...ark, and fling them from their windows out into the streets to bake in the morning sun. Hence flying toilets: literal cesspools of disease and degradation, and symbols of the stories of utter hopelessness that often come from slums. Slums provide some of the most genuinely heart-wrenching stories in the world. As viewers, we ask ourselves how any place could possibly be so terrible, and then gladly provide – from time to time – a dollar or two fo...
...ntytowns of Dhaka overflow with rural farmers fleeing a countryside devastated alternating Biblical floods and fierce droughts. The city is seen by these desperate migrants as a gem of opportunity. They find instead a city of slums. These desperate neighborhoods are now home to half of Dhaka’s 15 million residents—and equivalent neighborhoods are found in any major city of the developing world. For the first time in history, conflict has been uns...
...tural and environmental sectors. Despite these good intentions, the Nairobi International Trade Fair has a hidden underbelly, which tells an entirely different story: exploitation of the water and electricity supply of nearby slums. The fair is nestled between Kibera to the east and Jamhuri to the west, which are considered some of the world’s worst urban slums. These blighted neighborhoods also unwillingly provide much of the energy and water s...
...their way to the big city. But like so many that arrive in Nairobi with big city dreams of finding work and starting a life with a family and home, but instead finding few opportunities, the Somali refugees have taken to the slums near Dandora, the poorest in Nairobi. The Somalis have it particularly rough right now; because of the war, many Kenyans have been discriminating against anyone that looks of Somali descent, and, in some cases, discrim...
...rbanization in which city dwellers grew from 30 percent to 70 percent of the population in just 50 years. The urban poor’s lack of political accommodation prompted the formation of illegal settlements, commonly referred to as slums, vilas, or favelas, in virtually all major cities, which largely lacked access to basic amenities as a result of their rapid and informal development. During this period, Brazil’s elite-driven municipal governments onl...
In Kibera, one of the most notorious slums in the world both for its extreme poverty and danger, there is a group of artists who are inspiring tangible change within the community. Based out of Katwo Kera, one of the 14 informal neighborhoods in Kibera, is Jah-Army. While the group started in 2005 with two members, today there are about 15. Each member specializes in a type of art including basket weaving, beadwork, graffiti, film, painting, and...
...regions in continental states are included. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon recently noted that over 60 million people worldwide live less than one meter above sea level, and many of them – crowded into developing-world city slums – are “tinder for the fires of social unrest.” For the most-threatened SIS, there exist neither the funds nor, more critically, any higher ground to which inhabitants can retreat. The Carteret Islands have become nearl...
...d sponsor; the government should hand over the $25 million fine received by the US Justice Department to an organization that helps rehabilitate victims of Colombian paramilitaries. Those who have survived to this day live in slums of Colombia’s large cities in utter misery, burdened with the psychological trauma of having seen their relatives and friends murdered in front of their eyes. Unprecedented as such a transfer of money might be, these v...
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