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We further commit ourselves to the objectivesof … providing legal security of tenure andequal access to land to all people, includingwomen and those living in poverty. 1Security of tenure – or ‘the right of all individuals and groupsto effective protection from the State against forcedevictions’ 2 – is a major concern for hundreds of millions ofslum dwellers and other poor people. The possibility thatindividuals, households or whole communities may beevicted from their homes at any time is a major safety andsecurity threat in urban areas the world over. The followingtwo chapters address a range of issues linked to the increasinglyprominent and fundamental issue of security of tenure.The analysis explores a wide range of questions linked tosecure tenure from the primary perspective of human rightsand good governance, augmented by experiences in variouscountries. The chapters compare and contrast various initiativestaken by states and analysts on the question of securetenure, and seek to identify the strengths and weaknesses ofthe most prevalent approaches taken to procure security oftenure throughout the world. More specifically, Chapter 5explores the scope and scale of tenure insecurity in theworld and trends surrounding tenure, while Chapter 6provides a review of policies that have been adopted toaddress tenure concerns.The analysis treats the concept of security of tenureas a key component of a housing policy built upon the principlesof human rights law, which seeks to achieve the goal ofadequate housing for all, as elaborated upon in the HabitatAgenda. This raises a number of crucial questions, which areaddressed in this part of the report:• Are all types of housing, land and property tenurecapable of providing the degree of security of tenuremeant to be accorded to everyone under human rightslaws?• 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 tenureas a human right?• Is the universal enjoyment of security of tenure as ahuman right a realistic possibility within a reasonabletimeframe?These and a series of additional questions clearly requiregreater attention by the research and legal communities, aswell as by governments, the United Nations and policymakers.This part of the Global Report thus aims to examinecontemporary approaches to security of tenure through theperspective of human rights in order to determine howinitiatives in support of tenure security might achieve betteroutcomes once a human rights approach is embraced.As noted in Chapter 1, the year 2007 marks a turningpoint in human history: for the first time there are morepeople living in cities and towns than in rural areas. Whilesome may argue about the precise date on which city andtown residents became a majority, the political, legal andresource implications, coupled with the social and economicconsequences of this shift, are widely recognized, eventhough they may still not be fully appreciated by decisionandpolicy-makers.Urbanization brings with it both positive and negativeprospects for the world’s cities and towns and the existingand new populations of the world’s built-up areas. In Chinaalone, the urban population has increased by hundreds ofmillions of people, and this number is expected to continueto grow in the coming years as the economic boom continues.The Indian capital, Delhi, is growing by about half amillion people each year, and similar urban growth is occurringthroughout the developing world. Although the majorpart of urban growth in most cities today occurs throughnatural population growth or physical extension of urbanareas, 3 large numbers of these new urban dwellers aremigrants from rural areas. Urban areas will continue toprovide employment choices, standards of living and culturaloptions simply unavailable in the countryside. Cities willcontinue to exert a considerable pull factor for the world’spoor and underemployed as great numbers of people seetheir aspirations linked to an urban life.It is now widely known and understood that migrantsto the world’s cities do not end up as residents in upmarketor even middle-class neighbourhoods. Rather, because veryfew governments have sufficiently prioritized actions insupport of pro-poor housing solutions for the urban poor, theformal, legal and official housing market is neither affordablenor accessible to these groups; as a result, illegal or informalland markets, slums, shanties, pirate subdivisions,pavements and park benches become the new abodes formillions of people every year. These informal self-helpsolutions have long been the only housing option available tothe poorest in most developing world cities and, increasingly,in some developed world cities, as well.At the same time, however, the sense of urgency