[World Urban Forum 3] U.N. poverty conference warned it ignores the poor

from Reuters India

By Allan Dowd

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Officials and activists meeting to craft an international response to growing urban poverty were warned on Tuesday they don't understand many of the people they are trying to help.

Jockin Arputham of India's National Slum Dwellers Federation also said the United Nations was not doing enough to stop the forced evictions of urban poor by private developers and government-sponsored aid programs.

"Where is the teeth of the United Nations?" Arputham asked the World Urban Forum, a U.N.-sponsored conference in Vancouver that has drawn more than 8,000 urban planners, academics, activists and government officials.

The week-long meeting follows last week's U.N. report that warned that governments cannot ignore growing urban slums as people continue to move into already strained cities to escape rural poverty.

The report said the world will reach a critical point in 2007 when the majority of the globe's population will be urbanized. By 2030, 80 percent of people will live in cities, it predicted.

The report cited evictions as a growing problems faced by the urban poor. It estimated that 6.7 million people were forced from their homes between 2000 and 2002, up from 4.2 million people between 1998 and 2000.

Housing planners who are developing programs to aid slum dwellers are often ignorant of the cultural concerns of the people they are trying to help, Arputham said.

"And you call yourself experts?" he asked sarcastically.

Arputham also told the conference that many of the delegates were less interested in reducing world poverty than in holding more international meetings and writing academic reports.

Arputham's message that private-sector aid programs do not help the poor contrasted sharply with that of U.S. Housing and Urban Development chief Alphonso Jackson -- who is using the forum to promote private home ownership.

Jackson told the conference that governments alone cannot solve the problems of poverty and need to work with both private developers and "faith based" organizations.

"The army of compassion lives in the community not in government," Jackson said.