Organization: United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat)

Today, over half of humanity lives in urban areas. Everyday 180,000 people are added to cities, mostly in Africa and Asia. Most of these people end up in slums and squatter settlements. Where people live in close conditions, the threat of disease and infection is ever-present, especially where sanitation conditions are lacking.

At the 13th Session of the Commission for Sustainable Development in 2005, prominent women gathered to raise awareness of the problems specifically affecting women in slums. Anita Miya from the Aga Khan Planning and Building Service in India, told the audience how 64 percent of the population of India did not have access to adequate sanitation and that in most slums, 250 families or more share as single toilet facility so filthy that most prefer to defecate in the open. Mariela Garcia Vargas, of the Instituto Cinara, Colombia, said the situation was similar for Latin American slum dwellers who suffered for years from ill health due to dirty water. What was worse, women in slums could not get their requests for clean water and sanitation funded by their communities because few women were part of the decision making process.

For Small Island Developing States, Pennelope Beckles Barabos of Trinidad and Tobago explained how natural disasters could affect women and children. She said women often had to manage under the most difficult conditions especially as natural disasters often led to an immediate loss of income. The women were left without resources to feed their families and found it almost impossible to raise funds for rebuilding and reconstruction.

Pursuing the relationship between slum upgrading and the water and sanitation targets in alleviating the plight of women, the Colombian Vice-Minister of Environment, Housing and Territorial Development, Carmen Arevalo, said security of tenure was critical for improving the condition of slums dwellers. She also provided examples from Latin America that showed how the participation of women in the slum upgrading and in local authority committees helped make the projects more realistic and successful.

Keywords: gender and water, sanitation, water for cities.

Location: Colombia in LAC, India (Asi), Barbados (SIDS)

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