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Current threats to urban safety and security15TENURE INSECURITY ANDFORCED EVICTIONThe second threat to urban safety and security that thisreport examines is the growing worldwide problem ofinsecure tenure of the urban poor and the threat of forcedeviction from public and private land, which they occupywith or without legal permission. While this problem hasbeen studied for many years and considered in the analysisof land use and housing, more recently, freedom from forcedeviction has become recognized as a fundamental humanright within human rights law. 57 This important advance hasfundamentally changed the debate about this subject, shiftingit from an issue of technical legal status to one of a legallyrecognized right. This shift has changed the legal position ofhouseholds lacking secure tenure. In theory, households arenow legally protected from administrative decisions of localor national governments to bring in the bulldozers. Thechallenge, now, is to identify appropriate alternative formsof security of tenure within a specific locality.Chapters 5, 6 and 11 of this report are devoted tosecurity of tenure. They review the wide range of tenureoptions that currently exist in different parts of the worldand discuss what makes tenure secure or insecure. Thediscussion is based on the increasing recognition thatsecurity of tenure is a basic human right. This approach alsofits within the concept of human security, as presentedearlier in this chapter, and thus takes a more all-encompassingvision of human rights as they relate to the tenure issue.As noted in Chapter 5, security of tenure has beendefined as ‘the right of all individuals and groups to effectiveprotection by the state against forced evictions’. In thiscontext, it is important to distinguish forced evictions frommarket-driven evictions. Market-based evictions are muchlarger in scale and frequency than public expropriations ofland. 58 It has been emphasized that ‘Eviction mechanismsand trends must be analyzed with reference to the globalcontext of the persistent imbalance between demand andsupply of land for housing, the scarcity of prime urban landfor development, increases in the market value of urbanland, and increasing commodification of informal landmarkets.’ 59 A useful typology of these situations has beendeveloped (see Box 1.3).What is the scale of insecurity of tenure? As notedearlier, there are already more than 1 billion people living inslums, and many more are expected in the projected urbanexpansion to come over the next few decades. Chapter 5suggests that many slums in developing country cities areoften characterized by insecurity of tenure and that the scaleof insecurity of tenure is growing, along with urbandemographic growth. Furthermore, current evidencesuggests that there is deterioration in tenure status asexpanding urban populations are forced into unplanned orillegal settlements.Estimates cited in Chapter 5 note that, in most developingcountry cities, between 25 and 70 per cent of theurban population are living in irregular settlements, includingsquatter settlements and rooms and flats in dilapidatedbuildings in city centre areas. In spite of the many existingBox 1.3 Forced eviction: A typology• A landowner who has, in the past, authorized tenants to settle on his land now wants todevelop it or to sell it to a developer. He refuses to collect rent and asks the occupants tomove out (this has been a common case within inner-city slums in Bangkok during the last30 years).• An investor buys land suitable for development from a private landowner with the intentionof developing it. If tenants or squatters already occupy the land, and if the investorcannot persuade them to leave through negotiation, he may obtain an eviction order froma court.• Public authorities launch an expropriation procedure, by power of eminent domain, inorder to build infrastructure or carry out urban renewal, or a redevelopment scheme, or abeautification project.• Public authorities sell land to private investors which is already occupied by tenants orsquatters (this is common in cities in transition, where land is being privatized with thepressure of emerging land markets). The sale of public land aims to increase theirrevenues in the absence of land taxation and other fiscal resources.• Public authorities recover land that had been allocated to occupants under a temporary‘permit-to-occupy’ regime in order to carry out a development project, usually in partnershipwith private investors (this is common in sub-Saharan African cities, where the‘permit-to-occupy’ regime still prevails).In all of these cases, occupants of the land will ultimately be exposed to forced evictions.However, de facto security of tenure in informal settlements usually provides protection againstforced evictions, which may compromise the success of legal actions to evict occupants, andmay force private investors or public authorities to negotiate.Source: Durand-Lasserve, 2006poverty alleviation initiatives and safety-net programmes, thetotal number of people living in informal settlements isincreasing at a faster rate than the urban population. 60According to one analyst, an additional 2.8 billion people willrequire housing and urban services by 2030, with some 41per cent of humanity possibly living in slums. 61 Anotherfinds that informal land occupation in urban areas remainslarge scale: 51.4 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa; 41.2 percent in East Asia and the Pacific; 26.4 per cent in LatinAmerica and the Caribbean; 25.9 per cent in the Middle Eastand North Africa; and 5.7 per cent in Eastern Europe andCentral Asia. 62 At the national level, the pattern is the same,with between 40 and 70 per cent of the population ofBrazil’s main cities living in irregular settlements and some58 per cent of all households in South Africa living withoutsecurity of tenure. 63 Data also shows that tenure problemsexist in developed countries as well, such as in the UK andthe US.Beyond the difficulties of estimating the scale andcomplexity of the tenure insecurity problem, Chapter 5 alsopresents a range of existing tenure and occupancy options.What is clear is that no one alternative is appropriate for allcircumstances. Security of tenure depends upon what kindof land and/or housing is being occupied (public or private),and whether the occupant has some form of legal contract orlease, or not. While protection from forced evictions hasbeen accepted in international law, the fact is that evictionsare nevertheless increasing. The challenge, therefore, is tounderstand why and to identify measures to reduce thisform of urban insecurity.Freedom fromforced eviction hasbecome recognizedas a fundamentalhuman right withinhuman rights law