Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Policy responses to tenure insecurity
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Box 6.3 The Sindh Katchi Abadis Authority (SKAA)
The Sindh Katchi Abadis Authority (SKAA) is responsible for the implementation of the Katchi
Abadis Improvement and Regularization Programme (KAIRP) in Pakistan. This important
government poverty alleviation programme has, over the years, faced a number of constraints
that SKAA has successfully overcome. Among these constraints has been the lack of funds for
upgrading initiatives, forcing SKAA to depend upon large foreign loans from the World Bank
and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Other constraints have been excessive costs of
overheads for infrastructure developments, complicated regularization procedures and an
absence of community participation.
To combat these constraints (and other obstacles), SKAA undertook a series of
measures, including decentralization of the entire upgrading and regularization process; focus on
user friendliness; transparency; community participation; affordable lease rates; and flexibility in
designs. In SKAA’s view, the three major starting points for a successful policy for low-income
land supply can be summarized as:
• Low-income people are often characterized by having irregular incomes and can thus only
build their dwellings in a flexible and incremental manner. This has to be acknowledged in
policy and programme design. As a result, traditional standards for construction are
meaningless and often directly harmful to the aspiration of the poor.
• It is essential that ways are found to identify who should be the beneficiaries of land allocations.
Only those who really need plots for their own dwellings should benefit, while those
who want plots for investment or speculation purposes should be excluded.
• Procedures for allocation of land should be simple, straightforward, transparent and
efficient.
Source: Ismail, 2004
The work of the Sindh Katchi Abadis Authority (SKAA) in
Karachi has been widely heralded for its unique approaches
to regularization (see Box 6.3). Removing the fear of eviction
was seen by settlers to have a much greater value than
obtaining formal property documents. Similar experiences
have been reported from many other locations, as informality
‘does not necessarily mean insecurity of tenure’. 6 In some
countries in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, communal or
customary land delivery systems may not be formally recognized
by the state, yet they still guarantee a reasonably good
level of security. The perception of security offered through
the recognition by the community itself and by the neighbourhood
is often considered more important than official
recognition by the state.
The city government of Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo,
has pursued particularly constructive policies on providing
secure tenure to the urban poor for several years in a
manner combining the various approaches just noted. The
city government has developed a legal allotment programme
that assists slum dwellers to obtain rights and register their
homes. This programme sought to benefit 50,000 families in
some of the poorest neighbourhoods of this city. 7
The upgrading and regularization process, combined
with the understanding of the importance of the informal
sector and a growing acceptance of the informal city,
together point to another trend in the security of tenure
policy discussion that places considerable responsibility on
community-level organizations and poor individuals to solve
the often severe residential problems confronting them on a
daily basis. The Baan Mankong (Secure Housing) programme
in Thailand, for instance, enables poor communities to influence
a national process of forging comprehensive solutions
to problems of housing, land tenure and basic services in
Thai cities. The programme, which was initiated in 2003,
Box 6.4 Upgrading with community empowerment
A comparative analysis of upgrading projects undertaken by UN-
Habitat in Afghanistan, Cambodia and Sri Lanka has shown that the
upgrading interventions provided people with a ‘secure place to live
with dignity’ by improving the physical conditions and by establishing
the institutional framework necessary for communities to plan
future activities in a sustainable manner. All of these projects –
which were supported by the United Nations Trust Fund for
Human Security (see Box 1.1) – have focused on the
empowerment of communities using an approach involving
community action planning, community development councils and
the community contracts system.
The projects had the following impact on security of tenure
in the three countries:
• Increased investments in the settlements (indicating a
perceived increase in security and future prospects).
• Increased ownership of the work done in the settlements
(high community contributions and vigilant community
surveillance).
• The involvement of registered community development
councils legitimized occupancy rights (it provided a sense of
belonging and confidence as well as a sense of responsibility).
• Dialogue among community development councils has
strengthened the opposition to forced evictions, and has
increased demands for policies focusing on the allocation of
land to the poor and regularization of tenure.
The projects have demonstrated that the use of upgrading as an
entry point to the empowerment of communities is effective
where institutions have been fragile and unstable in post-conflict
situations, and where there is no conducive environment for
providing protection.
For instance, in the case of Afghanistan, a community development
council was established in a settlement which did not even
appear on the city map before the project started, and was later
named Majboorabad 2. Residents had been threatened of evictions
several times in the past, both by warlords and by the Ministry of
Interior which claims the land. As the community is located near a
military area, residents had been fined and even imprisoned for
their ‘illegal’ building activities. When the residents had their
community development council registered by the municipality this
seemed to increase the confidence of the community at large. It
implied that the government now formally accepted their former
‘illegal settlement’ as an ‘informal settlement’.
Removing the fear of
eviction was seen …
to have a much
greater value than
obtaining formal
property documents
Source: Balbo and Guadagnoli, 2007