 Good morning. Good afternoon. Hello everyone and welcome to this webinar on the distribution of urban land in the global south. The webinar is co-hosted by the Land Portal Foundation Habitat for Humanity International, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and UN Habitat. I'm Jane Katz and I'm Director of International Affairs and Programs at Habitat for Humanity International. And we are having a little bit of technical difficulties with one of our panelists, so we're hoping that we can resolve this during the session. Lack of access to secure use of land and rental land is perhaps one cause for the expansion or ongoing formation of so-called slums in urban areas in the global south, which are often located in risky areas and on vulnerable land such as on areas of hills or on the edge of contaminated canals. And these spaces have been allocated often without approval to populations who live in conditions of poverty and who for various reasons have been migrating from the countryside to the city. Mike Davis in his book Planet of Slums reports that until 1954, Kenyans were considered temporary occupants of Nairobi where they could not rent or buy property. In Zimbabwe, the original settlers had to wait until the independence of the country to obtain the legal right to buy a house in the city. Recent photographs of aerial photographs of Nairobi, for example, have revealed that more than half of the population still lives in the 18% of the urban territory. In Dakot, it is estimated that 70% of the population is concentrated in just 20% of the city. In Santa Domingo, two-thirds of the population live in slums and invaded land and use a fifth of the urban space. Among the most extreme examples or cases recorded by Davis is that the city of Mumbai, while the rich have 90% of the land and lived comfortably and with many free areas, the poor live in squeezed or squeezed into 10% of the land. The geographical characteristics of these territories, highly populated and without the assistance of basic services to lead a dignified and safe life in the city, causes various problems such as that which has been lived in the city of Sopalo on February 9, 2020. Many homes and the lives were lost due to landslides and caused by heavy rains and slums that were located on hills. The formal city population argues that these populations choose these types of territories to settle, placing themselves at risk. This places the responsibility for the unequal distribution of urban land on the poorest populations without reflecting on the origin of this distribution and experiences in terms of access to urban land to these populations. It is for this reason that we propose to dialogue to reflect on these inequalities. And our panels will share their experiences on the subject due to the active participation in these issues related to the inequalities that are lived in cities of the southern hemisphere in the colonized world. And especially during this pandemic. This is even more acute. I'm going to start by introducing the panelists who we have here today, as well as give you some more information on my background. We'll then discuss four different questions for about an hour. And then we'll end with 30 minutes for questions from you, the audience. If you have any questions, please post them using the questions feature in the box. And we'll try to answer all of them during the final half hour. Also, I just wanted to note that we will have our cameras on for the first round of introductions so that we can familiarize you with us. And then probably with the connection issues, we have a lot of people who are going to be joining us on this call today. The panels will turn off their cameras at a certain point. After that. So, as I mentioned, I'm Jane Katz. I've been working for Habitat for Humanity International in our government relations and advocacy office. And we've been promoting and developing global housing issues, working on policy priorities and advocacy campaigns. The advocacy campaign that we've recently completed called solid ground was about access to land for shelter. And it covered a lot of the issues that we're going to be talking about today. That includes some of the shelter related issues on settlements and gender, as well as disaster resilience, and also talking more about security of tenure. So just wanted to share with you some of the other panelists. I have a background in government politics and urban affairs and and foreign affairs. So, today I'm going to introduce first Dr. Mark Napier. He is a principal researcher at the CSIR and he's an architect by profession with a PhD in housing from the University of Newcastle upon time. Mark has spent two years as chief director of research at the South African Department of Human Settlements and seven years as program director of the urban land markets program Southern Africa or urban landmark. He joined CSIR in 2013 as a principal researcher and manages their urban knowledge exchange Southern Africa initiative. Next, we'll hear from Raquel Lunamir Bernadino, Raquel is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences Latin America and Caribbean Center. Her PhD research explores the intersections of housing, tenure security and domestic violence against women, setting light on broader inequalities and the distribution of resources in urban low income talk context in the global south. And previous research topics have included right to the city, strategic city planning and forced evictions, land conflicts, among others. Raquel has over 10 years of experience as an independent consultant and has worked on projects with the European Union, DFID, British Council, UN Habitat Open Society Foundation and Habitat for Humanity and the Brazilian Federal Land Administration. Tala Kumaria, Tala has been a Housing Policy Analyst at UN Habitat since 2017. She's responsible for Lebanon's country programs, working on housing, land, property rights and issues in the context of refugee crisis and on developing national housing policies. She's an architect by training and holds a master of urban planning degree from the University of Illinois, as well as completed program at Wharton Executive Program and Housing Finance. And finally, we'll hear from Shikha Sivastava, I always bungle that one. Shikha heads the Urban Habitat Migration Portfolio at the TAW Trust, India's largest and oldest philanthropic organization. She has responsibilities at the trust cover a range of urban issues, including affordable housing, basic services, internal migration and governance, and she leads a regional teams who design interventions that undertake programs, implementation and partnership with the state government civil society at academia. She's got a career that spans over two decades in development sector has worked with various government and non government agencies, among a number of unit and agencies, and she holds a BA degree with an honors from the history college for women and a postgraduate degree from the neighbor university in the deli, in addition to other work that she's done. So we have a very well rounded panel for today. And we're going to be shutting off our cameras. Now, as we move to the discussion part of our webinar. I'm just going to introduce our first panelist mark and ask him a question. And then all of the other panelists are going to respond to the same question. Mark in post colonial countries of global south access to formal to economic opportunities and to public communities. So this long history of struggle for access to land and racial segregation, which was imposed both in the colonial and the apartheid times. This has shaped the form and layout of South African cities. And this was one of the biggest challenges that the new government from 1994 inherited. Now they've been a lot of publicly funded programs of the new government to invest in infrastructure to reverse these patterns, both socially economically and spatially. After 25 years, many of the physical aspects of the apartheid city remain intact, and some of the unequal patterns have even been reproduced. And this ongoing challenge is acknowledged by both government and non government organizations. Just for context remember that South Africa has a population of 56 million people with 65% of people living in urban areas and the population growth rates in the cities or an urban growth rate of 2.8% per annum, which is not the highest in the continent, but is significant. Just by way of introduction given this history and more more recent efforts to reverse this inequality in the system. If we were to describe the current land distribution in South African urban areas today, we could talk about four main land allocation mechanisms, which continue to operate. Firstly, the property markets, which is very dominant, and this is where the highest and best use is the rule of the game in terms of land allocation. Secondly, there's a very large state housing and land distribution program, which seeks to allocate land to people on the basis of historical dispossession that I've described and poverty and vulnerability. This the mass housing program has added around 20% over the last 25 years to the housing stock in the country. Thirdly, the customary and like neo customary land allocation on the edges of some cities and towns. This is an overhang of the colonial and apartheid history of land under customary administration. And then finally, the informal land occupation, which along with neo customary land allocation houses up to 23% or almost a quarter of South Africa's urban population. And so obviously the residential land market competes for space and location with other land uses, like land for transport, industry, commerce and retail and government funded projects for housing. Also compete in the market for the land that's valued in this open system. The market dynamics and government regulations and actions directly influence land values, and therefore who can access what urban land and where. And the neo customary and informal land allocation processes, which operate mostly outside of the formal system, they supply marginal land to meet the large demand for land to accommodate residential mobility and driven by population growth, migration and urbanization. So that's just an introduction to the South African case. Thank you. Thanks very much Mark for those very insightful comments. We're going to now turn to Tala. And we're going to ask you the same question. Is there a racial division of land in your country and how is this division structured. Thank you Jane. And thank you for the land portal for really giving us the opportunity to engage on this very important topic and to share our different experiences in the so called global south. I work in Lebanon and we can safely say that there are certainly a clear division of land along lines of class and nationality more so than race. On the one hand, you'll find wealthy households living within major cities on land that's perceived of high value. In a sense, neighborhoods and generally cities are segregated based on income. And it's a rare occasion to find areas with a mix of income groups or coined as inclusive vulnerable households are concentrated in the outskirts of major urban centers. And these outskirts have grown exponentially in the past 40 years. They can be called informal settlements, even though there is no nationally endorsed definition of informal settlements just yet. On the other hand, these informal settlements are now housing not only poor Lebanese households, but also thousands of displaced Syrian refugees since 2011. The UNHCR 80% of refugees live outside so called informal settlements and residential and non residential structures of low quality and then don't comply with building regulations. These refugees join poor Lebanese and other vulnerable groups, such as migrant workers and Palestinian refugees in some areas, further exacerbating the living conditions and the already strained infrastructure. Land division has been really shaped this way as a result of many factors. I will name just four. The first one is the absence of a strong central government that monitors population growth and strategizes development plans through a national urban policies, not even a national housing policy, which resulted in an informal economy and informal housing sector flourishing to respond to the emerging needs. The second reason is the rural urban migration during and after the Civil War that stretched from 1975 to 1990, which was where there was a large exodus from the rural areas which resulted in the proliferation of so called informal settlements at the outskirts of major urban centers. The fourth reason, the third reason is the influx of foreign migrant workers and refugees throughout the years for different reasons. And finally, the adopted economic model that we have that relies on real estate speculation services sector mainly with a high and only stimulus for home ownership exclusively. Prior to the Civil War of 1997 informal settlements developed around the industrial zones of Beirut, the post-war development strategy resulted in this this possession of land and properties in some areas and was heavily centralized in the capital which raised the value of urban land and created an over heated urban land market that is inaccessible to the vast majority of Lebanese, leading to pricing out many income groups to the outskirts and the suburbs. This heavily centralized approach also reinforced the rural urban migration in search for better work opportunities in cities which further physically materialized these land versus class divisions. As of today, more than 88% of Lebanon's population are living in urban and peri urban areas and access to urban land is heavily structured along the lines of class and income. With more than 40% living under poverty, according to World Bank, we find a high concentration of urban poor and poverty pockets on urban land. So in a nutshell, these are the, that's our case study. Thank you. Thanks so much, Tala. That's very insightful and interesting around work in Lebanon. We're now going to turn to Raquel and Raquel is going to provide information around the racial division of land in Brazil and how is this division structured. Thank you, Jane. Thank you so much for the question and thank you as well for the land portal for organizing this super interesting event. In the case of Brazil, class and racial inequalities play the very important role in how land is distributed in the country. So, but if you really want to understand that we would have to go back to a very important chapter in our history, which is right before the end of slavery. That's precisely when land became a commodity in our country. So for a few centuries. So now I'm talking about the 1500s. So during our colonial period, the Portuguese ground was the one entitled to distribute land to the country's elites. And but no one really had ownership of land. No one really own land. People only had used rights to land that this use rights were supposedly at least legally connected to the fact that the whoever got the land use rights were supposed to make that land productive, right. And just to be clear, we're talking about a specific moment in our history when the labor slave labor coming from Africa was a very important aspect of this of this economic system. But then what happened around the 1800s was that the land owners became to look around what was happening in other Latin American countries and even in the American throughout the American continent and they realize that slavery was coming to an end sooner or later elsewhere and also in Brazil. So they basically tried to find a way to grab the land before releasing the before releasing the slaves free. So what the historical term that we use here is that they tried to capture the land right before releasing the slaves. And the way they did that was through a land law in the 1850 that basically said that the only way to have access to land to have formal access to land was through buying land for purchase and for I don't need to remind you that the slaves, the people who were enslaved here in Brazil, they didn't earn, they didn't earn money for the work, they didn't have savings to buy land. So basically, and they could no longer live in the farms where they used to work, and the state was not yet responsible for providing for their housing needs. So basically the only practical way to for them to have access to land for shelter was through informally occupied land that wasn't claimed at the time. So that was a major characteristic of our organization process. And that went on for a century. And the only the first constitution that actually explicitly acknowledged the urban issue or this urban problem was in 1988, when already 70% of the population of the country already lived in cities. So we have a huge gap, and only into in year 2000 that's when housing became a recognized right so I think these three pieces of legislation really tells a lot about what we see in our cities today and what has been a very common image of the global south also here, that that's also reflecting what happens here in the case of Brazil. Thank you, Jane, for the question. Okay, sure. Thanks so much, Raquel. And she can we'll give you the last word on this question about the racial division of land in your country and how it is structured. And are you on mute. Okay. She can you can you hear us. We can't hear you. All right, well, while we work on that. We do have another question if we if we can't get this going but we'll have she join us as soon as she's able to. Okay, it looks like she hasn't been able to connect we'll still work on that. So we'll go to our, our second question. And we've talked a lot about our, how formal tenure was closely related to the power struggle and now we're going to turn to the topic of evictions. And according to UN data, the population that lives in slums in the world grows on the basis of 25 million people per year, and higher urbanization rates are being recorded in the poorest countries. Mark, how have urban projects contributed to evicting and displacing populations living in poverty and cities by denying the right to housing in your country. And how have these evictions transformed the distribution of urban space in your city in the past decade. Thank you, Jane. And I met it in the first question. Thanks to the land portal again for hosting this. In my first response earlier to the first question I described the origins of the unequal and distribution that came through from our history and how this also affects people's livelihoods and coming now to land evictions and whether urban displacements or urban projects displace people. The subject of evictions itself is quite specialized. There's a lot of South African legal experts who could speak in great detail about both urban and rural land evictions now and in the past. So my response is just going to be a high level overview of a few issues that have shaped the current patterns of distribution and specifically of urban lands in South Africa. Most of the evictions from better located in more central lands took place in the early 1950s and that's at that stage an estimated three and a half million people were forcefully removed to urban peripheries. And that was under the segregated group areas plans and also to homelands that I mentioned earlier. Because the apartheid regime imposed and maintained segregation through to the 1980s, there wasn't generally much in the way of inner city or urban core informal settlement or what we'd think of as typical inner city slums. From the 1970s in South Africa as the pressure from urbanization increased and most apartheid township mass housing delivery had stopped. Most of the informal settlement started to take place around larger urban areas on the distant peripheries. And I remember growing up in Durban now called it a greenie and Durban was one of the fastest growing cities in the region in terms of informal settlement. But generally since 94 and the democratic government, the legislation that prevents eviction has been fairly strong and has been tested extensively in the courts. So we've got something called the prevention of illegal evictions act, or for short the PI act. And that was put in place in 1998 and it put in place a fair procedure for the eviction of unlawful occupiers as they were called and provided that no one should have their home demolished or be evicted from land without a court order. And after considering all of the relevant circumstances. And I'll come back to that in a later question. Where there has been significant displacement as a result of evictions is in places like inner city buildings in Johannesburg, for example, where numbers of buildings that are occupied by people where there's not a formal landlord present. So there's not a formal rent or paying of property rates and services, but it's the informally managed buildings. There have been many evictions from those types of buildings, but also human rights organizations have been very successful in defending the informal occupants rights not to be evicted and calling for city municipalities to address the poor living conditions in inner cities. With the current threats of the spread of COVID-19 in the last two months or that we've been experiencing it in this part of the world. There has been an attempt by government to open up land to resettle people from dense informal settlements to reduce the possible spread of the virus. This might be a case of too little too late, but it is a it is a fair attempt to try to reduce the spread if this should happen. Publicly owned land is being identified and used to house homeless and evicted people in temporary shelters. So it's a kind of a first response to to what might unfold. And despite there being a national moratorium on land evictions that has been recently written into the disaster response regulations, some municipalities municipalities have continued to evict people. And at the same time, new land invasions have been taking place in the last few weeks, often followed by removal of structures. And so this is a complex situation it's changing and then developing each day, but generally the laws on eviction and the rights to land and housing are quite strong but they are being tested in practice and under these extraordinary circumstances that we are all currently living through. Thank you. Thanks Mark so much for leading us on that question. And addressing cove it as well. What are your thoughts on how urban projects have contributed to evicting and displacing populations living in poverty in your city. And by denying the right to housing in Lebanon. Have these evictions transformed the distribution of urban space during the past decade. Thank you Jane. Actually, unlike South Africa, Lebanon, unfortunately does not have legislation that specifically prevents eviction. As discussed earlier in my first intervention. Beirut and its suburbs were heavily damaged during the civil war which resulted in large scale population movements to the urban peripheries. The growth of these peripheries at the time occurred illegally or informally and violation of building regulations involving squatting lands and properties. The post where construction included many urban projects, the post where construction started in 1990 and included many urban projects led by both the state and the private sector. These projects included the construction of new buildings, the eviction of squatters in many areas, large scale infrastructure projects, including roads, stadiums, hospitals, the airport. Large scale rehabilitation of the coastal areas that also mainly house the squatters and not to forget the infamous reconstruction of Beirut downtown. They have largely contributed to evictions and the displacement of informally settled population, especially when highways intersected dense neighborhoods of the city. These evictions resulted in the creation of more informal settlements or densified already existing ones. These urban projects have been halted since the late 1990s, but the impact they have left is still seen until this day. Urban land is now distributed between areas that are properly planned and actually increasing in its value over time and areas that are neglected by the state with no strategy to rehabilitate them or up to minimum standards of adequate living. Evictions also largely take place among vulnerable populations, including refugees who and the vast majority of them do not hold written these agreements and do not have any kind of free course to the justice system. The UN community academics and many NGOs have been strongly advocating for the tenure security rights of these communities with the forces of the informal market keep them at a disadvantage. Thank you. Thanks, Taka, Tala. Raquel, can you talk about evictions in Brazil, please? Sure. Yeah, so it's so interesting to hear from South Africa and Lebanon. But I think in the case of Brazil, when we look at the history of evictions in our countries, I see different waves or different generations of evictions. So in the early 1900s, very much connected to my previous, to the racial issue that I addressed in my previous answer, we saw a generation that was basically massive evictions. They fled massive evictions and not necessarily connected to the provision of alternative housing to the people who were being displaced and evicted. And that was a complete mess. And they were basically changing the place of the problem, right? And then a second generation understood that it was important to connect the displacement with some form of relocation. So as huge state housing projects was being built, but then very far from where these communities were originally living. So that has a huge impact on their livelihoods so people are being displaced and disconnected to their communities and so forth. So that was very, very problematic. And I think a third generation of housing answers to this to this amical distribution of land was when I think when Brazil became very famous in the international debate about urban development that was basically when it was clear that it was possible, not only possible, it was needed to recognize these areas and to improve these areas and provide services and infrastructure and some form of tenure regularization or legalization of these areas to ensure protection against evictions. So that's when several instruments and legal legal and urbanistic instruments have been developed such as the special zones of social interest that some of you may have heard of. But I think and that that's kept many, many informal segments safe for some period of time. But what we see now is probably a new wave of evictions. And that's probably that's happening regardless of the tenure stages of many of these areas. So, and the narrative behind this evictions is very much this public interest that will benefit everyone and they will benefit the city and even the country sometimes. And here it's very clear to think about the, the World Cup events and all the preparation for that and how much that impact the settlements that were in between the stadiums that were being built and the airport and the hotels and the areas. So that was very clear to us. But perhaps something else that I wanted to share with you on this question is that it's really problem that the what we know about this eviction is very problematic. We don't have enough data to understand what's going on where how many people are being are being impacted or what exactly is this kind of impact is not only material. So, we know that there are many non material impact to it. So, one very interesting thing that we did a couple of years ago and I was consulting for having that for humanity at the time. And we had a partnership with the land portal foundation and we did a regional consultation to try to talk with many experts in the Latin American context to try to understand what were the kinds of evictions that were taking place in each of their communities. And it was very interesting to us to assess the kind of evictions that were happening and what were the impact, but not only that I think for me what was the most interesting thing of this discussion this regional discussion was to what kind of initiatives were taking place to address these issues and here I'm talking about protection of land rise and advocacy and community empowerment and so forth so I think that's pretty much the most beautiful piece of that publication that's online and I'll be happy to share with you afterwards. That's great. Thanks so much Raquel. We're still unable to get Sheika online here. If we can get her back by the end of the session we'll have her answer all these questions. But right now we're going to go to our, our third question with Mark. And Mark, there are two sides to this question in South Africa. On the one hand, there are wealthy people from countries who are interested in property ownership in South Africa, and then there are generally middle income and poorer people moving to South Africa from other African countries. So for this question, I'm mainly addressing the wealthier so go ahead so the wealthier so called foreigners and local elites. So if you could answer some of these questions about a new pattern of distribution of urban land that's not only privileges the local elite but also acquires land by foreigners. Thank you Jane. I've just been looking at some statistics while we've been speaking and in the residential property market, the formal property market in 2016, one in 20 properties that were transacting were being bought by people that were from South Africans. And it's normally 3 to 4% of properties that are transacting to foreigners so it's a big part of our property market. And certainly in some cities, the property market is more influenced by wealthy foreign landowners. In this case, for example, the prime coastal property in and around Cape Town, where both domestic and foreign property owners build and buy holiday homes, or just luxury homes, and this happened in other parts of the countries as well. And how this activity impacts on the overall distribution and values of properties and land has been studied but probably needs to be studied further. There is general agreement that this type of market activity drives up the prices of land, especially in sort of parts of the city, and particularly along the coast. And that's not an uncommon pattern around the world. On the other hand, it can also be argued that there might be some benefits to bringing in foreign investment and in stimulating the construction industry and sparking other forms of job creation. However, what it does definitely do is make land and certain locations very expensive for the domestic market. And it's interesting to know in other places like Vintock and Namibia, the impact of the markets for minerals and diamonds has driven up the Vintock property markets as people that are well paid and working in the industry are able to afford luxury housing and that has an overall impact on property in Vintock. Coming back to South Africa in 2007, there was an attempt to further regulate the property market when governments established an expert panel on foreign land ownership. And we've written about this briefly in our book called Trading Places, Access to Land in African Cities. And despite the findings of the panel that was elected by governments that represented different sectors, it did recommend some limitation to ownership of urban properties by professionals, but this wasn't at the time carried through into regulation. And then much more recently, last year, the issue of foreign land ownership was considered by a presidential advisory panel on land reform and agriculture. This applies more to the amount of commercial agricultural land that could be owned by foreign individuals and companies, and it's not yet clear if these expert panel recommendations would be taken forward into actual regulation. But as a general observation about South African cities in the last 10 to 20 years, the property market is still dominated by wealthier people and companies operating in a fairly open property market. The activities of foreign investors do have a real impact on this market and not just residential, but retail space, office space, industrial space, and now logistics, space for logistics accommodation, and a lot of that has as foreign investors. The urban land market, as in many other places, is very competitive and poorer communities often lose out in the absence of an effective set of state led land market interventions to make land distribution system fairer as a whole. So there has been in the last five to 10 years a lot of discussion about mechanisms designed to balance the urban property equation somewhat, such as value capture mechanisms, and based financing, including property taxation and land use taxation, and more effective management of land as assets by municipalities and state agencies more generally, but it's an ongoing debate that needs to be carefully looked at with real evidence and the panels that sits sometimes lack deep evidence for making some of their recommendations, but I'll leave it there for now. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Talia, can you give us some of your thoughts about if you've observed this phenomenon in the distribution of urban space in Lebanon, and is there a new pattern for distribution of urban land that not only privileges a local elite, but also acquires land by foreigners. Thank you, Jane. Yeah, I mean it's certain that the large scale displacement and faster urbanization have been reflected in the distribution of urban space in Lebanon, where we see the city boundaries expanding at fast rates to house the income levels. So land consumption is certainly increasing. The social value of land is not reflected in land governance procedures, and there is no balance between the perception of land as a real estate asset, and as holding an integral value. This has resulted in making cities significantly shaped by both local and international elite, some of which derive their privileges from ties with the political voting class, the business class, and it also has to do with many shortcomings in the in reputations. We also have a large diaspora of Lebanese across the world who also send a lot of remittances to Lebanon, and that has largely impacted the market and its affordability to the residents who probably don't make the same level of wages as the migrant Lebanese across the world. However, compared to other countries in the global south, land consumption can be perceived as not too high in the sense of surface area. So our satellite imagery is showed that 70% of the population is living in urban areas that constitute only 8% of the national surface area. The development pattern includes newly developed areas that are housing middle class and low middle class families that can no longer afford to live inside cities. The pricing out of residents is a real issue, and cities are becoming more and more unaffordable, privileging the local elite and also the international elite, let's see. The areas housing the urban poor are heavily densifying, and new areas are being created in the same illegal pattern. We conduct city profiling at your own habitat where we have identified the boundaries of cities based on the continuous fabric and not the official administrative boundaries, given that they don't reflect reality on the ground in terms of land distribution. But given that a rural economy is practically nonexistent and we have a very poor transportation network in different areas. We can conclude that urban land consumption is very high when accounting for the concentration and centralization of the social economic and political potential in cities only. Thank you so much. Very interesting. Raquel, can you give us some of your thoughts on the same question? Sure. So when I thought about, when I was reflecting about this question, this issue of consumption of land, I think what I would like to underscore today is really the different kinds of vacancies that are associated with these different patterns of land consumption, at least here in Brazil and probably in other contexts as well. So if we think about this very known pattern of this large scale development, very much connected to foreign investments, especially in huge cities and mega cities like São Paulo or the countries' capitals elsewhere, many researchers and many experts have already illuminated. They have already called our attention that if we drive by, for instance, in many of these developments and by night, we'll see that many of them are empty. Well, it's going to be a clear image that these developments are empty and or not fully occupied. So this is a clear message saying that in these specific pattern of land consumption, having urban land that is empty is actually more valuable in economic terms, right? It's more valuable than having this property contribute to the social value of land. So that's one of the first patterns that reminds me of this specific kind of vacancy that's very troubling. A second pattern is something that very local that we observe in Recife, but maybe I just wanted to share with you as well. So we've been observing what happens to the land after forced evictions, right? So we've been trying to understand where these families goes and what happens to the land afterwards. And what we found out in many, many cases is that years, even decades after the eviction, the land remains empty. So it basically literally means that the families or entire communities have been displaced for nothing. And we still don't fully understand what's going on behind this picture. And it's just a clear image. We're using a aerial imagery to understand that. And finally, the third pattern of vacancy that I wanted to connect with these patterns of land consumption are basically the vacant land and property within city centers. So I'm talking here of empty buildings or empty lands that used to have a social function and they're very well located near job opportunities and near the best infrastructure and public facilities, but they are sitting empty, especially due to this urban sprawl and this urban expansion that's not necessarily planned. And the urban reform movements here in Brazil have been calling our attention to that this is not fulfilling a social function. This property is not fulfilling a social function according to our legislation. And what is very interesting to us now is that in this context of COVID, in this context of the pandemic, the empty vacant, the property that was having been vacant for many, many years now they have the state has been requesting this property to host or to home, the homeless or whoever is needed right now so I think there is a very important moment to us to understand what can be done with this vacant with this vacant property within our cities. That's great. Thanks for addressing those issues. I think we still have some issues. And unfortunately, we're not going to be able to hear from chicca. But let's go back to mark for the final question that we're going to be asking and then we'll be opening it up for for your questions. So, the right to land legal ownership of land or a house is key to the economic social and political development of people living in vulnerable situations, and especially women. To the global land to network legal land tenure reaches only 30% of the inhabited areas in developing countries of this total, only 3% of women have property registration documents. Are there specific urban policies in your country that guarantees women's land rights land tenure rights, especially those who live in informal settlements or slums. Thank you, Jane. I'm probably not best to the best place to address this topic, but I would refer you to a recently released data story which we did, and that was released on the land portal. And the title of that data story, which was beautifully produced by land portal. If the title was South African law in gender, women's land rights. In South Africa, in principle, at least the Constitution prevents unfair discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnic or social origin socio economic status and a range of other aspects. And from a policy perspective, there are a number of ways to address this question of whether people living in vulnerable situations are catered to policy and in practice. But even with progressive policies and laws, it's not always clear whether these are being effective. And I'm thinking here mainly about the urban land and housing situation, rather than the customary rural situation. Because of the scope of this discussion, but I would also refer you to a piece of work on the land portal. That's addresses the rural side, which is called how traditional leaders undermine women's land rights and that's based a case study based in quasi-natal in this east of the country. But getting back to the question, I can just offer you a few thoughts about South African policy that is reasonably progressive. And these kinds of things can be measured according to how they benefit vulnerable people. Firstly, the national and provincial policies that govern the allocation of land and housing subsidies, and that land and housing is serviced and has secure tenure, is targeted at the poorest households. But it's also a requirement that allocation of housing be done in a gender balanced way, reaching and the way that's defined is the balance between male and female headed households. And reported delivery data year by year has shown that this allocation policy has been honored and looking at the impacts of that there have been studies of that. So that's kind of leads to property ownership through the housing program. Secondly, policies that govern various types of social grants in the country such as pensions and child grants. They also need to be administered and allocated in ways that are fair and balanced. Thirdly, the prevention of illegal eviction legislation that I mentioned earlier has an anti-discriminatory aspect to it when considering someone's rights not to be evicted. That act requires that special consideration be given to the rights of the elderly children, disabled persons and households headed by women. And finally, in inheritance law, which is a whole specialized area on its own, it is forbidden to discriminate, although again in practice, there are very many real challenges to the fair passing of property between generations. And the recent presidential land panel that I mentioned recommended amongst many other things, the merging of marriage and inheritance laws so that women do not are not placed in situations of disadvantage in terms of inheritance and changing marital status. Thank you. Thank you. And I think we'll probably have some questions around this as well. But I want to go to Katala now, if you can share about urban policies in your country in Lebanon that guarantees women's lands tenure rights and especially those living in informal settlements or slums. Hi, thank you, Jane. Lebanon is actually one of the countries working with multiple legal systems. So we have customary laws, religious and statutory systems that are interweaved in one another, giving that we're confessional system of governance with different constituents and who follow different rules. We generally protect women's land tenure rights on the basis of second private property, which is also ensured in the Constitution. Women can own land and lease land with no discrimination. Discrimination per se is not explicit in policies. However, it often occurs in issues of inheritance and the word settlements where customary and religious laws are used, rather than civil laws. And these differ between the different religious constituents. We also have an indirect discriminatory impact on women's land tenure rights, such as citizenship laws that don't, for example, allow Lebanese women, marry to non Lebanese men to pass down their nationality to their children. So it's depriving them from their rights of what is lawfully hers, including land and property. Also to mention that to focus on those who live in informal settlements. Unfortunately, policies do not protect residents of informal settlements from eviction, at least not in practice. Many women headed households living in informal settlements suffer from very weak tenure security, especially as mentioned before, when there are no lease agreements to ensure to prove their tenure rights. So that is a very big issue that many women and vulnerable communities in general suffer from and that really deserves a lot of, a lot of work and we're, there's still a long way to go on that. I will end with this. Thank you. Thanks so much, Tala. And Raquel, you're closing up here. Can you give us your comments about guaranteeing women's land tenure rights. And I must say that this topic is actually very close to my heart. This is actually the topic of my PhD research. And I was mainly interested in trying to understand what Tala and Mark have been saying that there is a great space between the actual law and what the law says and what happens in practice. So in the Brazil, in the case of Brazil, the legal that women's legal property rights are very strong. They can women can own land, regardless of the marital status that our inheritance law is gender neutral. So it favors both daughters and sons. And it also protects the widows. We are marital property regimes by default is a partial community property that says, basically that women are legal entitled they legally own a half of the property that's acquired during the relationship during marriage or a consensual union. So it all looks great. Oh, and there is also the housing and land allocation programs that they explicitly say that they claim to prioritize women as beneficiaries. I think like in the case of South Africa that Mark shared with us. So it all looks great on the legal on the legal and the policy level, and I was asking myself so how come that's so different from what we see in the informal settlements and the, especially here in the global south, right. So, so I wanted to bring to you two concerns of mine that have been pushing me to continue working on this topic. And the first one is data. We don't know enough. We don't have enough information to understand what's happening in practice. If women understand properly the property rights, if they're able to exercise those property rights, we usually don't have a reliable and gender disaggregated data to understand what's happening in practice. And in this respect, the rural feminist researchers, they have advanced a bit more than the urban ones. So there are some studies that have been measuring the what is called the gender asset gap. But that's in rural context and that no one is really paying attention to to to what's happening in the urban context and I'll go back to it in a minute. So for just to give you an example, the housing data here in Brazil is not disaggregated by gender. So it's virtually impossible to understand if women are a more exposed or disproportionately affected with rent burden for excessive rent burden, for example, or if they're the majority living in overcrowded housing units. So we really should know more about what's happening in practice and that would try to understand what's happening in this gray space between the law and the practice, right? And the second concern that I wanted to share with you today is that urban experts, right, urban development experts, they usually avoid dealing with matters to what happens in the household. So they usually avoid intra household analysis data, they say no that's private matter that's not for an urban expert to to look at and my PhD research specifically looked at looked at the impact of domestic violence on women's tenure security. So I was mainly interested in how many women or how women are being forced to leave their homes to survive to survive an abusive relationship. And that and I was so surprised with such a so with how this how under export this issue still is in the urban literature in the urban studies literature. So just to give you some data here in in recipient where I conducted my study. I understood I found that one third of women who experience domestic violence they remain in an abusive relationship in exchange for a place to live so they have no other housing alternative so they have to leave with the abusive partner. And the other two and in this group I would underscore that many of them are exactly the beneficiaries of housing programs so women who have been allocated with land and housing they're not willing to leave and lose their property. So that they're being exposed to continuous and more and more severe violence and not to lose their property that they've been able to acquire through government programs. And the other two thirds of women who actually leave their their homes to survive. I would underscore the subgroup of women who fully understand their property rights they're very much aware of the property rights and they try to exercise their property rights. And that's precisely when the violence becomes more and more severe reaching death threats and they end up leaving anyway so I would urge us urban experts to always try to include gender disaggregated an inter household analysis. Whenever we want to address and better understand gender inequalities in the distribution of land and resources in our city. That's great. And I'm sure we're going to talk more about that I just wanted to mention that we've been in habitats been involved in a campaign for women's land rights and closing the gap between policy and practice called stand for her land. And this is a new initiative as a 10 year campaign that we've been engaged in. So just a little notice about that as well. So thanks so much. And we've covered a lot of ground in this session. And we do have a number of questions were right on time so that anyone can put in the chat if you do have some questions. And we'll now turn to some of those questions for the panelists. So let's start with one question to all of you. Let's see. So adhering to the nothing about them without them maximum. What is the voice of the disadvantaged urban dwellers themselves. Are they organizing themselves to fight the problems addressed by the addressed by you all to conquer land rights. And in the three countries that we've discussed. So if so, are they being successful in changing legislation and policies to their advantage. I know that's a mouthful and let me know if you need me to read it again. I'll start with Mark. Okay, good question. I'll just be quite brief. I think our last quarter century of land policy and land planning has been very participative. South African integrated development planning process for every city and town is starts with prioritizing different development needs of communities. Although it's a difficult process, it has been integral to our whole planning process. But more specifically, there's a very active land and housing set of civil society organizations across the country, both urban and rural. I could mention many names. But just to give one illustration at the moment, even in the last six weeks while governments been formulating a human settlements and land response to the covert virus, we've been hosting a online platform that has 149 different individuals and organizations, which is a balance between government from national, provincial and local level. And then 30 NGOs that are working on the ground in informal settlements to cope with the other situations developing. And that's that meets every week and we've got a WhatsApp group, and that's the kind of a live participation. So, I mean groups like the STI aligned federation of the urban poor are very strong in the country. And other grouping called Abishali Basem Jindolo are very strong. And then there's a lot of sort of purely land based land rights and gender rights organizations as well. I think it's quite a healthy set of engagements, both in policy terms and in real terms, and a lot of struggle for access to land. I mean, in fact, it influenced the last election very, very strongly. The land reform platform was an extremely important issue on which the last election which was concluded last year was actually fought. Thank you. Same question. That's a very important question. I am. Well, okay, so in Lebanon, we have a very strong civil society groups that are active on multiple fronts and advocating for many rights issues on land and specific have not yet taken the front lines and advocacy per se for civil society organizations, but we've made a lot of progress in the past 10 years and putting at the forefront right to housing and to to basically fight pricing out of residents outside of main cities. I believe the question asked about informal settlements in specific and how people are organizing and mobilizing. That is yet to be seen to be honest and our informal settlements. Really, because many of these settlements are inhabited by non Lebanese residents and there are a lot of fears and a lot of considerations for these people who might have precarious legal status in the country to be actually active and to be vocal about their rights. So, this is where civil society organizations step in to take the lead on that. But, yeah, I mean, as I mentioned, there is still a long way to go on this front in terms of mobilizing and and advancing the rights of informal settlements residents. Thank you. Thank you, Raquel. Also here in Brazil, the civil society organized society is very strong actor in this urban dialogues. And I think and I'm happy to say that the participatory processes of policy making have been quite successful in the in the past decades out. It changed some good. I'm just giving giving giving you a little bit of background on what change exactly but even a so I mentioned in my first question that in 1988, the urban problem was recognized in the Constitution and it was only in the year 2001, when it was actually when a different when a different national law was fast that provided different examples of legal tools and urbanistic tools that could be implemented. And this 20 year process was super strong what was very a was a result. Well, what has been achieved during this 20 year period was really a result of a combination of efforts coming from technical perspectives and the voices of the disadvantages coming together to trying to draft what would be an interesting format to move forward the urban policy in the country and even the recognition of housing rights. I think that was very a very important step in in this in how these alliances made a concrete changes in our legal framework possible. But right now what we see and it's probably happening in other countries of the Global South is a moment of a very unsettling political turbulence that is pretty much dismantling many of the frameworks of participation that we had established in the previous years. So it's really a moment of reviewing many of our strategies and many of our alliances and how we conduct this our advocacy efforts so I think we're in the transition period that's actually very that can be very tricky and it requires a lot of efforts, because all the agendas of the social movements the grassroots movements that have been shuffling a bit, and we have to understand and make that use and useful in our favor. So yeah, just a few thoughts on that very huge question. Thanks. Okay, I'll try this one is a little bit more simple to any of you who it's addressed to any of you. So, what is the impact of corruption and or organized crime on the distribution of urban land. Anyone want to take that. And start. This is definitely a very relevant question for us here in Lebanon at the moment, especially with all the attempts to fight corruption. There is definitely a huge impact of corruption on how land is distributed especially when high value land is seized by the elite, the 1%, you know, whoever is monopolizing the political and commercial sectors. And this is probably where the biggest difficulty and ensuring equal and adequate access to land is faced because when you have corruption. You have a lot of layers that you need to navigate in order to be able to ensure adequate access to land and equal and distribution. So, I'm actually very interested to know how this topic in specific has been addressed and other parts of the world, especially in the global south. Since probably corruption is quite common in many countries in that part of the world. So that we can learn from our experiences and, you know, maybe can do something about it. Margot Raquel, do you have any want to jump in? I could just mention last year, our, we've got something called the city support program, which is kind of internationally funded. That sits in our treasury. And we wrote something called the catalytic land development guide, which is available online. And that tried to address how municipalities manage land as an asset within their boundaries. And I had to write a chapter on corruption. And we had this whole value chain of how land is packaged and assembled and approved and land zoned etc. And as I wrote the chapter on corruption and where you need to close the gaps for possible influence, undue influence or rent seeking or bribery. It turned out that I was writing a guideline on how to do it. So then we stopped writing that chapter in that way. And we rather wrote it as a way to look out how to look out for where things might go wrong. So it is a, it's, it's one of the biggest areas of potential corruption worldwide. It's not quite as syndicated criminally as possibly in other parts of the world in the South African context. But there's, there's a, there's a lot of undue influence between private and public sector in land use and zoning and building control. And in many, in many other ways. So it's something to really look out for. So in the absence of a longer answer I would just refer you to, to that publication catalytic land development guide. Great. Raquel any comments. Yeah. Yeah, I thought this question was supposed to be easier. Not as long. But I think there are many layers to that. And I immediately thought reminded, I was reminded of a specific case in Rio. Is a native that happened a year ago. And it was basically open the fact that the organized crime is a super important actor in our land markets here in Brazil. So they are the ones occupying land meant in many cities they're, they're occupying land they're building informally a housing units and I'm talking here high levels like story. Levels, multi levels buildings, and the, the episode that made this super clear was when a series of building just crashed and they came down. And then people started to, it was people just started to realize how serious the they and how widespread their role in the land market in informal settlement. So that's one aspect. But the other aspect, and, and, and of course they're, there is, they're very active role in allowing or not specific families to leave and specific in their settlement so there is eviction by organized crimes as well. And about corruption, I just wanted to touch very briefly on one of the most recent legislation passed here in Brazil regarding a land that was basically forgiving the corruption that has been happening historically by the elites here in the, in the country so it basically said no problem we will forget about that from then on. So it's, instead of recognizing the impact of the corruption that has been going on, the land corruption that has been going on for years. They actually managed to say no problem we'll forget about that and we'll move on and that's very much related to the fact that the power relations in place right now the political power relations and the economic ties that they're in place in our current government. So that's just two initial thoughts that I thought to mention this question. Thank you. Now we have a question regarding COVID-19 and its impact on empty properties. Is anyone aware of a movement in their country, city, to formalize the reclamation of empty urban property for pandemic purposes? Is there any suggestion that long term redistribution of these properties may occur as a result of COVID-19? I think Brazil has a very specific experience going on right now. We've been claiming this vacant property in cities for a long, long time. Right now what's happening is that the government, local governments and state governments have been, have understood that these areas have a potential to house a homeless or people who are in most need at the moment. So they have requested, they have been requesting vacant property in several cities like São Paulo, Porto Alegre and there's a very specific movement. It's called Quartos de Quarentena, which is basically rooms for quarantine in several cities and there's websites to collaboratively gather and grasp this information and to make this available. So I think there's something there, but in terms of how the extent to which this will be a long term dynamic, we're still yet to see, because right now everything is more or less justified by the effects of the pandemic. So I will still need to pay attention to what's going to be the unfolding effects of that. Mark, anything? There have been some discussions here and it's similar to other things where it's changing all the time. So there's been a kind of call that's gone out to identify inner city buildings that are standing empty. And there's been another call going out for what we call RDP housing that hasn't been allocated to that spot of the mass housing program. But at the moment the calls are a little bit uncertain in that it's not clear if it's looking for space to quarantine people who might have symptoms or have been tested as positive, or whether it is buildings for people who are homeless who don't have a place to stay. And that's been worked in different ways in different cities around the country with better and worse results, sometimes using sports stadiums and with tents and sometimes open land. But the actual occupation of buildings is it's it's quite difficult at first Johannesburg schools, we're going to open up their hostile accommodation for homeless. And then they took legal advice and decided that then the eviction anti eviction laws were too strong. And also they weren't sure about sanitizing the accommodation. At certain times when the schools would start again. And so it's tremendously fraughts discussion because we're not sure yet if it's a first response which is preventative, which is where we are as a country with only sort of just over 100 deaths. Or if it's getting accommodation ready for quarantine. And there's, and that's that's the province of local municipal disaster management centers. So it's all quite difficult. And as I said earlier, there's also been land invasions at this time, which is more onto onto open land. So it's quite a complex developing situation and I think government and and the health specialists need to get very clear whether you know what parts of the response it's addressing. Do they need to get safe inner city buildings in which to quarantine. And we've CSR has written guidelines on on those quarantine specifications that you need. Or is it buildings to house people temporarily, or is it a long term longer term kind of solution. So it's a it's a it's a developing picture. Yeah, Mark, we have a specific question for you. So as long as I have you. South Africa is well known for social economic rights example group boom ruling in 2000 rights to social housing. So the question is how easy is it for displaced persons to access justice. Is group boom reflective of how marginalized communities can access justice or is it an exception. You might need a legal person to answer this one for thought it's itively but I think generally our highest court is the constitutional court and that's the cases that have a constitutional implication get referred to that highest court and a lot of their business has been around land and housing rights, a lot of the cases that they've entertained over the last years have been around that. But whether there's an effective enjoyment of effective access to or recourse to law. That's more difficult. There are there's a lot of sort of pro bono work by by law firms to give that and even now. There's there's an association of legal firms that are offering free legal advice and and support in this current time where where evictions are more of a threat. And not only public evictions also private landlord evictions. So it's a lot of different things so in terms of the actual recourse to law. I think it's a mixed bag and although there are quite a few mechanisms and I think it's fairly effective. I think you will find cases where where people can't get that legal protection and where wealthier people are much easier find it much easier to get recourse to the law. And I certainly know that our land administration system in terms of our deeds register is when you're trying to pass trying to change your your deed of sale that is on your property. That is too expensive and too complicated and too inaccessible. So that's a special case I think where where we need to really reform our land administration system to make it easier to pass property. Either between generations or between family members or just in terms of usual transactions that remains very inaccessible and too expensive. Thank you Mark. We have one last question for everyone since we're running out of time. I'll ask Tala to start. The question is how efficient are the local authorities in the provisions of serviced land in their respective countries and also provide any other final comments now because we're we're running out of time. Thanks Tala. Okay, so the local local governments and municipalities have a very big goal to play. In some instances they do in Lebanon. They're actually in some areas much more active than the central government on this on this issue. But the majority need a lot of capacity building and basically resource mobilization to be able to respond for the emerging needs. They, the municipalities, local governments are very, they're very close to the community and they're well aware of the dynamics of land distribution. Many of them play a role in either facilitating or stopping the distribution one way or another. So it's actually not a consistent picture of throughout the country. That's my short answer. And I just wanted to say thank you again for this amazing discussion. I, for one, learned a lot. Thank you for everyone. Thank you so much, Tala. Raquel. Yeah, I think my short answer is there has been some progress. But right now, what the picture that we see is very brings a lot of concern in terms of capacity building, but not only that, in terms of capacity of the themes and so on, but also in terms of a question and what's going on at the political level to allow this allow service providers to work a detach from political strings. So that would be my a my short answer that could be expanded another hour. But yeah, I just wanted to thank land portal and also Jane for have that for humanity when all those involved in this beautiful moment for us to reflect a bit more and from different perspectives here. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for Cal and Mark. Thank you. I think our municipalities and local authorities are quite variable eight large cities metros as we call them have got fairly good capacity. But then after that it's very variable in terms of capacity. Spatial planning is a is a municipal function. And that's been clarified by an act that was called the spatial planning and land use management act about seven years, eight years ago, it was promulgated. So that puts it at the door of local authorities. And because of the way we've had a very, quite a strong housing and land distribution program. I think our municipalities are better at at building stuff. They haven't got as much capacity in terms of engaging with communities. And when it comes to things like upgrading informal settlements and regularizing tenure that really requires local authorities to work closely with and I think it's those capacities that really need to be built much more strongly in our, in our situation and those, those engagements with communities are being very tested at the moment of course. But again, yeah, thank you from outside and the partnership with land portal is very much is very valuable to us and our urban knowledge exchange for Southern Africa is a kind of a sister platform. I really appreciate the collaboration. Thank you for this. Thank you, Mark. And I just wanted to thank everyone for joining us today. I wanted to thank land portal and our hosts hosts today for joining us and please. We're hoping to have some more of this information available. And thank you again for joining us. I think we've ending right on time. Thanks very much.