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SEPT
13 2003
Update on UPGRADING
Breakthrough Cambodia
UPDF and SUPF have produced a Community Newsletter poster in English and
Khmer language.
Go here to preview the poster and news and
also download a copy of the poster or text.
MAY
25 2003 PHNOM PENH
BIG
BREAKTHROUGH
Prime
Minister agrees to provide secure land tenure to 100 inner-city poor
settlements in the coming year, and assist in a community-driven process
to upgrade those settlements
On
May 24, 2003, the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen announced a policy to
provide secure land tenure and to assist in the on-site upgrading of 100
inner-city poor communities each year for the coming five years, until all
of Phnom Penh's urban poor communities have secure land tenure and full
basic services. The prime
minister announced this policy in front of a gathering of 5,000 urban poor
people from Phnom Penh and 10 provincial cities, national and local
government officials, representatives from local NGOs and bilateral and
multilateral aid agencies, and community leaders from 9 other Asian and
African countries. The
gathering was organized to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Urban
Poor Development Fund and to promote the idea of on-site community
improvement, as an alternative to eviction and relocation to distant
resettlement sites.
The
Prime Minster's hour-long speech culminated in his announcement that his
government has agreed to the proposal from SUPF and UPDF to support the
upgrading of 100 poor communities in Phnom Penh in the coming year and
promised to provide secure land tenure to all those settlements, except
where communities fall in the way of planned civic projects such as parks
or drainage improvement. In
those cases, he pledged the government's help in securing relocation sites
that are nearby, close to job opportunities.
The Prime Minister even took the people's idea a step further,
asking why stop at 100 settlements and proposed upgrading 100 settlements
every year for the coming five years, so that in five years, almost all of
Phnom Penh's poor settlements could be improved and have land title!
To
show his commitment, the PM immediately called for a meeting with his
Minister of Interior and various national and municipal land authorities
on the following Monday afternoon to talk about the logistics of providing
land title to families living in these 100 communities.
He even said that the government can even help pay for the
upgrading, not only providing the land or secure tenure.
The
UPDF's fifth anniversary gathering drew together over 5,000 poor community
members from around the city and from ten other provincial cities,
community leaders and their NGO partners from 9 Asian and African
countries, representatives from the highest levels of the local and
national government. The
event was organized by the Solidarity for the Urban Poor Federation
(SUPF), UPDF and the Municipality of Phnom Penh, who jointly decided to
use the occasion to boost the strategy of on-site community upgrading, as
an alternative to eviction and relocation to remote sites.
Upgrading is a concept which most of us are familiar with, but in
Cambodia, where the chief solution used in the last ten years to land
conflicts has been to evict and resettle poor communities to the outskirts
of the city, this is a still a new and unknown idea.
So the idea was to use this big event to change this at a policy
level with more concrete programs to come.
The
gathering provided a venue to showcase the hard work communities in Phnom
Penh have been doing in recent months around community upgrading, and to
invite the government to support the people's proposal to upgrade 100 of
the city's informal settlements in the coming year.
The government's response to this proposal surpassed almost
everyone's expectations, when on May 24th, the Prime Minister declared his
government's full commitment to provide secure tenure and support the
community-driven upgrading of 100 inner-city settlements in the coming
year, as well as another 100 settlements in each subsequent year, until
all the city's informal settlements are secure and improved!
Somsook
Boonyabancha
- Asian
Coalition for Housing Rights
"This
is a festival of people, and a chance to negotiate for their ideas with
the highest level of government.
Many people feel that change in cities comes from the rich or from
professional people.
In this process in Phnom Penh, poor people are the agents of
change, they are the ones influencing the government and persuading it to
support what people want.
This idea to upgrade 100 settlements in one year came from the
people - from SUPF and UPDF - not from professionals or housing experts. .
. .
This is a new politics of slum upgrading.
In the past 20 years, upgrading is something that only happened in
isolated pockets, here and there, and the work was always done by
contractors, according to formal standards that were set by the city
government.
Today's announcement by the Prime Minister represents a totally new
direction.
And this direction is only possible because people have done the
ground work first.
There is a critical mass of the urban poor in place now in Phnom
Penh.
All the network-building and all the basic groundwork that has been
done over the past 5 years (savings, surveying, environmental activities,
income generation, linking, etc)
makes it possible to link with this new policy and make it a mass
policy, not just a few scattered projects."
Jockin
Arputham
- Slum
Dwellers
International
-
"We
asked for 100 settlements in one year, but he said 500 settlements in five
years!
He (Hun Sen) took the ball we threw him and ran with it!
