PRESS CONFERENCE BY UN-HABITAT

 

The international community must upgrade conditions for its existing 1 billion slum-dwellers to avert a crisis by year 2020, when 500 million new slum-dwellers would be added to the urban environment, the head of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) told correspondents at Headquarters today.

The Millennium Declaration had pledged to improve human settlements for 100 million people, but that figure only represented 10 per cent of the world’s slum-dwellers, said Anna Tibaijuka.  The upcoming crisis of expanded slums was one of the challenges facing the current session of the Commission on Sustainable Development, which was focusing on water and sanitation in the context of human settlements.

Stressing that the Commission’s main challenge was to address investment needs for slums, she said UN-HABITAT was encouraged that the financial dimension was now featured in the discussion.  “Water, sanitation and housing is not going to be delivered by decree, but must come through requisite investments, particularly pro-poor investments”, Ms. Tibaijuka said.  Innovative financing mechanisms were needed to provide the poor with affordable -- not free -- services, be they in housing, water or sanitation.

She added that ongoing negotiations in New York would attempt to harmonize the slum-upgrading target with other internationally agreed targets.  It was also crucial to incorporate preventive strategies into urban planning, so that services could be surveyed and upgraded to avert a new crisis for the growing number of slum-dwellers.

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