Latin America

Latin American cities, home to more than 77 percent of the population of the region, present well-known challenges: poverty, segregation, and vulnerability to disasters. Paradoxically, the governments have abandoned their responsibility for urban-territorial planning in favour of allowing private appropriations of urban spaces and failing to restrict real-estate speculation. At the same time, they ignore, and even criminalize people’s individual and collective efforts to obtain a decent place to live.

In order to produce changes in current urban development trends, social movements have been struggling to build a sustainable model of society and urban life. COHRE has been a key player in the formulation of the Right to the City, which aims at countering a growing tendency that deliberately excludes access to cities by poor people, particularly in the case of recently-arrived migrants fleeing disintegrating rural economies. Additionally, armed conflicts, infrastructure development projects and property speculation continue affecting living conditions of indigenous, rural and urban communities and increasing the number of forced evictions.