by Anika Gärtner

21 May 2007

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: It was one of those typical hot summer days in Rio de Janeiro and I was sweating in my shorts and flipflops, not my usual office outfit.

I was visiting a slum, a Favela, together with our local partners. Like most of Rio’s slums it’s nestling to a steep hill with difficult access and climbing up in the heat turned out to be an incredibly challenge. I wondered how locals can manage there way up several times a day carrying babies, heavy bags or supplies from the supermarket. Not to think of the problems the elderly are facing - hard to imagine. But the view from the top of the favela fully recharged my batteries, it was simply breathtaking.

Of course, I didn’t climb up there to enjoy the view. I’m working as International UNV with UN-Habitat’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean based in Rio de Janeiro and although the work is predominantly of administrative and normative nature I need to know realities faced by the slum dwellers throughout the continent to ensure the quality of my work.

Our local partner has been implementing a programme for slum-upgrading in the Favela and was proud to present its results. We visited basic infrastructure such as a primary school, a health centre, a kindergarten and the office of the community representation.

Impact could already be felt; the small rivers cutting the slum had been cleaned from waste, houses and place are maintained nicely and there are several social activities going on. I started to ask myself if this was a “model slum”, an example that might work and serve as a "best practice". But as soon as I started to chat with locals it became clear that it's mostly cosmetic and if you wash it away reality appears: high teenager pregnancy rates, no public transport system available and, as expected, violent gang fights linked to drug trafficking.

The most impressive proof of what is really going on when night falls was a museum organized by one of the slum dwellers in cooperation with the waste disposal, a voluntarily service organized by the community. All pieces exposed in the museum were art works made out of bullet casings found in the streets of the Favela.

These regular visits and especially the conversations with slum dwellers and local partners allow me not to lose the scope of reality and undoubtedly clarify obstacles we are facing when trying to achieve Goal 7, Target 11 of the MDGs, which states to improve significantly the lives of at least 100 Million slum dwellers by 2020.

The United Nations System assigned UN-Habitat the responsibility to assist Member States monitor and gradually attain this “Cities without Slums” Target as it is popularly known. But what exactly are those obstacles? A combination of several things, especially poor policies, the failure to plan the city to respond to urban demographic trends, the failure to address people’s needs, inequities in access to services, insecurity of tenure and incoherence in national and international development initiatives.

But there is hope. I would be lying if I said I was feeling this hope each day of my work. No, sometimes I’m frustrated because all processes seem so slow and bureaucratic while people out there are suffering. Sometimes I’m surprised how difficult it is to allow small changes. But it is possible to overcome the obstacles and that’s what I’m working for. The community must be involved in planning processes, there should be more capacity building for local authorities to be able to plan slum interventions jointly with stakeholders and to address adequately the poor’s needs. If we combine our expertise and strengths,  we can still do it.