PRESS BRIEFING BY ASSISTANT SECRETARY-GENERAL OF HABITAT
Press Briefing
PRESS BRIEFING BY ASSISTANT SECRETARY-GENERAL OF HABITAT
19961030
FOR INFORMATION OF UNITED NATIONS SECRETARIAT ONLY
At a press briefing yesterday at Headquarters, Wally N'Dow, Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat) and Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) -- told correspondents that recent events in Zaire were an illustration of the "coming chaos". When human settlements collapsed and social contacts were broken over competition for resources, home and lands, even countries with outward tranquillity could erupt like volcanoes, he said.
He said that Habitat II, which met during June in Istanbul, had been one of the powerful series of debates which began with the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. The objectives of the Rio Conference, of the Cairo Conference on population, of the Copenhagen Conference on social development and of the Beijing Conference on women, all "came home" in the cities, villages, hamlets and towns of the world. If they did not come home properly, catastrophe resulted. People would live "cheek by jowl" with inadequate infrastructure and competition for resources.
The Istanbul Conference had attempted to initiate a global conversation on partnership, Mr. N'Dow said. Governments alone could not do the job. Civil society, local authorities and the private sector were essential. Attacking the challenge of human settlements and questions of poverty without inviting the private sector to come along was like going to war and leaving your army at home. The development challenge must include those new actors.
The Habitat Agenda and Istanbul Declaration, which had emerged from the Conference, made clear that unless the question of human settlement was examined, the catastrophes that had become the "daily diet" of the news media could not be avoided, he added.
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