By 2003, 70 per cent of
Kabul had been destroyed by the
ongoing war in
Afghanistan and
Médecins Sans Frontières reported there were tens of thousands of squatters, living without adequate food supply and medical facilities.[1] Conflict has also displaced many people from their homes across the country. In 2019 alone the United Nations estimated 600,000 people had been forced to move. In addition, three million Afghans have returned from neighbouring countries Pakistan and Iran since 2015. Many of these people have ended up in squatted informal settlements.[2]
As of 2018, 78 per cent of the people living in 34 cities were
slum dwellers and most of the housing stock was informal.[3] In the 2000s, the Afghan authorities had attempted to provide housing through the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing (MUDH) but demand far outstripped supply and so in the 2010s, the policy switched to
slum upgrading.[3] The Special Land Dispute Court was founded in 2002 to arbitrate cases regarding disputed land ownership (including squatting).[4] Adverse possession can be achieved after 15 years of continuous possession, although there are exceptions to the rule.[4]
In 1994,
Armenian forces displaced around 800,000 people from
Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory surrounded by
Azerbaijan and claimed by Armenia. The refugees were forced to take any option for accommodation such as
squatting by the roadside, paying for hotels or living in tent cities.[5] Thousands of refugees squatted Azeri homes and were tolerated by the authorities, which insisted that they would return home eventually to Nagorno-Karabakh. By 2010, residents of the capital
Baku were protesting that they wanted their homes back.[6] A World Bank report on housing in Baku stated there were various types of
informal settlements including inner city squatter housing and upgraded squatter settlements.[7]
Squatting in Bangladesh occurs when people migrate to cities such as
Chittagong and
Dhaka. They live in informal settlements known as "bastees".[8][9] As of 2013, almost 35 per cent of Bangladesh's urban population lived in informal settlements. In
Khulna, the largest squatted area was Supraghat, with 15,875 residents.[10]
Brunei is a country on the north coast of the island of
Borneo. There are three distinct legal traditions, namely indigenous beliefs, common law and Islamic law, which all have their own dispute resolution processes.[11]
Indigenous peoples such as the
Dusun, the
Iban, the
Penan, the
Murut and the
Kedayan who traditionally lived in wooded areas and made a living from forestry have moved to the cities in recent years. They live in apartments and houses rather than squatted shacks.[12]
In the
Khmer language, "squatter" means an
anarchist and "squatters settlements" literally translate as "places where anarchy and confusion reign" therefore officially squatters are referred to by different names, such as the "urban poor" or "temporary residents".[13]: 5, 18, 21 After the
Khmer Rouge was ousted in 1975, many people returned to
Phnom Penh and began living in their old houses or
squattedinformal settlements if their homes were already occupied.[14] One example of a squatted building was the
White Building.[15] Until the end of the 1990s, the Phnom Penh authorities did not recognise squatters and tended to evict squats. As of 2003, an estimated 25 per cent of the city's population were squatters.[13]: 5, 16
East Timor became an independent country in 2002, after previously being occupied by first Portugal and then Indonesia. Following the conflict involved in becoming independent, East Timor had no land registry and no process for squatters to be evicted.[16] This created problems as people displaced by war returned to their homes to find them occupied by squatters, who in some cases had rented them out and wanted a monetary settlement before leaving.[17] Land claims can be broken into four groups, namely those who currently possess land, those claiming land they owned under Portuguese rule, those claiming land they possessed under Indonesian rule and people asserting customary or traditional land rights.[16] In 2006, conflict again broke out and 100,000 people were displaced; as had happened previously, when residents returned to their homes they found them squatted.[18]
Towards a Participatory Society: New Roads to Social and Cultural Integration - page 184 - “According to UN-HABITAT, the world’s highest percentages of slum-dwellers are in Ethiopia (an astonishing 99.4% of the urban popula- tion), Chad (also 99.4%), Afghanistan (98.5%), and Nepal (92%). Bombay, with 10 to 12 million squatters and tenement-dwellers, is the global cap- ital of slum-dwelling, followed by Mexico City and Dhaka (9 to 10 mil- lion each), and then Lagos, Cairo, Karachi, Kinshasa-Brazzaville, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Delhi (6 to 8 million each)”.20
One of the oldest kampungs in Jakarta is Kampung Pulo, located beside a river.[20]
Bandung is the third largest Indonesian city after Jakarta and
Surabaya. After independence, there was internal migration to Bandung and people expanded existing kampungs or squatted new ones. In 2017, Bandung was estimated to have 120,000 inhabitants of informal settlements.[21]
West Papua
Legal
According to
UN-HABITAT there are 17 different forms of land tenure in Indonesia. These include Hak Milik (freehold without ownership), Hak Milik Adat (tenure under the
Basic Agrarian Law which is often not respected), Hak Guna Bangunan (building right), Hak Guna Hutan (permitted land use), Hak Pakai (use right) and Hak Garap (squatting on state land).[22] Until 1960, people paying land tax had girik rights (land rights), and although this is no longer legally true, it is sometimes still assumed by those who pay land tax.
Adverse possession exists as a doctrine and squatters can apply for it after ten years of continuous possession of state land.[22]
After World War II, squatter zones emerged which were made up of a mixture of
Burakumin, Korean migrants,
Okinawans and foreigners. There were two types, one was composed of people occupying buildings and the other was shack dwellers. The shanty towns were tolerated and the squatters were forced into emergency housing.[23] One example was Barrack Town in
Kobe City.[24] Others were Korean encampments beside the Kyoto military airport and Osaka International Airport.[25][26] By the 1950s, there were public housing schemes being established but the number of squatters also continued to increase.[23]
The numbers of both squatters and
homeless people rose in
Osaka in the 1990s. Most of these people were male day labourers with an average age of 56.[27]
During the
Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic (1936-1991), land
squatting occurred when there was insufficient housing. There was another wave of squatting when the USSR collapsed and people internally migrated to the cities such as the capital
Bishkek in search of employment.[28] In the wake of the
Tulip Revolution in 2005, the disturbed social order allowed squatters to occupy land, one example being the Ak Jar settlement in the
Chuy Region north of Bishkek, where the squatter leaders (
Kyrgyz: top bashylar) first on the land gave plots to their families and then sold other ones to newcomers.[29] The new president
Kurmanbek Bakiev did little to stop the occupations and therefore they continued. Coupled with weak governance, the lack of affordable housing pushed people into illegal occupation. Political leaders condemned the squatting actions, but were unable to stop them, whilst academics argued against the negative perceptions of squatters and NGOs such as Arysh, the Children’s Protection Centre and the Red Cross gave aid.[29]
Following the
Kyrgyz Revolution of 2010, Kyrgyz nationalists attacked
Mayevka, a village near Bishkek, on 19 April 19. They pillaged and claimed land from
Meskhetians and Russians, but were evicted in the following days. Five people were killed in the disturbances.[30]
Melvin: "The redistribution of property, which has been closely involved in the ethnicization of Kyrgyzstan’s political conflict, took the form of open land grabs in the months following the June violence. Reflecting the state of lawlessness that continued in southern district nearly five months after the summer violence and the ever-present pressure for land created by rapid population growth, ethnic Kyrgyz squatters began to occupy land formally owned or rented by ethnic Uzbeks. With the local authorities struggling to tackle this issue, it risked feeding into the ethnic polarization that remains acute in the region.70 Indeed, some have suggested that the issues of demography and communal conflict are being exploited by political and economic forces—notably the Osh local authorities
In
Mongolia, pastoral nomads live in ger (
yurts). Severe weather disasters known as
dzuds have resulted in herds dying and many nomads have moved to living in their ger in
informal settlements ringing the capital
Ulaanbaatar.[31][32] The majority (61 per cent) of Ulaanbaatar's population of 1.1 million people live in ger, which tend to have electricity but not sanitation.[33]
In 2005, the New Internationalist interviewed orphaned children living in holes in the ground who kept warm using heating pipes.[34]
Syria has a history of
squatting which reaches back to ancient times, when
Tell Brak was founded 7,000 years ago.[35] In the 1950s, there were squatters on the periphery of
Homs.[36] The
Yarmouk Camp was set up in 1957 to house Palestinian refugees who had previously been squatting and Aysh Warrwar is a squatted area on the periphery of the capital
Damascus which was established in the 1970s by internal migrants.[37][38]Hafez al-Assad ruled the country as a dictator from 1971 until his death in 2000. He oversaw the development of the country, building houses for squatters who moved from the countryside to cities.[39] Whilst officially land in Syria was either owned privately (38 per cent) or owned by the state (62 percent), in reality tenure was determined by customary, tribal, Islamic, informal and statutory arrangements.[40] It was noted in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies in 2016 that Syria had very little
slums in contrast to other neighbouring countries; this was explained by the fact that most people could afford to build rudimentary homes in informal settlements or make illegal constructions on land they had bought.[41] In 2005, local authorities estimated that Aleppo had 22 informal settlements which covered 45 per cent of the city's area.[42]
During civil war
During the
Syrian civil war which started in 2011, 2.3 million Syrians fled the country and only 20 per cent of this total entered refugee camps, with the rest finding other housing solutions which included occupying derelict factories in Lebanon.[43] At the beginning of the war, around 40 per cent of Damascus' population and 50 per cent of Aleppo's had been living in informal settlements.[40]
East Timor became an independent country in 2002, after previously being occupied by first Portugal and then Indonesia. Following the conflict involved in becoming independent, East Timor has no land registry and no process for squatters to be evicted.[16] This created problems as people displaced by war returned to their homes to find them occupied by squatters, who in some cases had rented them out and wanted a monetary settlement before leaving.[17] Land claims can be broken into four groups, namely those who currently possess land, those claiming land they owned under Portuguese rule, those claiming land they possessed under Indonesian rule and people asserting customary or traditional land rights.[16] In 2006, conflict again broke out and 100,000 people were displaced; as had happened before, when they returned to their homes to find that in many cases they had been squatted.[18]
In the sixth or seventh century, churches were constructed on the islands of
Dalma,
Marawah and
Sir Bani Yas in the
Persian Gulf. When they fell out of use, there is evidence that squatters occupied them.[44] In 1981, there were 20,000 migrant workers squatting in the city of
Al Ain. They had self-built housing on government land. The shacks are constructed out of corrugated metal, plywood and palm leaves.[45]: 15, 174
Uzbekistan
In
Uzbekistan, squatting is not common. From 1989, some properties owned by Russian-speaking Jews have been occupied as part of broader ethnic tensions.[46][47]
In
Hanoi, from 1975 onwards there were increasing land encroachments and illegal constructions, particularly in the areas of Giang Vo–Thanh Cong, Cao Sa La and Trung Tu–Kim Lien. A 1987 city ordinance regularized squatter houses on state-owned sites, with the conditions being payment of taxes and a promise to leave if the state needed the land in future.[51] In the 1990s, two squatted informal settlements were the Thanh Nhan precinct in Hai Ba Trung district and the Trung Liet precinct in Dong Da district, the latter on the site of a rubbish dump. The city authorities intended to move the squatters into rented accommodation elsewhere.[52] In the 2000s, there was the Chuong Duong informal settlement beside the
Red River. The city at first wanted to evict the squatters then decided to tolerate them. Consequently, the squatters decided to take community action to improve the banks of the river.[53] From 2000 onwards, the
Cities Alliance worked with the authorities on a
slum upgrading and a National Upgrading Investment Plan.[54]
The Hanoi Municipal People's Committee announced in 2013 that there were over 650 villas and 600 semi-detached homes standing derelict in
Hanoi. Some of these had been squatted.[55]
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^Uhlmann, O.; Feldmann, H.; Breuste, J.; Dung, Nguyen Huu (1998). "Improvement of Living and Environmental Conditions of Informal Squatters in Hanoi". Urban Ecology. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. pp. 371–375.
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