By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Jan 24 2005 (IPS)

The World Social Forum that gets under way this week will bring together a large number of slum dwellers’ representatives. “Never again an isolated struggle” is their slogan as they seek common solutions to common problems.

They will meet at an assembly of urban social movements Jan. 27. The assembly will bring together citizens networks, tenants’ unions, members of indigenous populations and housing rights groups to discuss a common agenda for action.

“The time has come to join our struggles,” Cesare Ottolini from the International Alliance of Inhabitants (IAI) told IPS. “We want to create a global solidarity ground for urban social movements for confrontation and common initiatives.” Together with 30 other citizens associations, the IAI based in Padua in Italy is launching an “appeal for the unity of urban social movements.”

Housing problems affect more than a billion people, according to the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-Habitat. The figure is expected to grow to 1.7 billion people by 2020 unless firm preventive action is taken, it says.

“Developing countries’ repayment of the foreign debt fostered by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund is making it impossible to reach the UN objective of creating better housing conditions for 100 million people by 2015,” Ottolini said.

But slums are not a problem only in developing countries. Around 5 percent of the population of industrialised countries lives in slums. Many more live in precarious conditions or under threat of forced eviction.

A wide range of issues will be discussed at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre (Jan. 26-31): from the right to safe and decent housing to foreign debt remission, from privatisation to alternative social housing policies.

A seminar will be dedicated to the launch of a global alert system on evictions and to the ‘Zero Evictions!’ campaign promoted by the IAI to stop forced relocation.

Supported by the Catholic Kutoka group of parishes, the campaign helped stop 300,000 evictions in Nairobi in Kenya, where 55 percent of the population lives in slums without regular electricity, water or sanitation.

Urban movements in Kenya and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean are promoting “popular funds for houses and land” with money arising from debt remission. “Instead of going back to the richest countries, the money can be used for and by populations,” Ottolini said.

The proposal will be presented on behalf of civil society to the meeting of the eight most industrialised nations (G8 including the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia) in Scotland in July this year.

Debt policies are already on the meeting’s agenda. Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown has proposed debt cancellation for the poorest nations.

The UN-Habitat Advisor Group on Forced Eviction (AGFE) that comprises non- governmental organisations, local authorities, central government representatives and professionals is supporting such moves.

“Despite the fact that we have a voice but not a vote, we can bring civil society needs to the UN central government, who will have to hear what we say,” says AGFE coordinator Yves Cabannes, who will be at the WSF.

AGFE is engaged in conciliatory missions to stop evictions in Ghana, Santo Domingo and Curitiba (Brazil), and next in Thailand “where the rebuilding (after the tsunami) may be a real problem for poor people, who will be relocated because of the big investments,” said Cabannes.

The Forum of Local Authorities for Social Inclusion, a parallel event taking place in Porto Alegre Jan. 25, will seek to build a bridge with the WSF. Representatives of urban movements have been invited to speak at this forum, to be followed by a meeting between them and city officials.

A meeting is also scheduled at the WSF between citizens networks from Peru, the Dominican Republic, the Basque region in Spain and the government of Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic.

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