UN-Habitat supports millions of urban poor in Bangladesh

Close to three million urban poor in the People's Republic of Bangladesh will continue to benefit from the support of UN-Habitat through the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) in a program set to improve the livelihoods and living conditions of the urban poor, especially women and girls. In close partnership with United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Bangladesh, UN-Habitat is co-implementing the country's largest urban poverty programme called Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction (UPPR) particularly on improving the living environments of poor settlements, mobilising urban poor communities and promoting tenure security. The Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) Secretariat, facilitated by the UN-Habitat, joins the team in a bid to accelerate project's efforts to improve tenure security of the urban poor. "We have already made recommendations of various interventions derived from close consultation with project stakeholders, including the visited poor communities, to promote security of tenure of the urban poor in the short to medium term. Some of them include working with strategic partners to support the anti-forced eviction legislation pending in the Parliament and supporting pilot activities to strengthen tenant-landlord relationships," reports GLTN Secretariat staff, Danilo Antonio. As a result, the Secretariat in collaboration with the Project Management and UN-Habitat/ROAP has fielded a mission to Dhaka. Meanwhile, GLTN continues to explore how pro-poor and gender sensitive land tools can also be used and applied within the country context particularly to support the preparation of the next phase of the programme and the establishment of a UN-Habitat country office.