Homeless urban poor await genuine political will

       The first Monday in October every year has been designated as World Habitat Day. It is a day on which the United Nations has called for reflection on the right of all people everywhere to adequate and secure housing.
       Yet the stark reality across Asia, as throughout almost the entire developing world, is that housing rights are still routinely violated, illegal forced evictions and demolitions are rampant, and security of tenure remains but a dream for the urban poor, who constitute the majority of the population in the cities of the global South.
       This situation of basic insecurity is exacerbated by the general trend of urbanisation without adequate provisions for housing the urban poor. Consequently the poor, who play a vital role in developing the cities - whether as construction workers, small-scale vendors or street cleaners - are denied a place in the very location they have helped create.
       Although exclusion from a secure place in the city is just one of the many indignities suffered by hundreds of millions of slum dwellers around Asia, having to live in constant fear of eviction has a far-reaching impact that adversely affects the ability of the urban poor to overcome poverty.
       Earlier this year, as the Anti-Eviction Coordinator of Leaders and Organisers of Community Organisations in Asia (LOCOA), a regional network of grassroots organisations working with the urban poor around Asia, I had the opportunity to travel to the Philippines, India, Cambodia, Indonesia and Bangladesh. In each of my destinations, I spent time visiting urban poor slum communities that had lived through actual evictions or the threat of evictions.
       In some instances, these communities had successfully stopped the bulldozers of the demolition crew on the doorstep to their communities. Yet in other cases,my visits were with people who had already been forcibly evicted and compelled to settle elsewhere, sometimes with no compensation whatsoever.
       While the details of the individual cases of forced eviction may have been different from place to place and country to country, the common denominator among all of them is that it is the urban poor, perhaps the most vulnerable segment of the population, who are affected.
       In fact, the actual reason behind almost all of these evictions was the same: the land used for settlement by the urban poor, sometimes for several generations, has been commoditised and drawn into the real estate market.
       The subsequent desire by landowners,whether private individuals or state agencies, to maximise profits by taking advantage of upward market pressure on land prices, combined with structurallyconditioned social discrimination against the urban poor, has worked to drive slum dwellers out of their homes and,in many cases, out of the city.
       Just as we understand the root causes of forced evictions, we also have a fairly good idea about what can be done to stop them. Years of experience suggest that strong, united communities in pos-session of knowledge about basic human rights stand the best chance of resisting evictions and eventually finding solutions to their problem of insecurity of tenure.
       Nevertheless, strong communities with knowledge about rights are not naturally occurring phenomena. Instead,both community solidarity and rights awareness are things that must be nurtured.
       Once again, experience indicates that this nurturing process may be most effectively accomplished through the intervention of skilled community organisers, who play a role in boosting the confidence and competence of urban poor community residents, empowering them to stand up collectively and demand their basic rights.
       It is consequently quite fitting that on the occasion of World Habitat Day 2009, LOCOA, together with its Thai member, the Four Regions Slum Network (FRSN), will hold a six-day workshop in Bangkok for young community organisers to share their experiences and hone the skills of their trade.
       As an independent grassroot people's organisation, FRSN has been instrumental in protecting urban poor communities from forced eviction. But beyond addressing these immediate concerns,FRSN has also been one of the main voices advocating for long-term solutions to the problems of urban land and housing insecurity in Thailand.
       Its current proposal to implement concretely the government's new community land title deed policy in three of its own member communities situated on public land alongside canals in Bangkok, is an idea well worth studying.
       The three communities in question have been organised and exercising responsible stewardship over the canals for more than 10 years already, but the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration has thus far been reluctant to legalise their status.
       If the government's policy on community land title deeds is able to overcome this obstacle and proves to be effective in establishing the security of tenure of these three FRSN communities,other LOCOA members will certainly take note of this innovative solution from Thailand for possible application in their own countries.
       This year, the UN's official theme for World Habitat Day is "Planning Our Urban Future."
       While the focus on urban planning may be well-intentioned, privileging a technical approach to solving the problem of urban poor housing insecurity overlooks the importance of first ensuring that the genuine political will exists to find a solution to this problem.
       This more important prior step is something that can best be achieved through the mobilisation of united, organised communities demanding government accountability for the provision of the fundamental right to adequate and secure housing.
       Jeff Wong was Coordinator of the LOCOA Anti-Eviction Programme and is currently an adviser to the Four Regions Slum Network for international affairs.