Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

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Towards safer and more secure cities
Box 11.10 The Habitat Agenda: Recommendations on
secure tenure
To facilitate access to land and security of tenure for all socio-economic groups, governments at
the appropriate levels, including local authorities, should:
(a) Adopt an enabling legal and regulatory framework … to stimulate partnerships with the
private business and community sectors, specifying recognized types of land tenure and
prescribing procedures for the regularization of tenure …
(b) Provide institutional support, accountability and transparency of land management, and
accurate information on landownership, land transactions and current and planned land
use.
(c) Explore innovative arrangements to enhance the security of tenure, other than full
legalization …
(d) Promote measures to ensure that women have equal access to credit for buying, leasing
or renting land, and equal protection for the legal security of tenure of such land.
(f) Encourage, in particular, the participation of community and non-governmental
organizations.
Source: Habitat Agenda, para 79
It is crucial to
recognize the forced
evictions paradox
that exists today, …
a firm normative
framework for
addressing forced
evictions exists …,
and yet the scale of
eviction continues to
grow
Box 11.11 The Bathurst Declaration on Land
Administration for Sustainable Development
CONCLUDING REMARKS:
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
FUTURE ACTION
The Bathurst Declaration was adopted in 1999 at a workshop organized by the International
Federation of Surveyors (FIG). The workshop was attended by representatives of a wide range
of international organizations and other participants. The declaration recommends a global
commitment to:
Source: FIG, 1999
1 [Provide] effective legal security of tenure and access to property for all men and
women, including indigenous peoples, those living in poverty and other disadvantaged
groups …
8 Improve security of tenure, access to land and to land administration systems
through policy, institutional reforms and appropriate tools with special attention
paid to gender, indigenous populations, the poor and other disadvantaged groups.
In many nations, this will entail particular efforts in areas under customary or
informal tenure and in urban areas where population growth is fast and deficiencies
are most prevalent.
There is no doubt that considerable progress has been made
in recent years on the question of security of tenure. Policy
at all levels has changed in important ways; as a result, taking
all legal domains into account, there is today more legal (and
de facto) protection against arbitrary and unlawful forced
evictions than ever before. Furthermore, there is greater
recognition than ever that forced evictions are prima facie
human rights violations. Governments, international organizations,
NGOs and other civil society actors are increasingly
showing resolve and commitment to enable ever larger
numbers of people to have access to appropriate forms of
tenure security. It is widely agreed that security of tenure
can be addressed in a pro-poor manner, and there is also
widespread agreement that this does not happen automatically
and that special care thus needs to be taken to address
the concerns of the poor and other vulnerable groups in this
regard.
At the same time, there is a compelling need to move
the security of tenure agenda forward. We still cannot underestimate
the scale of forced evictions or of market-based
evictions. Furthermore, it is crucial to recognize the forced
evictions paradox that exists today, where a firm normative
framework for addressing forced evictions exists and is
constantly being improved, and yet the scale of eviction
continues to grow. We need to recognize that there are no
universal solutions to providing security of tenure and that
challenges in this regard tend to be solved in different
manners in different locations. Rather, the goal must be to
identify appropriate forms of secure tenure. Depending upon
circumstances, there are a number of such acceptable forms
of secure tenure in addition to the often presented ideal of
individual title, and the merits of innovative policies are clear.
There is also a pressing need for better monitoring and better
data on security of tenure and forced evictions, and a necessity
to simplify the process of providing security of tenure,
but in ways that are acceptable to the communities involved
and fully consistent with human rights principles.
As noted above, a whole range of international agreements
are highlighting the importance of security of tenure.
Many of these are presenting specific recommendations for
action. Perhaps the most prominent of these international
agreements is the Habitat Agenda (see Box 11.10). Indicative
of the increasing focus on security of tenure, a myriad of
other declarations and statements have been adopted by a
range of organizations and conferences during the last
decade. The main perspective of most of these statements is
that the ‘illegal’ city, far from being an eyesore in need of
eradication or eviction, is the core of better cities, which are
more responsive to the rights and needs of people.
Convincingly, there seems to be a general agreement on the
importance of security of tenure and that the informal
housing sector is realistically the only housing sector
currently capable of providing land and dwellings to lowerincome
groups. There is also widespread agreement that the
conditions in which the urban poor are forced to live are
wholly unacceptable – whether in moral, ethical or human
rights terms – and that much more needs to be done to
provide lower-income groups with greater protection from
abuse and insecurity. All would agree that a huge infusion of
financial resources dedicated to expanding security of tenure
protections are required, and new ways need to be developed
to mobilize these from as many sources as possible.
The Bathurst and Fukuoka declarations are fairly typical of
such statements (see Boxes 11.11 and 11.12). Both declarations
provide quite a comprehensive coverage of the types of
actions that governments and other stakeholders should take
to make security of tenure a reality for everyone.
In view of the fact that a myriad of recommendations
has already been presented on how to achieve the goals of
enhancing security of tenure and ending forced evictions,
the focus of this <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Report</strong> is to attempt to reconcile the
various recommendations made in the past. The main focus
of this report is that an integral approach grounded in HLP