UN-HABITAT twenty first session of the Governing Council, 16-20 April 2007, Nairobi, Kenya: what are slums and why do they exist?

If you do not have the misfortune of living in a slum, then chances are you don’t often think about them. When driving by a slum, you will most probably be repulsed, but perhaps subconsciously, you are tempted to blame what you see on those who actually live there. Everyone, especially those who live there, wishes slums would just go away. But before change can come to the slums, change must come to our misconceptions about why slums exist in the first place. Here is a formidable reality: In Nairobi, Kenya, 60 per cent of the population subsists in slums and squatter settlements. That 60 per cent is crowded onto only 5 per cent of the land - without adequate shelter, clean water or decent sanitation. UN-HABITAT’s The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003 asserts that much can and must be done to improve the lives of the nearly one billion slum dwellers alive today. But in order to do so, governments, international aid agencies, and NGOs involved in facing the slum challenge must first come to grips with what slums really are, why they exist, and in fact, why the number of people living in such places is projected to double by 2030.