With the recent implementation of the Pacifying Police Units (UPP) in several favelas in Rio de Janeiro, the gentrification process can already be observed, due to the vergitinous real estate valuation and to the rise in costs of infrastructure. Testimonies from residents of Chapéu Mangueira, a community in the Leme neighborhood, question the consequences of the current government’s policy, alerting the population so that the favela culture is not lost.
May 20, 2013 Hundreds of residents of Sumur village in Klender, East Jakarta, blocked a road to prevent a housing developer and personnel from the public order agency (Satpol PP) from evicting them from their residences. East Jakarta Police chief Sr. Comr. Mulyadi Kaharni said on Saturday that the angry mob stopped dozens of vehicles […]
THE halo has slipped from Aung San Suu Kyi’s head, at least in the eyes of the monks and villagers of Ah Lay Daw. The Nobel peace prizewinner, who has resumed her career as a working politician in Myanmar, dismayed villagers earlier this month by giving her backing to the development of a copper mine on nearby Letpadaung Mountain, on land that was confiscated from them by the government.
The Angolan government says it is waging “a sustained war against chaotic urbanisation”, but this appears to have become a war against poor people. The most extreme examples are in Luanda, a city bursting at the seams. Around half a million people lived in Angola’s capital in 1975, when the Portuguese moved out. Now, with many forced into the city to escape the country’s 27-year civil war, 5 million jostle for space, of whom three-quarters live in informal settlements with little or no documentation or land tenure.
A new co-housing development of 41 homes has just been completed here – and all without a developer in sight. By sharing facilities, the Forgebank community aims to solve these problems, reducing costs and environmental impact. It has its own laundry and a workshop with shared tools. There are two guest bedrooms, freeing up space in individual houses, and a huge kitchen, dining room and living area in the common house, as well as a shared playroom – complete with big box of communal Lego.
For the millions of people facing forced evictions and displacement, access to secure and adequate housing continues to be a challenge. According to the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, it is estimated that more than 18 million people were evicted from their homes between 1998 and 2008
The Special attended the “Civil Society Policy Forum”, an event part of the “Spring Meeting” promoted by the World Bank, in Washington, participating in discussions about the process of reviewing and updating its safeguard policies.
Two weeks after the first payments began going out as part of the settlement struck in January with mortgage companies, homeowners who suffered improper foreclosures are describing a new injury. Many say they are being denied their rightful compensation under the terms of the deal.
Bordered by a rubber plantation in the west, a forestry plantation in the east and a palm oil farm in the south, the 18 local communities that live in Ocean Division, southern Cameroon, have had an uphill struggle for the rights to their land. In 2008, the government leased much of their forestland, about 47,000 hectares, to international company United Forest Cameroon.
But only through a sustained campaign and involvement by the Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI), a global coalition of organisations working to encourage forestland tenure, the communities were given back some of their land by a February 2012 prime ministerial decree.
At the start of the Annual World Bank Conference on Land and Poverty this week, World Bank President Dr. Jim Kim made some welcome remarks about the global land rights crisis. He did not respond directly to the withering criticism of the role the Bank has played in promoting land grabs. But he did say that the Bank shares the concerns about the risks of large-scale land acquisitions, and importantly he acknowledged that “additional efforts must be made to build capacity and safeguards related to land rights and to empower civil society to hold governments accountable.”