Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Vulnerability, risk and resilience: Towards a conceptual framework
35
be ‘gendered victims’, such as women and girls. Other kinds
of generic victims exist in cities – for example, street
children who may be abused, maimed and even killed by
public authorities to rid the city of so-called nuisances, or by
private individuals or gangs who assume that attacking street
children can be done with impunity. If these victims are
vulnerable to crime and violence, they are also vulnerable to
forced evictions and are likely to be the least protected
during natural disasters. These individuals are, therefore,
likely to be cumulatively vulnerable to risks and hazards.
FORMS OF
INTERDEPENDENCE
The above analysis demonstrates that urban safety and
security are dependent upon complicated patterns of
cumulative causation and multiple impacts. An added dimension
to this complexity is a pattern of interdependence, as
well. Distinct spheres of action – social, economic and
environmental – interact in ways that demonstrate the high
degree of interdependence among them. Indeed, it is these
myriad forms of interdependence which form a central part
of the argument about various forms of resilience and
sustainability. 49
So far, examples in which social, economic or spatial
outcomes have depended upon multiple factors have been
presented. These factors have been described as contributing
to cumulative causation. The chains of causation,
however, do not move only in one direction. For example,
the high crime in Mexico City may be, in part, a result of
macro-economic changes affecting the availability of employment.
But high crime, as suggested earlier, also has a
significant cost for the macro-economy and contributes to
low levels of foreign direct investment or tourism. High
crime at the community level can also reduce the rate of
savings or asset accumulation of households who have been
robbed. As a result, they are unable to invest in improving
their homes. Therefore, even though their investment is
modest, their victimization by crime has inhibited economic
multipliers within their community. This micro-example is
repeated many times over in countries such as Colombia or
El Salvador, where households may be wary to reveal any
wealth for fear of robbery. The causes of insecurity, therefore,
may come from different origins.
The complexity of these patterns of causation
suggests that simple explanations or single-issue recommendations
to improve urban safety and security are likely to be
of limited value. This observation sets up the normative
framework in the following section.
PATHWAYS TO RESILIENCE
Previous sections of this chapter have proposed a conceptual
framework for understanding the origins, causation and
impacts of the three threats to urban safety and security
addressed in this report: crime and violence, insecurity of
tenure, and disasters. Risk factors underlying these threats
have also been discussed at different geographical and
analytical levels. This discussion has demonstrated that
single-cause explanations are insufficient representations of
the complexity of these phenomena. In normative terms,
three arenas have been identified that have the potential to
remedy some of the worst impacts of these problems: institutions
and policy, the juridical framework of international
law, and civil society and culture.
While each of these arenas will be presented in detail
in subsequent chapters of this report in relation to each of
the three threats to urban safety and security, the following
sub-sections suggest that, individually and together, the
arenas offer alternative and complementary pathways to the
resilience required to alleviate some of the worst impacts of
these problems. For the purposes of this chapter, as noted
earlier, resilience is defined as the capacity to adjust to
threats, to mitigate or avoid harm, and to bounce back from
shocks.
Institutions and policy
As suggested in previous sections of this <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Report</strong>, one
dimension of the urban safety and security challenges requiring
direct attention is the role of institutions. Examples have
been provided showing how various factors at the global and
national levels have affected national institutions and, in
turn, their influence on the capacity of urban and community
institutions to respond to these challenges. While it is
relatively easy to identify and document these institutional
impacts, it is much harder to improve institutional performance
on managing, for example, crime and violence in the
short, medium and even the long term. Indeed, the
weakness of urban institutions is itself a vulnerability that
allows these threats to security to be so heavy in their social
and economic impacts in the first place.
As noted above, the term ‘institution’ refers to any
structured pattern of behaviour, including ‘informal’ institutions
or behaviours, that communities and households may
use to maintain their equilibrium in the face of dynamic
conditions such as crime and violence or disasters. The value
and utility of this sociological definition of ‘institution’ is
illustrated in the following examples. Recent experiences
have demonstrated that in disasters in many countries, such
as after earthquakes in Surat in India and Bursa in Turkey, or
in recovery from tsunami-affected areas in India or Sri Lanka,
women’s groups are usually the best informed about community
conditions and about the mapping of facilities,
households and community hazards. 50 It should not be
surprising that they also are effective in determining the
priorities for relief and recovery, as international aid organizations
have now come to recognize and appreciate.
The issue of information is critical in this context:
normally male-dominated public institutions seek to control
information before and after disasters, using such events as
opportunities to assert power or to have a privileged claim
on the flow of new resources destined for relief and recovery.
Women’s groups as informal institutions, therefore,
should be central to any mapping of institutional actors
involved in maintaining urban safety and security. The importance
of gender in this regard directly contradicts what is
The complexity
of … patterns of
causation suggests
that simple
explanations or
single-issue
recommendations to
improve urban
safety and security
are likely to be of
limited value
Resilience is … the
capacity to adjust to
threats, to mitigate
or avoid harm, and
to bounce back from
shocks