Kenyan Vice President Michael Wamalwa on Monday urged the international community and UN agencies to address the plight of slum dwellers around the world, particularly in Africa.
”The international community and UN agencies must do anything viable to upgrade the lives of slum dwellers,” Wamalwa told the opening session here of the UN-Habitat’s 19th governing council.
He warned that there ”could be no global environmental sustainability without sustainable human settlements.”
”UN-Habitat and UN Environmental Program (UNEP) will, therefore, need to collaborate more fully in their activities to effectively respond to the challenges of human settlements and poverty in urban areas,” Wamalwa said.
The five-day conference will discuss mainly ”how to enhance sustainable urbanisation and ways of upgrading slums in world’s cities.”
The conference is the first since UN-Habitat became a fully-fledged UN programme in 2000, with the main task of addressing problems of urbanisation and human settlements worldwide.
Ministers from UN member countries in charge of human settlements and urbanisation, officials from local authorities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were attending the conference.
UN-Habitat executive director Ann Tabaijuka also told participants that the UN agency would work to upgrade the lives of at least 100-million people living in slums, mainly by working with national governments to alleviate urban poverty and draw out efficient national policies.
”We will work with national governments to draw national policies that will assist in curing the problems affecting slum-dwellers — the most visible of which is urban poverty, accompanied by diseases, illiteracy, vulnerability and insecurity — especially among women and children.
”Lack of adequate shelter, unemployment, pollution and shortage of resources are also major problems to be fixed,” Tibaijuka added. – Sapa-AFP