The Scarborough Urban Profiling consists of an accelerated, action-oriented assessment of urban conditions, focusing on priority needs, capacity gaps, and existing institutional responses at local and national levels. The purpose of the study is to develop urban poverty reduction policies at local, national, and regional levels, through an assessment of needs and response mechanisms, and as a contribution to the wider-ranging implementation of the Millennium Development Goals.

The study is based on analysis of existing data and a series of interviews with all relevant urban stakeholders, including local communities and institutions, civil society, the private sector, development partners, academics, and others. The consultation typically results in a collective agreement on priorities and their development into proposed capacity-building and other projects that are all aimed at urban poverty reduction.

O presente estudo tem por objectivo traçar um Perfil do sector urbano da República de Cabo Verde com a pretensão de contribuir para o desenvolvimento de políticas de redução da pobreza urbana ao nível nacional em Cabo Verde. A elaboração do presente documento – Perfil Urbano Nacional de Cabo Verde inscreve-se no quadro das acções desencadeadas pelo Ministério do Ambiente, Habitação e Ordenamento do Território – MAHOT e o Programa das Nações Unidas para os Assentamentos Humanos ONU – HABITAT no âmbito do PSUP.

O PSUP (Programa Participativo de Melhoria dos Assentamentos Informais), financiado pela Comissão Europeia aos Países ACP, constitui um processo participativo de levantamento de necessidades e das lacunas em termos de capacidades institucionais de Cidades, Municípios e Concelhos dos países recobertos por esse programa. Presentemente, o PSUP está sendo implementado em 20 países africanos, de entre os quais se encontra Cabo Verde. O PSUP utiliza uma abordagem estruturada em que as intervenções prioritárias são consensualizadas através de um processo consultivo.

Access to adequate housing is a fundamental human right and is enshrined in numerous international agreements and conventions. Yet millions of women and men continue to live in towns and cities without security of tenure and with inadequate housing and related services. This guide’s objectives are:

• To increase understanding of gender concerns and needs in housing and slum upgrading 
• To develop capacity to address gender issues in this area 
• To encourage the integration of a gender perspective into policies, projects, and programmes for sustainable urban development 
• To support the institutionalization of the culture of gender mainstreaming and gender equality, the implementation of gender-sensitive projects and programmes, and the monitoring of gender-mainstreaming progress.

This publication (in the form of a Strategy Paper) highlights the global problem of slums and advocates for using streets as tools for urban transformation. A street-led approach to citywide slum upgrading is promoted which advocates for a shift from piecemeal project based to programme scale upgrading. This publication draws from many slum upgrading experiences worldwide and encourages a relatively easy to implement approach. It views slums as integral parts of a city system which are spatially segregated and disconnected due to an absence of streets and open spaces. Therefore, taking advantage of streets as the natural conduits that connect slums with the city, UN-Habitat suggests a fundamental shift towards the opening of streets as the driving force for citywide slum upgrading.

The lack of recognition of the right of self-determination and the large-scale dispossession and degradation of their lands, resources and territories has had a devastating effect on indigenous peoples’ livelihoods, cultures and overall socio-economic conditions. Widespread poverty and destitution flowing from this has had a significant impact on their housing. Indigenous peoples often lack security of tenure and live constantly with the threat of forced eviction from their homes and/or lands. In some countries, indigenous peoples are often found in over-crowded houses that are in poor condition and that often have neither schools nor hospitals nearby. Indigenous women and men face discrimination in most aspects of housing. Housing and development policies and programmes either discriminate against indigenous peoples directly or have discriminatory effects. The loss of traditional lands andhousing contributes to the increased migration of indigenous peoples to urban centres, where barriers to adequate housing (such as unemployment/poverty, discrimination, and lack of affordable and adequate housing) are particularly acute.

Indigenous women in particular often bear the brunt of these inadequate conditions. At the same time, they experience gender-specific problems, such as domestic violence, together with discrimination and inequality as a result of institutional and cultural factors. These often curtail or prohibit women’s access to, control over and the right to inherit land, property and housing. Indigenous peoples with disabilities, youth and children, elders and sexual minorities also experience greater adverse conditions in housing.

The material originates from an international Expert Group Meeting on Urban Indigenous Peoples and Migration held in Santiago, Chile, March 27-29, 2007. It seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of migration by indigenous peoples into urban areas from a human rights and a gender perspective.

In this work, particular attention is paid to the varying nature of rural-urban migration around the world, and its impact on quality of life and rights of urban indigenous peoples, particularly youth and women.

Enabling shelter strategies call for a fundamental shift in the role of government, from provider to enabler of affordable housing. While such strategies have been utilised over the last two decades to improve affordable shelter delivery, there remains few publications documenting the underlying basis of the enabling approach and how to develop and implement such strategies.

This cutting edge guide addresses this need for a succinct reference text on enabling shelter strategies: what they are and how they can be implemented.

Housing Practices is an ongoing series that documents the experiences of countries who are implementing large-scale affordable housing programmes. It is a flagship series developed and produced by the Housing Policy Section of UNHABITAT, which provides authoritative and independent documentation of innovative affordable housing programmes in countries of the developing world. 

Rather than drawing from theory or abstract models, Housing Practices addresses the demand for practical guidance on housing programmes based on experience. Each volume holistically documents one ‘best-practice’ housing programme that has achieved significant results.

Rental housing has remained a neglected area of national housing policy which has instead focused, often exclusively, on promoting home ownership.

Consequently, rental housing has been overlooked with very few governments implementing any kind of policy to help develop or regulate this form of housing. Yet rental housing is a key component of a well-functioning housing market.

While renting is not the panacea to solving the housing challenge in the developing world, it does constitute a significant and vital housing tenure option that should be promoted alongside, not in competition to, home ownership.

This Policy Guide provides policy-makers with the necessary knowledge about the challenges and rights of Indigenous peoples in relation to land and property in the urban context. The Guide sets out how to secure land rights of Indigenous peoples in cities through a human rights framework in the context of urbanization, including migration and urban expansion.

This Policy Guide to Secure Land Rights for Indigenous Peoples in Cities builds on earlier guides and is part of a series of UN-HABITAT handbooks focused on the rights of Indigenous peoples. The first policy guide entitled, “Housing Indigenous Peoples in Cities: Urban Policy Guides for Indigenous Peoples” was published in 2009, followed by a report entitled, Urban Indigenous Peoples and Migration: A review of Policies, Programmes and Practices, published in 2010 and launched at the Fifth Session of the World Urban Forum in Rio de Janeiro.