”Within slums it is mostly women, children and the elderly who carry the burden of slum life because of their disadvantaged positions in society.”
The sentiment was expressed by Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, executive director of the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat), at the recent Expert Group Meeting on Gender and Women’s Issues in Human Settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.
Tibaijuka called on governments and the international community to critically review their urban policies to address the needs of the poor and work towards looking at poverty issues from a gender perspective.
Established in 1978, UN-Habitat is charged with ensuring adequate shelter for all and making human settlements safer, healthier, equitable, sustainable and productive.
The experts, representing all tiers of society, were tasked with drafting objectives for UN-Habitat’s gender unit for future action on gender mainstreaming at international, regional and NGO level. The meeting was funded by the Norwegian government.
In her opening address, Unni Ramboll, gender adviser to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, slammed the lack of gender equality in sustainable development. ”We were very disappointed [by] the fact that it was not possible to reach consensus [at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last year] on the issue that women have the same right to own land as men.”
The role of women in securing tenure, financing for low-cost housing and support for grassroots women’s organisations was discussed in an effort to highlight the gender aspect of human settlement.
”I hope the meeting will propose mechanisms to monitor the impact of human settlement policies and programmes on the lives and work of women in cities, especially those in low-income areas and slums,” said Lucia Kiwala, coordinator and chief of UN-Habitat’s gender mainstreaming unit.
She said her unit needed to be able to work with women’s organisations and to strengthen gender networks.
Among Kiwala’s challenges is the integration of gender issues in slum upgrading. ”Basic water, sanitation, waste collection, clinics and schools are required in slums for these women and children to survive. We drive past slums everyday without questioning why people need to live like this,” she said.
The violation of women’s property rights was discussed in relation to the need for universal human rights to be upheld.
”When you violate the rights [to] housing, a range of other rights are violated as well,” said Miloon Kothari, UN special rapporteur on housing rights.
He pointed out that while women’s right to housing has received recognition from all the international instruments, few governments have implemented the UN’s recommendations.
In Africa, sexist customary laws exclude women from inheriting property. The meeting heard of widows left vulnerable and without legal recourse when evicted from their land and homes, and stripped of their possessions by their in-laws.
”Where women lack access to, and control over, land and housing because they are women, [it] contributes to their continued and increasing poverty [and constitutes] gender injustice and a violation of their human rights,” said Jo Beall, of the Development Studies Institute’s London School of Economics.
The experts debated why it is important for women to be integrated into infrastructure or town planning.
Vickie Imande, chief architect of the Federal Capital Development Authority in Nigeria, said because women are responsible for child-rearing, they spend more time in their homes and some use it as a workplace.
”Women would know best their most urgent needs. They would also know better the technology that is suitable for them.”
The African continent is waking up to the need for urbanisation, the meeting found. With 56% of Africans living in slums, governments have resorted to forced evictions of slum dwellers.
”Forced evictions are inherently violent and in the context of gender inequality, this violence invariably affects women more adversely than men,” said Joy Ngwakwe, in a research report for the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions.
Kothari said the meeting was extremely important because UN-Habitat should not compromise on housing right violations and should come down hard on governments who abuse these rights.
A draft plan of action for UN-Habitat will be released next month.