federation continues working with urban poor groups in Uganda.  March 2003 SDI Meeting UK. India Federation continues working with urban poor groups in Uganda. and Kenya Jan 2003 Homeless People's Federation South Africa visit to 7 cities in the UPlink Network Indonesia Focus: Building Savings groups. Nov 2002 Asian Peoples Dialogue in Indonesia  More here August 2002 4th - 9th Namibians Exchange to India and Thailand 17th to 22ns South Africans in India and Thailand 21 to 24th Sri Lankans exchange to India 26-29 South Africans  to Kenya to meet Selavip. 28 - 30 Homeless International (UK) I and the Cities Alliance  in  Bombay India for CLIFF September 2002 1-13   Celine and Jockin go to Uganda and Kenya 1-13   South Africans to Swaziland 14-20 Indonesian Asian People's dialogue 2  14-17 South Africa meetings and discussions 20-30 South Africans to Argentina

http://www.sdinet.org/   Read the  SDI to ARGENTINA EXPOSURE TRIP on the SDI Website

Why so many Community Exchanges ??    See Face to Face  HERE

The Odd Couple Almost Done

Bono visited  SDI sites  in South Africa

Bono (from U2)  has come towards the end of a 10-day tour of Africa with Paul O'Neill, the US Treasury Secretary, in what has become a rolling debate on how western aid should be spent. Sharp differences have sometimes emerged between the unlikely pair, with the Dubliner's emotional appeals contrasting with the "results-oriented" approach of the multi-millionaire conservative politician.  From: World Bank. 3 June 2002

Read more about Africa's DEBT at   The Debt Channel  HERE

 

Some News on the World Forum in Nairobi  - May 2002

A Personal Report on the World Urban Forum from an SDI member 
                           Diamonds in  the Dung Heap  Here   below

On Relating to UN to Eviction matters   extract from Arif Hasan  Here below

An  Impacts in Cambodia   Here  below

We will publish more reports on the Forum as they arrive

Homeless International Reports on the Nairobi World Forum SDI attended en masse, with 70 representatives from all over Asia, Africa and Latin America. As well as giving and attending workshops, they had an SDI zone where people from informal settlements shared information. They promoted the dual themes of cities without slums looking at how people living in informal settlements can add value to cities, and the joint idea of secure tenure, life without evictions. Like Homeless International, SDI have been part of the UN process since the start of UNCHS, attending the ‘five years on’ meeting in New York last year. By attending, they remind practitioners from all over the world that the poor must be involved for solutions to work. As Anna Tibaijuka, the Executive Director of UN-Habitat says, “Poverty elimination starts with listening to the poor, fostering their initiatives and giving them a chance…it cannot be a case of ‘our agenda’ versus ‘theirs’. We must collaborate if we are to succeed.”

Click below for The Web site of Homeless International   The toilet constructed by SDI at World Forum Nairobi

 

The report below is personal view of the event from a member of People's Dialogue,  South Africa  and does not necessarily reflect the view of the organisation.

"Forget your perfect offering   There is a Crack in Everything   That's how the Light gets in "

DIAMONDS IN THE DUNG HEAP A REPORT ON  THE WORLD URBAN FORUM.   We spent 5 days in early May at the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) in Nairobi. We were there for the World Urban Poverty Forum. From the moment I set foot in UN Habitat’s cloistered gardens, far removed from the reality of Nairobi, and Africa – from the whole damn world for that matter - I could not stop thinking about old Ludwig Feuerbach. The crazy German philosopher could have been speaking about UN Habitat when he said, a couple of hundred years ago:  “ …the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence . . . truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.” I was there as part of the Slum Dwellers International (SDI) delegation. About seventy of us – mostly people from slums in Africa, Asia and Latin America – had come either out of naiveté or out of ignorance - to lend legitimacy to this dubious spectacle. To be honest there were a few choice moments during the week-long conference when many of the members of our party felt that the presence of 70 international and 150 Kenyan Slum Dwellers in the foyers and meeting halls of the United Nations was a piece of delicious subversion. Simultaneously we convinced one another that this was a moment of triumph for SDI. As the week progressed, most of us began to feel more and more uneasy. Only if one sucked too deeply on Gigiri’s rarefied air could one seriously believe that this was a significant event. The Conference, especially the participation of the slum dwellers was not an affirmation of change in the UN and growing recognition of the central role of people’s organisations. It was an affirmation of appearances. UN Habitat posits itself as an organisation that seeks to help to negate poverty and homelessness. And in the Alice in Wonderland world that they inhabit, there at Gigiri, they have succeeded (in a way) by negating reality. For they have transformed the real world into mere images – dynamic figments or complex props such as declarations, manifestoes, documents and conferences. Let us step back a minute and consider the United Nations itself. What does this institution represent and how did it come to be what it is today? The United Nations is State Power specialised - and in the process abstractified. A gathering of all the governments of this earth, it is hopelessly less than the sum of all its parts. No organisation in the UN stable reflects this better than Habitat – in spite of the intentions and remarkable energies of its new ED, Anna Tabaijuka. It is an instrument of governance (and therefore power) that has detached itself from the global society and the Kenyan city in which it is located  And UN conferences such as the Urban Forum, in spite of representations of the urban poor in the form of SDI, are little more than situations in which the ruling order can engage in a non stop discourse about its subjects, in a grammar that constantly betrays its philanthropic disguise to reveal itself as a never ending monologue of self praise.  These conferences are places where the UN serves as every government’s Ambassador to itself, delivering its official messages at a court where no one else is allowed to speak or listen – bar a handful of squatter leaders whose participation is more likely to lend credence to this alienation than to transform it. Nevertheless there most certainly were a few diamonds in the dung heap. One was Sonia Fadrigo’s poignant speech during the session on Secure Tenure and Evictions. It is reproduced below.

The view expressed (left)  has caused some consternation.  Whilst this is partly its intention it is important to stress that this is the view of the  author and not the view of PD or the SA Homeless People's Federation.   For the record the SA Alliance position is as follows   The SA Alliance wholly supports the SDI decision to engage UN Habitat, World Bank and Cities  Alliance.  However the means of engagement are not set in stone. In the light of different assessments in regard to the nature and value of the WUF experience the current means of engagement need to be reviewed.

 

Arif Hasan at the recent ACHR Regional Meeting (May 2002) I think that's all right to talk about how to get the UN involved in the eviction issue, but what is most important:  if within your own country you have organizations of squatters, you have organizations of poor communities that are strongly linked to professionals and academic institutions, this is what makes a difference.  This is exactly what changes things.  This is what breaks the power of the bureaucratic-politician-developer nexus.   Unless you have this in place, you're not going to make much headway.  You might change mind-sets at a superficial level on top somewhere.  But this linkage, if it is powerful enough, it brings about a change.  And I think this is what one has to aim for, to be able to get this in place.

Update on Pakistan 2002 from Arif Hasan   HERE

 

A brief view from an interview with a participant from Cambodia  ..... immediate impact Mann Churoen ( Chief of Cabinet of Phnom Penh City) attended Nairobi World Forum with fellow Cambodian community and NGO members .  In Phnom Penh a week later, he was active in Phnom Penh stopping the eviction of 30 families living on the edges of land belonging to Cambodia's Foreign Ministry.   "How can we evict the families like this after I have just returned from Nairobi"   he told the families as he gave orders to authorities to stop the eviction.  While giving favourable reports of the Nairobi conference Mann Churoen also emphasized his surprise at the lack of progress for the local poor in Nairobi considering it was the city of HABITAT headquarters.    The most valuable learning, he emphasized was however, his field visits to poor communities in Bangkok where he had a stop over on the way to Kenya.  "We can learn learn a lot about relocation, housing construction and infrastructure development from such exposures."   he said in Phnom Penh last week . At Mann Chureon's request,  ACHR is presently arranging such exposure for an integrated team of people from the Municipality, NGO and community groups.  Mr Mann Churoen spoke with ACHR May 12 2002. More News Updates on the Urban Poor in Cambodia   HERE

Mann Churoen at Toul Sambo in  Phnom Penh May 12

 

My name is Sonia, a community leader from the Homeless People’s Federation, Philippines, a member of the Slum Dwellers International (SDI) network. I want to share about my experience of eviction in my country, the Philippines - particularly in my own community.  We live in 5 hectares private owned land (and which according to my grandparents they were there for almost a hundred years now). We are more or less 400 families living there. The eviction threat started when the owner of the land wanted us to leave their property for their own purpose. The community people said “no!”, so the owner went to Court and was sided by the Court .We tried to seek assistance and help from the local Government but nothing happened. The Demolition team came and started dismantling the houses of one of the community leader, and because people were resisting and fighting back one of the members of the demolition team died and many Community people were injured. The most ironic part is that when the demolition was being carried out the Mayor was watching and said he cannot do anything because “the Order of the Court is final and executory”. Prior to that we have already community savings program in the Area and have tried engaging in the program of the government in Land & Housing (Land Tenure Assistance Program - LTAP) which is led by  the National Housing Authority (NHA) for off-site settlement. We tried to comply all the necessary requirements and process all the necessary documents, and come up with the 10% equity required, but when we reach the final stage of completion of our documents, our President was change and with a new President we have again a new set of policies and guidelines and she ordered a moratorium in all the soon to be realised projects of the National Housing Authority. And because of that we began to lose hope, but decided that with the savings we had, we negotiated for a foreclose piece of Land owned by a bank (BPI) which is near our settlement. At first the Bank did not believe that we have that capacity to buy land and that dirty Community people could have that much money until we handed down the 3 Million Pesos coming from our savings and from our own Urban Poor Development Fund as payment. In our part we complied with all the requirements so that in the end there was no reason for the Govt. to evict us again for not complying the legal process. Lastly we don’t want them to call us or to call ourselves squatters on illegal settlements in our very own country, the Philippines Up to now we are still struggling & fighting against eviction on behalf of other Communities who we facting the same problem because we know that eviction means an end to our housing rights. We are appealing to the UN to take stand in this.

More on the Homeless People's Federation of the Philippines Philippines Profile Philippines Homeless People's Federation  Payatas News   Visit to Payatas Dump Site    Photo Diary of 1 week in the Philippines   For more information on SDI Contact President   Jockin Amputham arcbyc@vsnl.com  Director  Joel Bolnick joelb@dialogue.org.za  SDI  Secretariat Bunita  sdi@dialogue.org.za    Coordinator SDI Asia   Celine D'Cruz arcbyc@vsnl.com    SDI is a coalition of groups  in Africa and Asia focused on Savings and Credit as means to organising and developing  urban poor committees.