Water is a class issue. Its distribution has never been equitable. What the residents of Cape Town will struggle with is what more than one billion residents of informal settlements across the planet deal with each day. They too have little access to piped water and no sanitation system. They have to fetch water from afar and have to rely upon open fields to relieve themselves. What has already a afflicted the very poorest on the planet has now become a grave peril as it inflicts itself upon a major city. Our Dossier #2 looks closely at cities without water.
The World Health Organization has identified Southeast Asia as the region of the world with the highest rates of domestic violence, with 37.7 percent of women experiencing spousal abuse. This troubling statistic deserves the attention of policymakers and nongovernmental organizations looking to reduce domestic abuse. But those designing interventions should not treat this region as a monolith.
Recent research has highlighted that domestic violence is the result of community- and individual-level factors. Although certain socioeconomic groups, such as the impoverished and the poorly educated, are generally more likely to be the victims of domestic violence, the factors that put individual women at risk of abuse vary across communities.
Policymakers aiming to reduce spousal violence must be conscious of local context when designing interventions. Otherwise, policymakers risk using valuable resources on ineffective projects that do not address the root causes of domestic violence. Recent fieldwork by the Urban Institute profiles how different the causes of domestic violence can be, even among similar socioeconomic groups.
Topic:
Women, Gender Based Violence, Cities, and Domestic Violence
Loren Landau, Kabiri Bule, Ammar A. Malik, Caroline Wanjiku-Kihato, Yasemin Irvin-Erickson, Benjamin Edwards, and Edward Mohr
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Building on original quantitative and qualitative fieldwork in three refugee hosting cities – Nairobi, Gaziantep, and Peshawar—this study explores the role of social networks in furthering or hampering displaced persons’ ability to achieve self-reliance. Experiences are diverse, but several general findings emerge: (1) Group membership is remarkably low; (2) Social networks are an invaluable asset for many but are either unavailable or a hindrance for others; (3) The in-group networks that initially offer protection become less effective in the long-term; and (4) Economic security is closely depending on people’s ability to forge connections beyond co-nationals.
Topic:
Immigration, Governance, International Development, Urban, and Cities
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Kenya, Africa, South Asia, Turkey, Middle East, Nairobi, Gaziantep, and Peshawar
Ammar A. Malik, Edward Mohr, Yasemin Irvin-Erickson, Loren Landau, Caroline Wanjiku-Kihato, and Benjamin Edwards
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Urban Institute
Abstract:
Despite strong ethnic, linguistic and religious similarities with host communities, the presence of Afghan refugees since the 1970s has fundamentally altered Peshawar’s social fabric. Using an original household survey, we explore the structures and forms of refugees’ social networks and their relationship with economic well-being. We find that refugees maintain networks both within refugee and host communities, gaining critical help in finding jobs and housing, besides financial and emotional support. We recommend strengthening refugees’ capacity to self-organize via community-based interventions and clarifying the future of their legal status in Pakistan.
Topic:
Immigration, Refugees, International Development, Displacement, and Cities
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
The West African Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in 2014/15 posed a number of urban-specific challenges to humanitarians responding to the crisis. ALNAP's Learning from the Ebola Response in cities series brings together the lessons learnt from the response in West Africa, with each paper focusing on a topic: quarantine, population movement, and communication.
Communication and engagement
This paper describes how humanitarians communicated and engaged with urban stakeholders in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. It focuses in particular on how humanitarians navigated urban notions of community, a dense and mobile population, participation in an environment of little trust and other related issues.
Topic:
Ebola, Cities, Stakeholders, and Humanitarian Response
Leah Campbell, Christopher Adan, and Milimer Morgado
Publication Date:
05-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
The West African Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in 2014/15 posed a number of urban-specific challenges to humanitarians responding to the crisis. ALNAP's 'Learning from Ebola' series brings together the lessons learnt from the response in West Africa, with each paper focusing on a topic: quarantine, population movement, and engaging with communities.
Quarantine
This paper brings together lessons from interviews with humanitarians and local responders, as well as existing literature, about the use of quarantine in urban environments during the humanitarian response to the Ebola Crisis.
Topic:
Ebola, Urban, Cities, Disaster Management, Epidemic, and Humanitarian Response
The Jerusalem Belfast Forum was established by IPCRI in 2016, based on the belief that cities which have endured prolonged conflict and divisions can learn from each other, while acknowledging that the conflicts are different and manifested differently in each city.
12 Jerusalemite activists, Palestinian and Israeli from a variety of professions, were accepted into the Forum, with the aim of infusing creativity and best practices into their efforts to improve the experience of Jerusalem for all who live there.
The members took a series of seminars, using the latest research on Jerusalem from an urban perspective, including demographic trends, gender, and implications of current policies on the local communities.
Following these seminars, they traveled to Northern Ireland to tour Belfast and meet a variety of local players, all of whom were deeply and directly involved in the violent conflict and building the peace, and who strive to overcome the persisting divisions that still exist in Belfast today.
Topic:
Conflict, Violence, Peace, and Cities
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Northern Ireland
This paper is based on interviews held with Istanbul waste collectors who cross the city to collect recyclable waste. Bound in some sense to garbage, these waste collectors are cast to the edges of the city and to the margins of society. Their working and living spaces are both degraded and threatened by encroaching urban renovation projects and real-estate developments; associated waste-management reforms do not recognize the work of waste collectors as legitimate and therefore exclude these “poor”, “dirty, and “archaic” waste collectors. Through an analysis of small and discrete practices of resistance of waste collectors, namely by continuing to collect waste despite its illegal status as well as through mobilization efforts to become organized as “waste workers”, this article argues that far from being passive, these waste collectors resist against exclusion and elaborate a justificatory discourse to defend their role in society.