UN Focuses on Urban Poverty

United Nations Focuses on Urban Poverty- US and China Shut Out the Voices of the Actual Poor

-BBC World Service: June 6, 2001

A special session of the United Nations General Assembly gets under way on Wednesday to review progress towards improving the lives of the millions of people who live in poverty in major cities.

Delegates will assess the degree to which an action plan - set out five years ago when the UN Centre for Human Settlements, Habitat, met in Turkey - has been implemented. UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and politicians will take part in the session.

But the BBC United Nations correspondent says that the views of the poor themselves will be almost entirely absent from the gathering. Non-governmental organizations, which have helped to promote the concerns of local people, complain that they are being marginalized by governments like the United States and China.