Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

We further commit ourselves to the objectives
of … providing legal security of tenure and
equal access to land to all people, including
women and those living in poverty. 1
Security of tenure – or ‘the right of all individuals and groups
to effective protection from the State against forced
evictions’ 2 – is a major concern for hundreds of millions of
slum dwellers and other poor people. The possibility that
individuals, households or whole communities may be
evicted from their homes at any time is a major safety and
security threat in urban areas the world over. The following
two chapters address a range of issues linked to the increasingly
prominent and fundamental issue of security of tenure.
The analysis explores a wide range of questions linked to
secure tenure from the primary perspective of human rights
and good governance, augmented by experiences in various
countries. The chapters compare and contrast various initiatives
taken by states and analysts on the question of secure
tenure, and seek to identify the strengths and weaknesses of
the most prevalent approaches taken to procure security of
tenure throughout the world. More specifically, Chapter 5
explores the scope and scale of tenure insecurity in the
world and trends surrounding tenure, while Chapter 6
provides a review of policies that have been adopted to
address tenure concerns.
The analysis treats the concept of security of tenure
as a key component of a housing policy built upon the principles
of human rights law, which seeks to achieve the goal of
adequate housing for all, as elaborated upon in the Habitat
Agenda. This raises a number of crucial questions, which are
addressed in this part of the report:
• Are all types of housing, land and property tenure
capable of providing the degree of security of tenure
meant to be accorded to everyone under human rights
laws?
• What makes tenure secure and insecure?
• If security of tenure is a right, how can it be enforced?
• Is there an emerging jurisprudence of security of tenure
as a human right?
• Is the universal enjoyment of security of tenure as a
human right a realistic possibility within a reasonable
timeframe?
These and a series of additional questions clearly require
greater attention by the research and legal communities, as
well as by governments, the United Nations and policymakers.
This part of the <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Report</strong> thus aims to examine
contemporary approaches to security of tenure through the
perspective of human rights in order to determine how
initiatives in support of tenure security might achieve better
outcomes once a human rights approach is embraced.
As noted in Chapter 1, the year 2007 marks a turning
point in human history: for the first time there are more
people living in cities and towns than in rural areas. While
some may argue about the precise date on which city and
town residents became a majority, the political, legal and
resource implications, coupled with the social and economic
consequences of this shift, are widely recognized, even
though they may still not be fully appreciated by decisionand
policy-makers.
Urbanization brings with it both positive and negative
prospects for the world’s cities and towns and the existing
and new populations of the world’s built-up areas. In China
alone, the urban population has increased by hundreds of
millions of people, and this number is expected to continue
to grow in the coming years as the economic boom continues.
The Indian capital, Delhi, is growing by about half a
million people each year, and similar urban growth is occurring
throughout the developing world. Although the major
part of urban growth in most cities today occurs through
natural population growth or physical extension of urban
areas, 3 large numbers of these new urban dwellers are
migrants from rural areas. Urban areas will continue to
provide employment choices, standards of living and cultural
options simply unavailable in the countryside. Cities will
continue to exert a considerable pull factor for the world’s
poor and underemployed as great numbers of people see
their aspirations linked to an urban life.
It is now widely known and understood that migrants
to the world’s cities do not end up as residents in upmarket
or even middle-class neighbourhoods. Rather, because very
few governments have sufficiently prioritized actions in
support of pro-poor housing solutions for the urban poor, the
formal, legal and official housing market is neither affordable
nor accessible to these groups; as a result, illegal or informal
land markets, slums, shanties, pirate subdivisions,
pavements and park benches become the new abodes for
millions of people every year. These informal self-help
solutions have long been the only housing option available to
the poorest in most developing world cities and, increasingly,
in some developed world cities, as well.
At the same time, however, the sense of urgency