Afrikas slumboere har fået nok: Stands tvangsflytningerne!

“Better housing is not a favour our governments should extend to us, but a right that we deserve to be given like everybody else,” said Alhassan Ibn Abdallah, a resident of Old Fadama, the largest informal settlement in Ghana’s capital Accra.

Abdallah was speaking at a meeting organized by Amnesty International (AI) in Nairobi, on the sidelines of a ministerial conference on housing and urban development.

“We urge our governments to stop the practice of forced evictions, whether carried out by government itself or by private developers. You cannot have development by creating more homeless people,” he said.

In Old Fadama, AI estimates that 55.000-79.000 people live without security of tenure (retten til bolig) and under constant threat of forced eviction, while in Nigeria, at least 20.000 people may be rendered homeless should the government implement its plan to demolish (nedbryde) waterfront settlements in Port Harcourt.

Activists from Chad, Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt and Zimbabwe have been, since 20 of March, taking part in a week of action dubbed “People Live Here”.

The aim is to highlight the plight of residents of informal settlements or slums and the need to provide essential services like health, water, education and security to them.

George Amaka from Nigeria said forced evictions normally disrupt the social networks and economic activities of those living in slums, saying the lack of security of tenure creates anxiety among many slum residents.

“We have to look for new schools for our children; we have to start creating new businesses, normally with no capital with which to do it. Every social safety net that slum people rely on to survive is disrupted. We are not criminals but people working hard to earn a living and provide for our families,” Amaka told IRIN.

Corruption