The programme's purpose
is to strengthen the capacity of local, central, and regional institutions and
key stakeholders in settlement and slum improvement through the use of good
governance and management approaches, pilot projects, and contributing, where
needed, to policy development and the implementation of institutional,
legislative, financial, and normative and implementation frameworks. To meet
these challenges, the PSUP programme seeks to harmonize with local and national
stakeholders on key slum upgrading projects through creating a network for
regional slum upgrading challenges. For this purpose, regional training and
policy seminars on the programme's concept, themes, and methods will be
organized with all stakeholders involved. The programme also aims to support
local and national authorities in identifying adequate funding to carry out
specific activities.
Objective 1: To enable
national, city and community representatives and planning authorities to assess
urban development needs and urban poverty in ACP countries through applying
cross-sector approaches and building ownership for the urban sector challenges
– this includes the acknowledgement of informal settlements as an integral part
of cities, and with the population therein addressed through a rights-based
approach.
Particularly,
municipalities and line ministries responsible for urban development lack human
and financial resources for urban governance and management. Actions in urban
areas lack coordination and often there is duplication of efforts addressing
the same context with very limited resources. Further, apart from strengthening
institutions to address urban poverty in an appropriate way, a link between
financing and technical government bodies is essential to finance urban poverty
in a sustainable way, also beyond this action.
Objective 2: To empower
ACP countries national, city and community representatives as well as planning
authorities to address slum dwellers' needs for better living conditions in
their cities with adequate planning tools and realistic resource mobilization
strategies – addressing and including the slum population directly in designing
slum upgrading programmes.
Often the identification
of slum upgrading needs lack continuation, implementation and the participation
of the target group. The formulation of slum upgrading projects is often
isolated and sector specific. This often leads to single projects improving living
conditions in the short-term or even leading to conflicts and negative impacts
on the ground.
The capacity to develop
slum upgrading programmes in an integrated and participatory manner under the
leadership of the government and in the context of the whole city or town, with
its overall development opportunities, is not taken care off.
In addition, policy and
regulatory frameworks often hinder sustainable and affordable urban
infrastructure, land and housing (from plot sizes, land regulations or secure tenure
and housing building codes to provision of basic services). This programme aims
at overcoming divides of the informal and formal city and improvement at
national and city or town level.
Objective 3: Empower
national, city and community representatives and planning authorities to
implement innovative slum upgrading programmes that demonstrate successful slum
upgrading interventions which are to be up-scaled and replicated in other
towns, cities and neighbourhoods and increase visibility.
Besides during the
implementation of slum upgrading programmes, not all key stakeholders are aware
or involved in the process. This can lead to institutional and community
blockages in cross-sector activities or to the initial target group not fully
benefiting from the action, and if implemented with external experts, the lack
of replication and institutional memory.
The design and
implementation of slum upgrading activities shall be carried by all
stakeholders with their different roles. It shall create job opportunities for
the target group and be enriched through their local knowledge. By having the
cross-sector approach, actions and improvements shall multiply their impact
through feeding into each other. The high visibility and improved capacity
shall lead to an up-scaling and replication of activities finding its
reflection in national priorities, budgets and policies beyond this action.
In order to achieve the
three major operational objectives in an efficient way, UN-Habitat emphasises
the importance of a coherent advocacy strategy. This can be strengthened by an
enforced tripartite partnership between the European Commission and the
European Union Delegations, the ACP Secretariat and UN-Habitat, as well as
government (line ministries and finance and planning ministries) to prioritise
and budget for urban development needs and slum upgrading.
The PSUP is carried out at local, national
and regional levels. Local, national and regional programme focal points are
trained on effective and inclusive stakeholder mapping and mobilisation in
different programme processes. The programme is fully implemented by national
implementation partners and overseen by national stakeholders.
The stakeholders consist of the following:
-
Local level: local authorities at all levels
(both managerial and political), NGOs, CBOs, planning and training
institutions, research institutions, academia, the private and informal sector,
as well as local slum upgrading initiatives and slum dwellers of identified
neighbourhoods;
-
National level: relevant ministries,
technical departments, offices providing statistics, local government
associations, national and international NGOs, CBO representatives, private and
informal sector representatives, academia, and national planning, development and
training institutions.
The PSUP approach aims to build country
teams reflecting both local and national interests. Particular attention will
be given to the selection of implementing agencies in order to provide a higher
degree of capacity-building in relevant institutions and to embed the
activities of the programme in the institutional set-up of respective countries.
UN-HABITAT will develop a communication strategy and
also provide the framework of collaboration for an efficient overall programme
execution and collaboration for undertaking and financing slum upgrading
programmes in ACP countries.
