ABSTRACT

The millions of people in the world who lack access to land where they can find secure shelter present a great global challenge to law, governance and civil society. About half of the world’s population (three billion people) now live in urban areas, and nearly a billion are estimated to be living in informal, illegal settlements, mostly in the urban and peri-urban areas of less developed countries (DFID 2001). The UNCHS (Habitat) Global Campaign for Secure Tenure, launched in 1999, has been encouraging the progressive regularisation of unauthorised and informal settlements through changes in legal frameworks, policies and standards (Fernandes and Varley 1998; Durand-Lasserve and Royston 2002; Payne 2002).