Urbanization has already started to neutralize the impact of previous investments and efforts to meet the MDGs. Urban areas in developing countries will house 87% of population growth by 2015 and 95% by 2030. Urbanization in developing countries is increasingly dominated by settlements of less than 500,000 people and in non-regional/district capitals. Less than 15% live in cities over 5 million. The rate of slum formation is almost the same as the rate of urban growth ...

The eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are international targets to halve world poverty by 2015, agreed upon by all 189 United Nations member states at the UN Millennium Summit in 2000. WaterAid believes water, sanitation and hygiene education are crucial for poverty reduction and form the bedrock of a healthy, productive society. Our work makes a significant contribution to reaching the goals especially through actions to halve the proportion of people without access to safe water and sa more...

The overall objective of the International Year of Sanitation (IYS) is to accelerate progress towards providing adequate basic sanitation for the 2.6 billion people worldwide who lack access to this fundamental human right.
Access to sanitation is vital to ensuring health, dignity and sustainable social and economic development for the world’s poorest citizens. The United Nations Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target for sanitation is 'to halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world’ more...

Diarrhoea claims the lives of 5000 children a day. These children are dying because they do not have access to adequate sanitation or safe water. Their deaths, from common diseases, are preventable. Where there is nowhere safe and clean to go to the toilet, people are exposed to disease, lack of privacy, and indignity. Bad health caused by poor sanitation has a knock-on effect on the family economy and nutrition. In many cultures women who have no access to a latrine must wait until it is dark t more...

WaterAid is an international non government organization dedicated exclusively to the provision of safe domestic water, sanitation and hygiene education to the world's poorest people. WaterAid has been working in Bangladesh since 1986 through local partner organizations (NGOs) to improve hygiene behavior and access to water and sanitation services for poor communities giving
emphasis on demonstration of innovative approaches, participatory methods, gender and vulnerable groups, hygiene promotio more...

Author - Judy L. Baker, Senior Economist, Finance Economics & Urban Department, World Bank. Dhaka is the fastest growing mega-city in the world. Annually, the city draws an estimated 300,000 to 400,000 mostly poor migrants who provide critical employment for the city’s industries and services. Urgent measures are required to address the vital needs of the rapidly growing urban poor. Poverty affects a third of Dhaka's residents mostly living in slums; Adequate access to shelter, basic servic more...

The development objective of the Urban Management Programme is to strengthen the contribution that cities and towns in developing countries make towards human development, including participatory governance, economic efficiency, social equity, poverty reduction, and environmental improvement. This is to be achieved through more efficient and equitable use and distribution of resources, including the harnessing of skills and initiatives of individuals, communities, private and voluntary organizat more...

The Community-Led Infrastructure Finance Facility (CLIFF) has released its Annual Review 07. The report highlights CLIFF’s work in India and Kenya to provide financing to communities seeking to upgrade housing and sanitation facilities. The report also announces that from April 2007, CLIFF began operations in a third country—the Philippines. CLIFF is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) through t more...

China and India are the two demographic giants of the planet. They count
together close to 2.5 billion inhabitants, representing more than 37 % of the
world population (estimated at 6.6 billion people in 2007). They are about to
become economic giants and are seriously shaking traditional power
relations in the international arena. A New World Economic Order is in the
making, as called for by the Non Aligned Movement since the Bandung
Conference of 1955. ( From article by Dr. Daniel Biau). more...

Sathyanagar (roughly translated as "Truth Town" in Sanskrit) is a self-built settlement on the north-east periphery of Bangalore, created in the 1970s when rural migrants from the neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu staked their claim to this leftover land on a dry lake bed. The settlement lies between a military establishment, a railway line, an industrial storage area, and an abandoned and overgrown tank, or reservoir. In the 1970s, founding families organized themselves into a more...