INTERNATIONAL ADVOCACY

Slum Dwellers International (SDI) is a loose network of people's organisations from an increasing number of countries in the South. The network is made up of Federations of community organisations and other grassroots initiatives that are in the process of developing Federations. Linked to this network is a group of professionals who are committed to supporting Federations of the urban poor.

The SDI affiliates in twenty-three countries have come together to give a voice to the poor in an arena of decision-making that has, in recent years, been confined to global organisations that champion neo-liberal theories of development.

As a counterpoint to these agencies, social movements (such as the women's and environmental movements) have emerged. They see themselves as opponents of centralised state power, backed by these global agencies - the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Then there has been a plethora (now diminishing) of organisations in civil society who have mobilised poor individuals, mainly through micro-finance, to help poor people improve their individual standards of living as a means of adapting to the reality created by the alliance of power between multi-laterals and national governments.

SDI affiliates are attempting to pioneer an alternative route to the two that are mentioned above.

All SDI affiliates are organisations of the Urban Poor. They range in size from a few hundred (at present) in Zambia to more than a million-and-a-half in India. Some are decades old; others have been in existence for less than a year. They all share a common vision: that the State on its own cannot solve problems of poverty and under-development. Whilst the State, especially in Southern countries, has a monopoly on power, its very relationship to this power and to the local and global economy makes it a very weak instrument for the delivery of the resources and services needed to eradicate poverty. Thus the SDI affiliates seek to remind the State and international agencies of their obligations with respect to equity. Since they question the capacity of these agencies to deliver, they constantly seek situations that enable those who are affected by poverty to become organised and united in ever-expanding networks, and to play a defining role in the way in which Governments and multi-laterals discharge their obligations to the poor. This is in sharp contradistinction to the rights-based social movements or the micro-finance organisations, or even archaic social movements of the past, such as earlier rural and urban movements of the poor, including trade unions and left-wing political parties.

Big brothers to the Nation States, the Bretton Woods Institutions and the UN, have been an international response, in a way, to the sporadic impulses of the poor and the marginalized, who have been driven by material need, towards contestation as an effort to create a society based on equity.

SDI is an attempt to move away from sporadic impulses to sustained, long-term investments in local Federations of the Urban Poor. SDI, as a network of these Federations, opens opportunities at the international level in order to strengthen its member organisations, give them voice and to take the challenge of brokering deals and political brinkmanship to the global level.