SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY, NEPAL:
Landless in Kathmandu - but not homeless
Story released 24th August 2007

A trip into the notorious Asian slum-scene

At least 20.000 people in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, are living an uncertain existence in small slum-like settlements around town. Locally known as Sukumbasi's they are squatters who have settled down and constructed very simple houses on land that doesn't belong to them. Hence the often used designation, 'landless'. Since they never bought the land nor got any kind of permission to settle down there, they live in constant fear of being evicted whenever the government, who owns the land, decides to 'develop' it or to sell it off to private investors. And if that happens, they will loose their homes and everything they have ever invested in them.

Eviction is a chronic threat hanging over the sukumbasi's heads, but like any other chronic ailment, people learn to live with them or, at least, relegate it to the back of their minds. Because in the slum there are more pressing concerns to face up to: The everyday struggle of making ends meet and avoiding sickness and diseases in the far from sanitary conditions they have come to call their homes. Many of the settlements are located directly on the banks of Kathmandu's polluted rivers, environmental disasters in themselves, way beyond biological death and at times bearing closer resemblance to an open sewage than a river. According to a local NGO, the poor sanitation is directly related to the high mortality rates in these communities.

A closer look

The global perspective
(source: UN HABITAT)

In the early years of urbanisation and industrialisation in the Western world, urban conditions were at least as bad as those found anywhere today and slums were just as widespread. The 19th century industrialization in Europe and America led to rapid urbanisation and the populations of London, Paris, New York and other places soared. Millions of poor people lived in dark, airless and unsanitary tenements, often without windows, where they were regularly exploited by rapacious landlords and politicians.

In a 2003 global assessment by UN HABITAT, it was concluded that 924 million people, or 31.6 per cent of the world’s total urban population, live in slums. In the least developed countries, 78 per cent of the urban population live in slums whereas 6 per cent of the urban population in the developed countries live in slum-like conditions., the assessment finds. Furthermore, the total number of slum dwellers in the world has increased by about 36 per cent during the 1990s and, in the next twenty-five years, the global number of slum dwellers is expected to reach two billion if no concerted action to address the problem is taken.

Family living in a single-room house

Community ladies chatting

"The year 2007 marks a turning point in history. One out of
every two people will be living in a city."
 

Slum development is largely fuelled by a combination of general population growth, rapid rural-to-urban migration, a spiralling urban poverty and hence the inability of the urban poor to access affordable land for housing. Inadequate urban and national policies have failed to address these problems, largely created by the global economic system. Daniel Biau, Director of UN-HABITAT’s Regional and Technical Cooperation Division explains the link between slums and economy: "Slums are not a market failure, they are a market success. The first thing we should know about slums is that they are economically useful, sometimes extremely useful, because they offer low-cost housing options to the poor. And cheap housing means a cheap labour force and low-income workers. Slums are the physical expression and condition of urban poverty. In many countries they are actually necessary to ensure a profitable economic growth!
 

"Land is a commodity and the poor, by definition, don't have
the resources to purchase it."

Slum

Toilet

At the same time, there is also a global awareness of the need to improve the living standards and reduce the higher mortality rate of that estimated one billion people who live in all the slums of the world. Since the early 1960's, thousands of organizations and local governments have been trying to solve the housing problems in developing countries. At first, building public housing for the poor was attempted, but this approach came to an end as it became clear that it wouldn't provide a hundredth of what was needed. Also, flagrant problems with corruption and nepotism in the developing world meant that most of the new housings just went to government employees. Today aided self-help is the widely preferred method. The eleventh United Nations Millennium Development target (under Goal 7) of achieving significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 indicates a strong consensus on the part of the international community that adequate shelter is, in fact, a fundamental human right.

In the doorway
Teenager at home	Growing up in the slum
Ramshackle housing	Motherhood
Fetching water at the well	Man in front of his family house
Going to the river-side toilet	Boy in squatter village