Asias urban issues

							AN DE RB

LOPM VE

T EN

Asia’s urban issues
www.wvasiapacific.org/urbanisation

The Asia-Pacific region contains around two-thirds of the world’s population. Very soon, more than half of them will live in cities.
Urbanisation is a consequence of, and also a prerequisite for, economic development, a sign of potential for a nation and its people. However, about 90% of city growth occurs in the developing world where societies and people are less prepared for the increase in population. The rise in urbanisation in Asia began many years ago and has set the pace for the rest of the world. In sprawling cities like Manila or Mumbai, children have been born, grown up and started families themselves without ever escaping the difficulties of slum living. In many Asian cities 30-40% of the population are already living in slum areas and the percentage of poverty is as high as 40% of the population. Shelter is the most visible issue of urban poverty. Because of the struggle to find or afford housing, a large proportion of new arrivals to the city often move to areas where land ownership is not enforced and build their own makeshift accommodation. However, urban poverty has many other dimensions, including inadequate or unstable incomes, lack of access to basic services, public infrastructure or safety nets, poor protection of rights and weak political voice or influence. In urban areas measuring poverty is more complex than simply using the traditional US$1 a day benchmark. The urban poor are likely to have a higher income, as they are often earning daily wages, and basic services and infrastructure are usually in place. However, it is the higher cost of accessing these basic services that differentiates urban poverty from rural poverty. In most cities, US$1 per day would not be enough to pay rent, access clean water, transport, health care, education, and other essentials. One of the United Nations’ targets under the Millennium Development Goals is to improve life significantly for at least 100 million slum dwellers globally by 2020.
Education is a major focus of urban development - though there are many schools in cities, access, affordability and the pressure to work keep many children away

Mumbai is home to around 18 million people, approximately 54%
of them living in slum conditions
(1) http://esa.un.org/unup/

Dhaka attracts 300,000 to 400,000 new residents every year; this
does not include new births from existing Dhaka residents

Jakarta has 40% of its area one metre or more below sea level.
13.2 million people live in this flood-prone megacity.

U
1950 2000

The 2007 Revision Population database2 contains expert calculations on the growth of urban populations worldwide. According to this resource, there will be close to 3 billion people living in cities by the year 2050, well over 60% of Asia’s population.

Urban population

South East Asia 27,513, 000 (15.4%) 206,680,000 (39.7%)

East Asia 110, 328,000 (16.5%) 596,765,000 (40.5%)

South Asia 66,607,000 (India: approx. 63 mill.) 328,501,000 (India: approx. 290 mill.) 1,088, 607,000 (India: approx. 915 mill.)

2050 (projected)

561, 580,000 (73.3%)

1,179,179,000 (74.1%)

Why is city living so hard...?
...for children?
A slum childhood is extremely difficult for many reasons, including challenges of health, sanitation, education, citizenship and protection. Health problems for children run riot in slum areas. There is a higher incidence of diarrhoea among urban children than among rural children below the age of five, and because slum land is often near swamps, rivers or open drains, malaria and dengue fever are urban realities. Contagious diseases are also more likely to spread, including life-threatening tuberculosis. Malnutrition is also high among children living in urban poverty, due in part to low family income and in part to lack of nutrition knowledge among adults. In Bangladesh and India, around four out of every ten children are malnourished.

Paijem’s city life

“I wanted to experience a metropolitan life. People said living in Jakarta is easy,” says Paijem, who came to Jakarta seventeen years ago believing she would find a better life. Paijem quickly found the opposite, because she did not have the right education or skills to be competitive in the job market. Since then, she has mainly helped other families who take in laundry. She raised her first daughter, now seventeen, while she worked. But a second baby two years ago has been yet another challenge for the fortunes of this family. With no neighbours or relatives to help, and no option for childcare, Paijem must stay at home instead of working. Paijem’s husband, who she met in the city, drives for Jakarta’s public transport system. This fulltime work brings in only around 10,000-15,000 rupiah (around US$ 0.8-1.3) for the family. For their tiny narrow room on the corner of a busy street in Kramatjati, East Jakarta, the family pays 200,000 rupiah (US$18.2) a month – almost half of what they earn. “We would like to run a small business, but we don’t have capital,” says Paijem. Paijem thinks now she could have lived a better life in her rural village, where her parents as well as her brothers and sisters live. But she cannot go home. People can only ever return from the city once they are successful, she says.

...for families?

Urban migrants are driven to the city by hope – hope that they will have better opportunities, wages and living conditions, and that their children will also reap the benefits of better education and healthcare facilities. But if they are pushed into slum living, the opposite can be true. Rapid urbanisation in developing countries can create an employment market based on informal, unprotected jobs, such as construction or labour. With few schools built in proximity to slum areas, children may sacrifice their schooling to work instead. If migrants from rural areas do not register themselves and their children, they miss out on government services altogether. Because most public campaigns for children on health, child protection and life skills are delivered through schools, children who drop out are alienated from this information. They are more likely to be malnourished, illiterate and facing limited employment opportunities as adults.

...for women?

Paijem with her daughter, who was raised in the city and is now competing with new arrivals for a basic job

At first glance, life in the city brings many benefits to women that traditional rural lifestyles have not offered. They can be economically independent of their families, whether married or unmarried. Often employed in the garment industry, fish processing or other factories, although women earn minimum wages andn the industries are not well represented by labour laws, independence can still be empowering. However, lack of monitoring of female-dominated workforces leaves girls and women vulnerable to sexual abuse, unfair dismissal and even trafficking. Women from slum areas are more likely to marry early and have more children than women in the rest of the city. Without the extended family of rural settings, women are then challenged to capacity on their ability to care for their children and earn money at the same time. Lack of access to maternal and child health information and care, as well as family planning resources, can intensify the challenges.

...for entire communities?

Isolated from extended family, new arrivals to urban areas lack an immediate support network, socially or economically. Single parent families are more common. Children are more often left alone because grandparents, aunts and uncles are not around while parents are working. New arrivals may also face stigma instead of support, with competition over land, jobs and possessions exacerbating existing feuds or social inequalities. Without a traditional sense of community and culture, socialising with new and unknown local influences can put both children and adults at increased risk of harm. Urban youth in particular can be exposed to social groups that exploit their poverty and frustration. Criminal gangs or militant groups often recruit from this vast pool of disenfranchised urban youth.

Focus on urban issues: World Vision’s response

Dhaka
Population: 12.4 million Focus: Malnutrition

Cebu City Jaipur
Population: around 2 million Focus: Land rights

Population: around 3 million Focus: Child labour
Twenty-five-year old Sorufa Begum is excited to see her two sons growing so fast now that their diet has improved. The challenge of child malnutrition in her slum community of Sribordi, on the outskirts of Dhaka, comes not just from household poverty but also from the lack of nutrition knowledge in parents. Sorufa only went to school till grade five and her husband Ferdous Ali, 30, is an illiterate rickshaw puller earning around taka 100 (USD 1.43) a day. After initial training from World Vision, the women in Sorufa’s neighbourhood of Sribordi now deliver PD (Positive Deviance) Hearth training to mothers in their community. Participants bring their own rice, vegetables and other ingredients to cook improved khichuri, feed their malnourished children together and measure their children’s progress. Sorufa says “Previously we used to cut the vegetables before washing, but now we cut the vegetables after washing. Now when we cook rice we absorb water within the rice to preserve maximum food value. We used to cook khichuri with just rice, lentil, salt, chillies; but now we mix eggs and a variety of vegetables that give the food much more value for the growth of our children.” PD Hearth participants come to 12 sessions in all. Once they finish their course, many of them go on to set up another group, leading by example in the measurable improvement of their children’s health. Child labour is still accepted by communities in Jaipur despite the Indian government’s clear legislation to reduce it. Many children work in this city, in gempolishing, manufacturing and other industries that offer low pay in exchange for the work that small and dextrous hands excel at.

Jakarta
Population: 13.2 million Focus: Citizenship

Without a birth certificate, children in Indonesia’s cities and villages find it harder to access government services such as schooling and healthcare. World Vision operates an advocacy programme to convince both governments and local communities of the importance of registering births. To mark Indonesia’s Children’s Day in 2008, around 500 children from World Vision’s development programmes in East Jakarta walked three kilometres, carrying banners and posters calling on parents living in the “urban villages” of the area to register their children.

A year ago ten-year-old Jhielyn was living illegally with her parents in a cramped squatter settlement, Pier Dos, near the port of Cebu. The residents of Pier Dos were mainly new arrivals to the city attracted by the possibility of work at the port. Their houses were made of scavenged materials, holes in the walls patched with paper or cardboard. With families of up to ten or twelve living in a single room, there was no place for children to play. In 2006, World Vision and its local project partner commenced negotiations with the city government to provide vacant land for the relocation of families from Pier Dos. World Vision also provided loans to families to build safe and stable houses on their new land. “Before, we only had one room for our kitchen, dining room, living room and bedroom. We did not even have a toilet. Now, our house has two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room and a toilet,” says Jhielhyn, amazed by the change in her living conditions. Her mother, who used to sell snacks at the port, is also excited, because being a home-owner was not something she dared to dream of. She has become a community volunteer in their new neighbourhood of Tac-An, and is busy organising vocational training for groups in a variety of skills more suited to their new environment.

Sharukh dropped out of school at nine and sewed the sequins on sarees alonsgide his mother for two long years.The small additional income he could bring was needed to help pay back their debts. “Those two years at home were not good. I wanted to be with my friends at school – but I had to help my mother too,” says Sharukh. “When the community came to know that Sharukh was not in school, we agreed that this was not acceptable. So we convinced his mother to send her son back to school,” says Sandeep, a World Vision Community Development Coordinator. Nowadays, Sharukh’s mother is a World Vision volunteer and heads up the community Self-Help Group that originally approached her about her son. She talks to parents of child labourers about the importance of education, citing her own example to show that it is possible to keep children at school through times of economic hardship.

The young advocates presented local officials with a list of children in their area that were not currently registered. In a planned public response, government spokespeople explained clearly to the crowd that had gathered about the process for applying for a birth certificate at any age. “If birth certificates are important, why do only 55 percent of children under five and 40 percent of all Indonesian children have one?” Sabam Christo, one of the two youth MCs, asked the crowd. “What will be the fate of the other 45 million children?”

“I’m doing backyard gardening now,” she says. “I have started my own vegetable garden, which I know will give me a steady supply of food and income in the future.”

Programming and partnership: World Vision’s RESPONSE
The consequences of new and rapid urbanisation present challenges for organisations like World Vision who have been working to reduce poverty and promote positive development for people in the developing world for decades. It is estimated that 15% to 18% of World Vision’s programming is already located in urban settings. The balance of urban to rural development will continue to shift as urbanisation grows. World Vision’s strategy in the Asia-Pacific has a clear mandate to respond effectively to the growing needs of city children.

Invest in the future of cities
Much can be done to improve the standards of living in Asia’s cities, big and small. Planning, commitment and true understanding of a city’s context, challenges and future direction are required, as well as a healthy and mutually rewarding relationship between governments and residents to share the city’s resources for the benefit of all. World Vision calls on governments and donors to invest in:

The Urban Pilot Programme
In response to the growth in urban poverty, World Vision Australia recently launched the Urban Programming Initiative (UPI), with six pilot projects across the world; Cambodia (Phnom Penh), Indonesia (Surabaya), India (Kanpur and Siliguri), Bolivia (La Paz), South Africa (Soweto) and Lebanon (Beirut). The UPI has two primary objectives: to pilot and test new approaches to sustainable community development in urban contexts, and to encourage reflection and learning that will contribute to World Vision’s broader understanding of urban poverty reduction. Rather than a traditional development approach of providing services, the initiatives concentrate on strengthening community resilience and contributing to liveable cities for children. In particular, the pilots will be exploring how World Vision can help to establish sustainable partnerships between urban communities and the actors who can contribute to their development. Each city chosen for the initiative has a different contextual priority – for instance, land rights in Phnom Penh, or child labour in Kanpur. Through partnership with local governments, community groups, local private sector and other grassroots organisations,World Vision aims to build structures that help us learn how to support social justice, equal access and “healthy” cities now and in future urban programmes.

• Infrastructure and urban planning, including fair
provision of water;

• Electricity and sewage to low income communities; • Protection of green spaces and a government-led,
community-owned emphasis on environmental sustainability;

• Legal services for the poor, especially land laws and

housing policies to protect families living in squatter settlements, and reduce dangerous and illegal overcrowding for new arrivals;

• Community-based organisations, who with the

right support can become the life blood of urban development, able to sustain themselves and represent community interests. CBOs are especially required in transient or illegal settlements where people may hesitate to work directly with authorities

• Public health as a “resource for life” (WHO

1986) and with an emphasis on knowledge and prevention, including maternal clinics and nutrition initiatives, HIV and AIDS awareness, and reduction of water-borne and mosquito-borne disease

• Community cohesion, including the recognition of
alternative or marginalised communities and the need for gender empowerment, anti-violence campaigning or youth support services. Again, CBOs are best placed to create and protect opportunities for all in new or rapidly changing neighborhoods.

Community-led approaches to campaigning on vital health messages have proven to be very effective in urban environments. This World Vision-supported youth drama troupe in Mumbai performs regular street theatre on HIV and AIDS awareness.Two of the troupe members are living with HIV and AIDS themselves.

For further information on World Vision’s urban development initiatives in Asia: John van Kooy Laurence Gray Urban Research Officer Regional Advocacy Director Asia Pacific region World Vision Asia-Pacific john.vankooy@worldvision.com.au laurence_gray@wvi.org

World Vision is a Christian relief, development and advocacy organisation dedicated to working with children, families and communities to overcome poverty and injustice. Motivated by our Christian faith, World Vision works with the world’s most vulnerable people. World Vision serves all people regardless of religion, race, ethnicity or gender. http://wvasiapacific.org