1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to generate discussion and debate
on urban poverty and approaches to its alleviation. Consequently
this paper makes strong statements and tries to argue its
case from the perspectives of the urban poor. The positions
taken and arguments made are not new and may be found in the
current development literature. They are also not comprehensive
and may be just one side of the coin. Other positions and
arguments may be just as valid. Participants at the High-level
Regional Meeting are encouraged to voice their views on the
issues raised and approaches suggested in this paper during
the various symposia.
While the issue of poverty has been the direct or indirect
focus of development initiatives in Asia and the Pacific since
the end of the colonial era (1940s to 1950s), the issue of
urban poverty has gained prominence only in the last two to
three decades. Two basic “levels” or “types" of poverty
are identified in the development literature: absolute poverty
and relative poverty. Simply put, absolute poverty is defined
as the cost of the minimum necessities needed to sustain human
life. The World Bank currently regards people earning less
than US$ 1 a day (in 1993 purchasing power parity) to be absolutely
poor. Relative poverty is defined as the minimum economic,
social, political and cultural goods needed to maintain an
acceptable way of life in a particular society. The European
Union defines the relatively poor as “... persons, families
and groups of persons whose resources (material, cultural,
social) are so limited as to exclude them from the minimum
acceptable way of life in the member state in which they live.”
Terms such as poverty eradication and poverty alleviation
are often used interchangeably in the development literature.
Before discussing causes, aspects, policies and approaches
to either eradicating or alleviating poverty, it is important
to distinguish what these terms imply. While absolute poverty
can be eradicated, relative poverty can only be alleviated,
because what is minimally accepted today may vary over time,
from villages to urban areas and from country to country.
Relative poverty also varies with levels of economic development,
and the perceptions and expectations of the majority on what
is minimally acceptable. For example, while clean piped water
may be a minimum acceptable standard of living in a city,
it may not be a minimum requirement in a village. Similarly,
while possessing a telephone may be a minimum necessity in
a country like the United States, it may not be a minimum
requirement in a country like India. Likewise while Internet
connections may not be a minimum necessity in India today,
they may become a minimum necessity ten years from now. This
paper, while addressing both absolute and relative poverty,
focuses more on relative poverty because it is more prevalent
in cities of Asia and the Pacific.
2. The Three Aspects of Poverty
Poverty essentially has three closely interrelated aspects:
“poverty of money”, “poverty of access” and “poverty of power.”
These make the working, living and social environments of
the poor extremely insecure and severely limit the options
available to them to improve their lives. Without choices
and security, breaking the cycle of poverty becomes virtually
impossible and leads to the marginalization and alienation
of the poor from society.
2.1 Poverty of Money
The most prevalent means of measuring poverty have been and
continue to be those related to money. Measures such as poverty
lines and Gini-coefficients are used to measure absolute and
relative poverty in terms of incomes and affordability. They
are prevalent because such measurements are relatively easy
to make and quantify.
However, the lack of money is more a symptom of poverty rather
than its cause. In most cases, the poor are not without an
income; what they lack is the ability to accumulate assets,
which is a key ingredient to the creation of wealth and breaking
the cycle of poverty.
Besides their low earnings, the prime reason for their inability
to accumulate assets and thus increase their security of income
is that their profits or potential savings are often appropriated
by moneylenders who charge usurious interest rates, by formal
and informal regulatory and enforcement agents or organizations
who demand bribes or extort protection money, and by middlemen
or other stronger business partners who exploit the poor because
they lack market information or the ability to use that market
information to increase their own incomes.
Another key reason that prevents the poor from accumulating
capital is that they are often forced to purchase public goods
and services that are readily available to other groups in
society at market or below market prices, at much higher costs.
2.2 Poverty of Access
Most of Asia’s urban poor live in overcrowded and unsanitary
slums and squatter settlements and often do not have access
to basic infrastructure and services. They are forced to live
in illegal and informal settlements because they cannot enter
formal land and housing markets. The reasons for the formation
of slums and squatter settlements are numerous and have been
discussed extensively in the development literature. It suffices
to say here that, because of the way formal markets are regulated
and structured, the poor are unable to afford the choices
offered to them in these markets. In contrast, the informal
and illegal housing markets of slums and squatter settlements
are specifically geared to meet their shelter needs.
However, like other informal markets, the informal land and
housing market is exploitative and has several negative impacts.
First and foremost, informal settlements are often located
on marginal land (along river-banks, railway lines, steep
slopes and on or near garbage dumps) and are prone to natural
and man-made disasters. They are also often illegal and those
living there do not have security of tenure. Because of their
illegal status, they are often not provided with formal basic
infrastructure and services such as piped water, electricity,
wastewater disposal and solid waste collection by government
agencies and organizations. They have to purchase these in
informal markets, often paying much more than higher-income
groups. Studies in several cities of Asia and the Pacific
have shown that the poor end up paying two to five times as
much for informal access to public goods and services than
higher-income groups.
Because there is often no security of tenure in illegal settlements
and the fear of imminent eviction exists, the poor do not
invest in improving either their housing or their settlements.
The lack of basic environmental infrastructure and locations
on marginal land often translate into higher rates of disease
and lower life spans. The consequent higher medical bills,
lost working days and early demise of income earners further
expropriate their marginal income and cements the cycle of
poverty.
Similarly, children of the poor are unable to access good
education. Often the standards and facilities of the educational
institutes they can afford are lower than those available
to children of higher-income groups. Moreover, poor children
often drop out of school earlier to support their families.
Poor education also contributes to entrenchment of the cycle
of poverty.
2.3 Poverty of Power
The poor suffer from both traditional and modern environmental
health risks in urban areas. They suffer from diseases associated
with poor sanitation, lack of clean water, overcrowded and
poorly ventilated living and working environments, as well
as from modern risks caused by air and industrial pollution.
While the poor suffer the most from dysfunctions in cities,
they are the least able, as individuals, to influence how
cities are governed.
In many Asian cities, both the formal structures of government
and the culture of governance tend to exclude the poor from
decision-making and tend to concentrate decision-making among
a small number of formal and informal elite. The poor have
a greater possibility to influence decision-making under conditions
of good governance, i.e., a system of government and a culture
of governance that is participatory, inclusive, consensus-oriented,
based on the rule of law, responsive to the needs of the population,
efficient, transparent and accountable.
Another important aspect of power is information. The poor
often lack access to information that they can use to advance
their case when dealing with other actors in the city. Even
when information is available, it is often in media and forms
that are either not accessible to nor understandable by the
poor.
3. Measuring Poverty
The extent and nature of poverty, as defined by its three
aspects and its impact on marginalizing and alienating segments
of the urban society, are difficult to measure. UNDP’s Human
Development Index is an attempt to compile and compare all
the above aspects of poverty. As the Human Development Report
of 1999 shows, the extent and nature of poverty vary considerably
in countries of Asia and the Pacific, and that of urban poverty
varies considerably between countries, between rural and urban
areas, among urban areas within a particular country, among
neighbourhoods of a given urban area and even within neighbourhoods.
Poverty also has a gender dimension. In most countries, the
poorest of the poor tend to be households headed by women.
Even within the family unit, the poverties of money, access
and power vary based on gender, with women and female children
suffering more than their male counterparts. Thus to meaningfully
measure poverty, disaggregated data and information are often
needed, which in many countries do not exist.
4. Urban Poverty and the Habitat Agenda
The Habitat Agenda, adopted by the Second United Nations
Conference on Human Settlements in 1996, addresses eradication
of poverty as one of the ten overarching goals and principles
to guide actions, policies and programmes on human settlements.
Chapter II (Goals and Principles) paragraph 28 states:
“The eradication of poverty is essential for sustainable
human settlements. The principle of poverty eradication is
based on the framework adopted by the World Summit for Social
Development and on the relevant outcomes of other major United
Nations conferences, including the objective of meeting the
basic needs of all people, especially those living in poverty
and disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, particularly in the
developing countries where poverty is acute, as well as the
objective of enabling all women and men to attain secure and
sustainable livelihoods through freely chosen and productive
employment and work.”
Commitments to poverty alleviation are dispersed throughout
the Habitat Agenda in Chapter III entitled Commitments (sections
on Adequate Shelter for All, Sustainable Human Settlements,
Enablement and Participation, and Financing Shelter and Human
Settlements). In its commitments, the Habitat Agenda also
addresses the above three aspects of poverty.
5. Globalization and its Impacts on the Urban Poor
While developing countries have been struggling to alleviate
poverty for some time now, they are also facing new challenges
posed by globalization. There are two fundamental and interrelated
globalization trends sweeping the region at present: globalization
of economies and globalization of information. Both these
trends are fundamentally changing not only the economies of
the countries of Asia and the Pacific, but also their environments,
cultures and societies. These trends are likely to affect
the urban poor adversely as they threaten to widen the gap
between the “haves” and the “have-nots” in society. Those
with capital and access to information and the ability to
translate that information into economic, political and social
gain, will benefit from globalization. Since the poor do not
have capital and are often unable to access information, they
are likely to be further impoverished and marginalized.
Globalization of economies is forcing developing countries
to restructure their economies to make them more competitive
in the global market by “right-sizing government”, and reducing
or eliminating subsidies, and by privatizing government-owned
firms and enterprises. Government budget cuts, particularly
in areas such as education and health, have reduced the level
of services available to some of the poor. The removal of
most subsidies will probably not adversely affect a majority
of the poor since they do not have access to them in the first
place. What will perhaps indirectly and adversely affect the
poor are the massive lay-offs that accompany “right-sizing
governments” and privatizing government-owned firms and enterprises.
While this would most likely benefit the overall economy in
the medium and long term by creating new and higher paying
jobs, experience has shown that, in the short term, low skilled
and hence low-paid laid-off staff are pushed into poverty
and use their severance allowances, if they receive any, to
either seek employment in the informal sector or start micro-enterprises,
increasing competition in the informal sector, which is already
highly competitive.
Moreover, integration in the global economy also means increased
vulnerability of economies to downturns in global markets.
Decades of achievements in social development and poverty
alleviation can be wiped out in months and can lead to social
and ethnic unrest as was amply demonstrated in the case of
Indonesia.
Globalization of economies is also reducing the power of
national governments to manage their own economies, particularly
by forcing countries to remove both open and hidden trade
barriers and open their markets to competition from other
countries, particularly from trans-national corporations (TNCs).
In a more free trade environment, TNCs are likely to dominate
local markets. TNC-induced job creation (jobs created by TNCs
or in response to competition with TNCs) is likely to become
more technology- and capital-intensive. In other words, TNCs
and local firms competing with them would most likely create
fewer jobs, at greater costs, for the more highly educated
and skilled among the labour force. A labour force that is
illiterate or just literate would probably not be a sufficient
criterion to either attract foreign direct investment or compete
in the global market.
Concurrent with the trend towards globalization of economies
is the trend towards globalization of information, which affects
the economies, societies and cultures of the region more fundamentally.
E-commerce and related telecommunications sectors are the
fastest growing segments of the world economy. Large companies
are increasingly positioning themselves to compete in the
new knowledge-based global economy which requires a highly
educated and skilled workforce.
On the positive side, globalization of information is also
enabling communities and civil society organizations to access
information, exchange experiences and advocate their cases
more freely. They can build partnerships, not only within
their own countries, but also internationally, to become part
of or initiate “social movements” that advocate change. However,
while civil society organizations, including those working
with the poor, have been greatly empowered by the globalization
of information, the same cannot be said for most of the organizations
of the poor.
Globalization of information also means greater exposure
to consumerism and higher expectations among urban populations,
which, given the above trends, are unlikely to be met for
a majority of the urban poor. Higher expectations that remain
unachievable can become causes for social, ethnic and religious
violence.
If present trends continue in developing countries of the
Asia-Pacific region, those who have access to capital and
information, and can translate that information into economic
and social gain, will benefit. This means that a highly educated
and information savvy minority of the labour force would benefit
the most, while a majority of the labour force, particularly
in countries of South Asia, that are not even literate, let
alone e-literate, would be marginalized. Thus the gap or “digital
divide” between the rich and the poor would widen considerably.
6. Towards Alleviating Urban Poverty
Policies or strategies aimed at alleviating urban poverty
have to address its three components: poverty of money, poverty
of access and poverty of power. The following sections discuss
some strategies to achieve this.
6.1 Alleviating the Poverty of Money
Globalization of economies and information cannot be reversed.
While minor adjustments to the global financial system, such
as curbing the flow of “hot money”, may perhaps be made, no
country can completely remove itself from the global economy
and expect to sustain economic growth and development. Globalization
threatens to increase the gap between the rich and poor unless
specific interventions are undertaken by governmental and
civil society organizations.
These interventions include supporting and integrating the
economies of the poor into the formal economy at city, country
and global levels; providing the necessary infrastructure
and increasing both literacy and e-literacy as widely as possible
to create the basis for a knowledge-based economy; and promoting
community and trade-based safety-nets to assist the poor in
weathering cyclical economic downturns, which are likely to
increase in frequency as countries restructure their economies
and become more integrated in the global market.
6.1.1 Integrating the Economies of the Poor
Microenterprises of the poor provide valuable services to
other poor and higher-income groups. Regulatory frameworks
and market structures often restrict and hamper providers
of such micro-services. For example, in the prepared food
industry, instead of recognizing that the market comprises
a wide spectrum stretching from high-end restaurants and precooked-packaged
food to street-side food vendors, regulations in many cities
exclude and discriminate against the lowest and most vulnerable
end of the market. However, this situation is changing in
some countries, most notably in Thailand and Malaysia. Cities
in these countries have not only facilitated street-side food
vending by allocating space beside the street and in open-air
food courts, but also regulated it by requiring minimum standards
of hygiene and waste disposal.
Solid waste management is a key issue not only for the city
as a whole but also for the poor, because many of them are
involved in the collection and recycling of waste. The traditional
approach to solid waste management seeks to dispose of waste.
Several pilot projects have been initiated by governmental
and non-governmental organizations that seek to extract “cash
from trash”, by decentralizing waste disposal, recycling inorganic
wastes and composting organic wastes through partnerships
among communities, waste-pickers and government. Ways and
means of incorporating informal sector waste collection and
recycling into the formal waste collection system, and the
feasibility of such decentralized community-based waste collection-and-disposal
mechanisms, need to be studied further.
Local governments and non-governmental organizations in Indonesia
have made a major effort to integrate the informal waste-pickers
in the formal solid waste management systems of cities like
Surabaya and Bandung. Alternatives to picking waste at dumpsites
were provided by organizing and regulating waste-pickers into
“yellow brigades” which received official recognition for
their valuable service role in the city. Vending spaces on
designated streets were also provided to encourage the sale
of used and recycled items. Partnerships with various neighborhood
associations and waste-pickers were also organized to facilitate
decentralized and community-based recycling and composting.
Evidence, particularly from the garment industry in South
and Southeast Asian countries, shows that economies of the
poor are already linked to the global market. Garment manufacturers
often subcontract the manufacture of specific parts to either
individuals or small workshops based in slums and squatter
settlements, residents of which in Karachi, Dhaka and Jakarta
make various parts of skirts, pants, sweaters and shirts,
bought by consumers in New York, London and Paris. While this
process provides income to the urban poor, it is also exploitative,
with the majority of the value-added reaped by retailers and
middlemen rather than the urban poor. Similar linkages between
the economies of the poor and the global economy exist in
other industries where subcontracting is practiced.
Where such linkages exist or can potentially exist, they
should be strengthened and promoted. However, care should
be taken to remove the exploitative aspects of these relationships,
by promoting collective mechanisms that would strengthen the
power of the poor to negotiate increased returns for their
labour and enterprises vis-à-vis other actors.
Moreover, e-commerce provides enormous opportunities for
directly linking the micro-manufacturing of the poor to businesses
and consumers in developed economies. While the individual
micro-entrepreneur may find it beyond his or her capacity
to establish such links, groups of micro-entrepreneurs, perhaps
as cooperatives, could enter such relationships. Examples
of such arrangements could be, for example, cooperatives of
small-scale manufacturers from labour-intensive sectors, such
as garments, sports goods, handicrafts and carpets, entering
into direct relationships with large-scale retailers or manufacturers
in developed countries. This is an unexplored area and considerable
action research through pilot projects may be needed to develop
its potential.
6.1.2 Providing Access to Credit
A major constraint that micro-enterprises of the poor often
face is access to credit at market rates. While formal sector
credit institutions have found the poor unbankable, several
community- and trade-based savings and credit groups have
proven that not only are they bankable, but that they are
much more likely to repay their loans than upper-income groups.
Experiences of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, SEWA and Mahila
Melan in India, SUPF in Cambodia, ENDA in Viet Nam and SIPSACRES
in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, show that many micro-entrepreneurs
joining these schemes not only break the cycle of poverty
for their own families but also create employment in their
communities.
6.1.3 Investing in the Knowledge-based Economy
However, while alleviating absolute poverty, all these efforts
may fail to alleviate relative poverty if the infrastructural
and human resources base for the sustainable and rapid growth
of the knowledge economy is not created. Massive investments
in information and communication infrastructure and power
generation and distribution networks need to be made, particularly
in wireless communication and micro-power generation. Liberalizing
and promoting a competitive environment in the telecommunication
and power generation and distribution markets can most effectively
achieve this.
Another key component to advancing the knowledge-based economy
is promoting e-literacy. A concerted drive is needed to increase
the levels of conventional literacy, particularly in South
Asia and some countries of Southeast Asia, as well as increase
the levels of e-literacy. This could be done by providing
financial incentives and support to private sector institutions
that promote e-literacy, introducing e-education in a majority
of public schools, as is being done in Malaysia and Thailand,
and providing Internet access at post offices and public call
offices as is being done in certain parts of Indonesia and
Sri Lanka.
6.1.4 Promoting Community-based Safety-nets
For reasons cited earlier, government subsidy programmes
established to protect the poor often do not reach them. Community-based
safety-net systems, such as community-based health, life and
unemployment insurance and scholarship funds, may be more
effective in protecting the poor from economic downturns,
illnesses or death in the family. However, while some pilot
projects are being undertaken in Thailand, this area needs
to be studied and explored more extensively.
6.2 Alleviating the Poverty of Access
Experience in the region has shown that the poor invest considerable
amounts of capital in the housing and infrastructure of their
settlements if they have security of tenure. However, often
such housing and infrastructure could be greatly improved
by providing the poor with access to improved technical skills
and know-how. Some governments have enacted laws and initiated
programmes that recognize and build upon the investments that
the poor make in their own housing and settlements. Recognition
of the existing investments of the poor in their settlements
has resulted in squatter settlement regularization and land
sharing schemes in many countries of the region.
An interesting example is that of the Province of Sindh in
Pakistan, which has enacted the Katchi Abadi (informal settlements)
Regularization Act and established the Sindh Katchi Abadi
Authority (SKAA). Simply put, the law states that an informal
settlement on land owned by the government, that is not marginal
and that has not been earmarked for essential infrastructure
development or public use, would be regularized. Residents
living in the settlement before a particular cut-off date
would be provided security of tenure provided they pay for
the cost of unserviced land, provide internal infrastructure
on a self-help basis and pay the partial cost of external
or bulk infrastructure. The SKAA, learning from the experience
of the Orangi Pilot Project, organizes residents into community-based
organizations and provides technical assistance for provision
and improvement of internal infrastructure by the people themselves.
One of the key principles in this approach is the minimizing
of subsidies to the poor.
In addition to regularization of existing settlements, it
is important to plan for low-income housing for the rural
poor migrating to urban areas, natural population increase
in existing slums and squatter settlements and relocation
of informal settlements from marginal, private land or from
land needed for key infrastructure development. Experience
has shown that such schemes are successful if communities
are involved in their planning, design and implementation,
and if these schemes seek to preserve and improve the economic,
social and cultural mechanisms and community support structures
of the poor.
6.3 Alleviating the Poverty of Power
6.3.1 Supporting Collective Mechanisms
Experience from the region has shown that whenever the poor
have been organized, united and in possession of technical
and managerial skills, they have improved their own conditions
and broken the cycle of poverty. They have resisted stronger
groups, been able to influence decision-making and build equitable
partnerships with governments and other actors in society.
Several non-governmental organizations have made valuable
attempts to catalyze coalitions of the poor in the form of
slum and squatter dwellers’ federations, rickshaw pullers’
associations and hawkers’ welfare cooperatives. These coalitions
have strengthened the bargaining positions of the poor and
have assisted them in building beneficial partnerships.
Experience has also shown that many of the collective mechanisms
of the poor have been short-lived, particularly those that
developed in response to external threats such as evictions,
or around a particular issue such as provision of water or
housing. Often once the external threat was resolved, these
community-based organizations disintegrated. While making
important contributions, such organizations are often transitory
in the struggle to break the cycle of poverty. On the other
hand, community-based organizations and collective mechanisms
that are developed around issues of long-term concern, and
that are able to engage the poor continuously and sustainably,
such as community or trade-based savings and credit schemes,
have a greater potential for empowering the poor and breaking
the cycle of poverty. This is because they create a core,
organized group within communities around which other issues
of common concern can be discussed and addressed by activating
other community members.
Another reason for the failure of organizations of the poor
is a lack of skills in the operational and financial management
of organizations, in group interaction and in negotiation
and consensus-building. Governmental and non-governmental
organizations that assist the urban poor in acquiring such
skills help to empower them. In contrast, those who speak
on behalf of the poor or provide them with services, while
doing valuable short-term work, often tend to make the poor
dependent on them.
6.3.2 Increasing Access to Information
One of the key components of power and wealth creation is
access to information and knowledge and the ability to use
that information or knowledge for economic or social gain.
Programmes and initiatives that seek to provide information
to the poor in easily understood media and forms greatly contribute
to their empowerment.
A free flow of information also contributes to transparency
in decision-making. Some governments in the region, for example,
now require public hearings before large infrastructure projects
are initiated. Even where such public hearings are impartial,
the poor are often unable to participate or influence decision-making
because they do not have the financial or human resources
to interpret the information provided. Some non-governmental
organizations and academic institutions are working to fill
this gap. Most notable among these initiatives are urban resource
centers (URCs). The URC approach links non-governmental organizations
and academic institutions to analyze and evaluate trends and
the feasibility and impacts of programmes and projects in
the city, and where needed, to work out alternative solutions
to governmental proposals. This information is then provided
in an understandable form to the groups and communities that
would most likely be affected. Equipped with such information,
several poor communities have been successfully able to resist
projects that were either unnecessary or whose negative impacts
would have been far greater than their potential benefits.
7. Capacity-Building
While considerable progress has been made in alleviating
urban poverty in most countries of the region, most efforts
have been ad hoc and fragmented. Sustaining and intensifying
efforts to alleviate urban poverty require substantial capacity-building,
particularly in the public or governmental sector, among the
organizations of the poor themselves and among the civil society
organizations that work towards empowering the poor. Capacity-building,
as defined here, has essentially two aspects: institutional
change and human resources development.
7.1 Institutional Change
Institutional change, encompassing regulatory, fiscal and
organizational frameworks, needs to focus on creating an environment
that empowers the poor to address their problems and become
an integral rather than a marginal part of the city. This
includes removing barriers that restrict their access to finance,
housing, infrastructure, education and other urban services.
It also includes encouraging them to organize themselves and
to acquire skills and information to enable them to enter
into equitable partnerships with other actors in society.
The role of government needs to change from that of provider
of goods and services to that of enabler, facilitator and
regulator of markets. The role of the government should be
to ensure a more equal playing field for the urban poor. This
requires much more precise targeting of subsidies through
mechanisms that are in harmony with the culture and economies
of the poor, such as community-based savings and credit groups.
Developing such innovative mechanisms requires research and
experimentation. Therefore, government institutions need to
create an environment that encourages officials to learn from
the poor and experiment with approaches and techniques of
addressing specific issues. Good examples of such innovative
mechanisms are the Urban Community Development Office of the
Government of Thailand, popularly known as the Urban Poor
Bank, the Incremental Development Scheme of the Hyderabad
Development Authority of Pakistan and the Integrated Action
Planning approach of the Department of Housing and Urban Development
of Nepal.
Moreover, governmental institutions can only become “pro-poor”
if the poor are able to influence decision-making. Experience
from the region has shown that the poor are more able to influence
decision-making and enter into equitable partnerships more
effectively at the local rather than national level. Thus
one of the key requisites for sustained poverty alleviation
is decentralization and devolution of fiscal, regulatory and
executive powers to the local level.
7.2 Human Resources Development in the
Government or Public Sector
Poverty alleviation requires both attitudinal change and
skills development among government officials. Government
officials need to regard the poor as clients and partners,
rather than the “governed” and ignorant who need to be taken
care of. They need to realize that often the poor know how
best to solve their own problems and succeed if a supportive
institutional environment exists. The job of government officials
is to facilitate the creation of such supportive institutional
environments.
Government officials also need to learn from the situation
on the ground rather than develop policies that are based
on imported models, theories and standards from developed
countries. One of the key lessons from successful poverty
alleviation programmes has been that the initiators of the
programmes studied the existing situation and identified ways
and means of improving upon existing market delivery mechanisms
in partnership with the poor.
In addition to attitudinal change, government officials also
need assistance in developing their skills, not only to interact
with organizations of the poor but also to provide the technical
assistance required to address the problems faced by them
and to improve their working and living environments. In other
words, their skills to provide technical research and extension
services to the poor need to be developed and strengthened.
Most countries of the region have public service and local
government training and research institutions that are entrusted
with developing the human resources of governmental organizations.
However, in many cases these institutions are unable to build
the needed capacities because they themselves lack capacity.
Capacities of these and other technical institutions need
to be enhanced to tackle the demand for human resources development
in the public sector.
7.3 Human Resources Development
among the Poor and their Partners
Human resources development in the organizations of the poor
and among civil society organizations working with the poor
is also required. While in most countries of the region the
poor and their partners in civil society are better organized
today then they were a decade ago, they still need capacity-building
in strengthening and expanding collective mechanisms and improving
the articulation of their needs and demands.
7.3.1 Strengthening and Expanding Collective
Mechanisms
To acquire power vis-à-vis other actors in the city, the
poor have to organize themselves into collective mechanisms
such as community- or trade-based organizations. Several organizations
have undertaken this task effectively. However, given the
number of the poor in the region, these efforts need to be
increased considerably. This would require concerted effort
in training new community organizers and further developing
the skills of existing community organizers.
Moreover, the poor and their partners also need assistance
in transparent management of community- and trade-based organizations
including such skills as financial and operations management,
working in group environments and consensus-building. They
also need skills such as negotiation, coalition-building and
networking to build partnerships with other actors in urban
areas.
7.3.2 Improved Articulation of Needs and
Demands
The poor and their partners need assistance in improving
their skills at advocacy and in accessing, analyzing and disseminating
information, including skills related to improved technologies
and markets. They also need assistance in social marketing
techniques to effect social and political change, including
more effective use of information technologies to link with
international and regional civil society movements and campaigns,
and the local and international media.
8. Actions at the Regional Level
Most efforts to alleviate poverty must be taken at the national,
sub-national and local levels. Regional efforts should concentrate
on supporting efforts at the country level. Moreover, these
efforts should concentrate on actions that either cannot be
done at the national level, such as exchange of experience
and information, or on actions that, because of economies
of scale can be done more effectively at the regional level,
such as comparative research or norm setting. Given these
two criteria, these regional actions are suggested:
- Further refining disaggregated indicators on urban poverty
that would enable policy-makers to measure and understand
both the extent and nature of urban poverty;
- Documenting and disseminating innovations, networking
and promoting exchange of experience and information among
governmental, non-governmental and community-based organizations
as well as research and training institutions on various
aspects of urban poverty, to encourage learning from each
other;
- Undertaking comparative action research on cutting-edge
issues and alternative development approaches such as integrating
the economies of the poor into the formal global economy,
decentralized community-based waste management systems,
and community-based safety-nets, using information technologies
in capacity-building of local governments, among others;
- Promoting debate and discussion among national and local
policy-makers on cutting-edge issues, approaches, policies
and strategies to alleviate poverty; and
- Advocating such issues as decentralization and devolution,
partnerships among organizations of the poor and other urban
actors, security of tenure and good governance.
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