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households using a bamboo bridge to walk over waste in informal settlement

Reflections and dilemmas: My visit to an urban informal settlement

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In this blog post Farzana Manzoor takes us to Nama-shyampur, an informal settlement located at the edge of Kadamtali Thana, under Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC). This area is home to more than 5.5 thousand people.

It was my first ever visit to shyampur as part of ARISE. It was a very different experience for me, I have been to slums in Mirpur and Korail but this visit made me realize that not all slums are similar.

Every year there is an inflow of people from villages and towns coming in search of a better life and a roof over their heads, as many of their houses are flooded due to natural calamities. Many migrants come to earn a livelihood from industries like the steel, rods, cement and garments sectors or to be a domestic worker.

Heterogeneity

When I visualize a slum, I think of homogeneity in the physical layouts of housing. But Shyampur mixes high rise buildings with tin shaded houses and 12-20 feet wide roads. The more I walked through the roads, I had the feeling of a rustic kind of place. Passing through the pathways, there was a swamp followed by a garbage corner and at the side of which few vacant, drowned low-lying houses were found.

Heterogeneity can be vividly seen in this area. There are differences between the local community and migrants. Moreover, from the informal discussion with a Community Development Organization (CDO) it appeared there are disparities between the areas on the upper side of railway named “Ucha-shyampur” and underneath the railway, “Nama-shyampur”. Ucha means upper and Nama means lower, both the areas connote the types of lands and the people residing on them. People from Ucha-shyampur are mostly business people or landlords and are more solvent whereas people of Nama-shyampur earn less and are day laborers, factory workers etc. Ucha-shyampur has big buildings whereas Nama-shyampur has few newly constructed building structures.

“Ucha-shyampur sort of undermines the Nama-shyampur.”

Defining Marginalization

Nama-shyampurWhile walking towards the edge of the area, it seemed like the railway line had separated two distinctive contexts. One side consists of mills, factories or industries and the opposite houses in a precarious state. Actually, it can be viewed from varied perspectives. The industrial site is a source of livelihood for the people who are residing on the opposite side of the tracks.  Or one side produces hazardous chemicals and waste particles and the other is a dumping zone for this garbage. It is very difficult to measure whether the contribution or advantages of one side outweigh the hazards and disadvantages caused by them to the other side.

Marginalization can be defined in various ways. Few of the vulnerable sites that we visited had pipes and illegal lines, whereas six or seven minutes away you can find a high-tech water ATM booth with a filtered water pump where customers can buy water by using a prepaid card. To use the ATM card, you have to be a member of that community, must have a national ID card (citizen card) and apply for the card by submitting required papers including an application fee.

It is surprising how the differences are so clear within one community. When we asked one of the community people about the initiatives to address these issues, he indicated the avaricious nature of the ‘chair’ (‘chair’ represents the power and position of the local governance actors, for example local elected Ward Councillors, who are responsible for the development of a particular area). It seems people work for advantage or profit rather than serving vulnerable people and welfare of the society.

“The problem is with the chair not with people.”

Perilous roads

Walk way on stiltsWhen entering the slum, the roads are wide and well developed, though, with poor drainage systems and overloaded garbage corners. But the roads or narrow pathways that we had to take deeper in the slum, those were very fragile. Most of these roads were made up of bamboo stilts and some were thin wooden pieces balanced over the industrial wastewater. This made me wonder how the people living within that area walk around. Especially for the children living in this area. They grow up in stinky air and can easily come into contact with contaminated drainage water sources.

As we walked through the community, there were people staring at us from their doorways who have no option but to put up with such precarious houses, pathways and surroundings which they call home. I felt guilty of covering my nose with the scarf but it was difficult to breathe in the chemical mixed air. One of the women taunted me saying,

“We are poor so we can take it but you are solvent so you are unable to breath in dirty air.”

This was a reminder of the inequity that persists within the research process. It creates dilemmas related to keeping myself safe while simultaneously aiming to safeguard the co-researchers and community people to the same level. Being an early career researcher, such field visits, face to face interactions with community, attending community meetings all contribute to deeply understanding the reality and perceiving the experiences of community people living in informal settlements.

Streets of Korail

A letter to UKRI from Bangladesh

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We heard with dismay that the UKRI research budget is facing massive cuts. Our team in Bangladesh wanted to demonstrate some of the ways that UKRI financing has made a difference and what will be lost should it be taken away.

By colleagues at JPG School of Public Health at BRAC University

In Bangladesh working together with communities has given us a better understanding of the ground realities of people in informal urban settlements. We understand their problems better and we have been able to build a good working relationship and trust with the community. ARISE is a research program that touches many lives. We’ve highlighted a few areas of work that have really made us proud.

GIS mapping

Group mapping in Bangladesh

Urban slums in Dhaka are made up of many different sections. These sections are not unified and some are better served than others. Some of these sections are safe while others are not. Having a map allows the community to take initiatives and understand their slum and its entirety. We have supported the community to conduct GIS mapping.

These maps will be placed in the community clubs, where many residents can access them and they will be shared via mobile phone. They can use the maps to identify areas where services are not available, so when a new NGO comes in with an intervention such as building a school or health camp, they can look at these maps to identify these areas and thus reduce service duplication.

One of our co-researchers said that the map will help the firemen navigate through the community in the event of a fire incident helping other NGOs and community people find the exact location of different services.

“Fire incidents are common in our area. When a fire breaks out in our community, different people give different directions to the firemen because of which they often cannot reach the affected area in time. Now, with this map, we can easily direct the firemen to the exact location of fire and hope they are able to reach there sooner.”

Capacity development of co-researchers for better livelihood opportunities

Group work

ARISE approaches – such as co-producing GIS maps of our study sites – have been carried out with co-researchers from the community.  We had thought that this process would help build the capacity of youths and prepare them for better opportunities for their future. Our co-researchers consider being part of the team as a learning and capacity-building opportunity and that the knowledge and skills they gain through their involvement in this research will equip them to obtain better employment.

Within a month of working with ARISE, one of our co-researchers, Nishika Samaddar Tumpa  was offered a job at BRAC Urban Development Program as a community organizer for Shyampur. She is grateful to ARISE Bangladesh and said:

 

“Working in ARISE made me have more empathy and find ways to have more solidarity with marginalised groups. In addition, the training and reflexivity sessions made me more confident and all these ultimately helped me during the job interview process. It is because of the opportunity given to me as a co-researcher, I have this job today. My work is also being strengthened as I can now visit the marginalized households, feed in their needs and priorities to BRAC Urban Development Program and other NGOs in our area.”

Violence and facilitating referrals

We co-organize dialogues and meetings with community members and governance actors where community members are able to share their experiences and raise issues which need to be addressed. For example, in one of our community inception meetings, a mother helplessly wept for her child who was raped in their own community, and asked for help. The ARISE Bangladesh team linked the woman with BLAST (Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust) and she is now getting legal support free of charge. Moreover, we have also linked her up with a psychosocial support institute named Moner Bondhu who provide telephone counselling free of charge.

Community engagement to inform policy-makers

policy maker meeting

We link up the community with policy-makers such as chief health officers, councillors, slum development officers and ward members. These meetings serve as a platform for informal settlement residents to have their voices heard, it helps them realize their rights to their own health and wellbeing, and thus enable and encourage them to take action in their own interest.

In one of the meetings a community member said:

“Through your research, if we are able to present our needs and talk about our rights to the government, then the residents of our community would be benefited.”

Due to ARISE, we have begun working and building relationships with policy-makers who have emphasized that they are open to learning and are trying to address some of the community’s needs and priorities on the ground. Given the COVID-19 situation, it is important to continue this engagement because the government is willing to improve interventions and responsiveness in the informal settlements. We will continue to work with them to bring out community voices.

Uptake of COVID-19 vaccination in informal settlements

The evidence being generated by ARISE is key in informing policy decisions. For example, our observations, findings, reflections and feedback from data collection and community meetings are shared with the BRAC Urban Development Program. This helps them improve and modify their activities to better suit the needs of the community. Our findings also feed into the strategic planning and decision making of other organizations. We are currently undertaking qualitative research in different sites to understand the low uptake of vaccination in the country. The research is already gathering data on community’s understandings (including gender, stigma and other factors) as well as any misinformation that exists around the national COVID-19 vaccination roll-out program. These data will be shared with key stakeholders to help them design responsive communication on COVID-19 vaccination in urban informal settlements.

Urban digital platform: Inter-slum cross learning

ARISE team visiting and engaging with slum dwellers in Brac

An innovative strategy has been planned as a result of the ARISE Responsive Fund to provide an online learning platform provided for Community Development Organizations. As part of this project BRAC Urban Development Program will pilot a virtual cross-learning exchange where communities from three selected slums in three cities will meet and exchange learning and experiences. In meetings, community organizers of one slum will virtually connect with community organizers in the other two slums through tablet computers. This peer learning and sharing system will provide a sustainable system longer term to keep each other informed of innovative community-led initiatives and apply or adapt relevant initiatives in their own slum. This will lead to solidarity and unity across these slums when voicing their priorities and needs as a unified group when required to the councillors, ward members and NGOs.

contaminated water in bangladesh slum is health hazard

Join our Health Systems Global panel

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If you are a participant in the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research please do come along to our panel on the 10 March, 09.00-10.30 GMT.

Title

Digging into urban health: uncovering concepts and action for health and social justice in informal settlements

What’s it all about?

Rapid urbanization is re-shaping social and economic life and, with it, human health and health systems. Most of the world’s population is now urbanized, yet one-third of urban residents live in precarious ‘slums’ and ‘informal settlements’. These city-dwellers typically lack access to healthcare and vital health-supporting services. Slums are widespread in the Global South but often hidden in plain sight, reflecting residents’ lack of voice as well as sectoral and disciplinary silos. This session asks how health systems can better engage with the social, economic and environmental realities of informal settlements, in hopes of improving residents’ health and promoting social justice.

Urban areas often experience deeply entrenched health and social inequalities, but also concentrate knowledge, economic dynamism, and vibrant local organisations that can foster innovations in health-promoting practices. However, practical and conceptual approaches to deliver health systems for low-income urban residents often fail to address intersectoral challenges and the ubiquity of informality in the Global South. Vast amounts are spent on health services, while the social, economic and environmental determinants of health in informal settlements remain overwhelmingly neglected. Informal settlements are also poorly represented in official statistics, rendering them invisible to health officials and policymakers.

To reveal new insights into slums and urban health dynamics, the session will be organised like an archaeological dig: it will go beyond superficial observations to analyse the underlying structural determinants of health, and participating urban researchers, policymakers, and practitioners will foster interdisciplinary dialogue that can promote health equity and the broader 2030 Agenda.

Contributors

  1. Mr Robert Hakiza, a Congolese refugee in Uganda and director of Young African Refugees for Integral Development, will highlight urban displacement and associated risks to well-being. In particular, how urban refugees living alongside other low-income residents in Kampala struggle to access housing and healthcare, and face additional challenges of discrimination, lack of documentation, or language barriers.
  2. Mr Abu Conteh, an urban health researcher at the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC), will highlight the complex, undercounted health burdens in Freetown’s informal settlements, drawing on research into residents’ life histories and the roles of formal and informal governance structures.
  3. Dr Alice Sverdlik, an urban researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED, UK) will highlight how health in informal settlements is influenced by multi-level factors including household poverty; inadequate shelter, services and infrastructure; unresponsive local governance and exclusionary planning.
  4. Dr Surekha Garimella is a researcher at the George Institute for Global Health (India) working on participatory approaches with waste-picking communities in Bangalore’s ‘informal spaces’. She will highlight collective community processes to improve health services entitlements for urban poor and marginalized residents.
  5. Professor Sabina Faiz Rashid is an anthropologist and the Dean of the BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health. She will highlight the social and structural inequalities which contribute to health vulnerability in informal settlements in Bangladesh

Photo credit: “Contaminated Waters in Bangladesh Slum” by United Nations Photo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

International Development Committee on secondary impacts of COVID-19

ARISE inputs inform UK International Development Select Committee

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On the 26 January 2021 the UK Government International Development Select Committee published a report on the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kate Hawkins explains what’s in the report and the evidence that ARISE submitted to the process.

The International Development Select Committee has a mandate within the UK government to track and assess international development spending and policy and make recommendations where change is deemed necessary. In April 2020 they opened an inquiry into COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries and then moved into a second phase later in the year that looked at the secondary impacts and how aid from the UK might mitigate them. It focused on:

  • Non-coronavirus health care
  • Economy and food security
  • Treatment of women and children

Our evidence

We felt it important that we shared evidence from our work in India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Sierra Leone. You can find a shortened version of the points we made in our blog for World Cities Day. We highlighted the effects of violence and mental strain brought about by the pandemic and measures to tackle it. Our evidence explored how daily wage earners were particularly hard hit and that particularly marginalised people in urban informal settlements – such as waste-pickers – were feeling the brunt of the pain. It highlighted the gendered affects of COVID-19 and its impacts on the most vulnerable.

The International Development Select Committee report

The inquiry found that routine healthcare in some countries is grinding to a halt; vulnerable economies risked failure under rising levels of national debt; people across the Global South were more in fear of threats of job losses and starvation than the pandemic; and the virus, and its counter-measures, were increasing levels of gender-based violence, child marriages and other challenges to girls access to education.

The findings of the inquiry echo many of the challenges that we have seen in the course of our work. They cite our work several times and highlight the importance of capturing data on COVID-19 in a manner that adequately reflects the real-world situation for marginalised groups which is disaggregated  according to sex, ability, age, status etc. Throughout, they acknowledge that communities that were previously poor are being plunged into further crisis by the pandemic.

The report offers many recommendations for how aid from the UK can better organised. You can find the UK Government’s response to the report here.

We welcome the report and are grateful for the opportunity to provide evidence. Moving forward, we will be following future Select Committee inquiries and supplying data from our work where useful.

 

 

 

International Development Committee on secondary impacts of COVID-19

ARISE inputs inform UK International Development Select Committee

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On the 26 January 2021 the UK Government International Development Select Committee published a report on the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kate Hawkins explains what’s in the report and the evidence that ARISE submitted to the process.

The International Development Select Committee has a mandate within the UK government to track and assess international development spending and policy and make recommendations where change is deemed necessary. In April 2020 they opened an inquiry into COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries and then moved into a second phase later in the year that looked at the secondary impacts and how aid from the UK might mitigate them. It focused on:

  • Non-coronavirus health care
  • Economy and food security
  • Treatment of women and children

Our evidence

We felt it important that we shared evidence from our work in India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Sierra Leone. You can find a shortened version of the points we made in our blog for World Cities Day. We highlighted the effects of violence and mental strain brought about by the pandemic and measures to tackle it. Our evidence explored how daily wage earners were particularly hard hit and that particularly marginalised people in urban informal settlements – such as waste-pickers – were feeling the brunt of the pain. It highlighted the gendered affects of COVID-19 and its impacts on the most vulnerable.

The International Development Select Committee report

The inquiry found that routine healthcare in some countries is grinding to a halt; vulnerable economies risked failure under rising levels of national debt; people across the Global South were more in fear of threats of job losses and starvation than the pandemic; and the virus, and its counter-measures, were increasing levels of gender-based violence, child marriages and other challenges to girls access to education.

The findings of the inquiry echo many of the challenges that we have seen in the course of our work. They cite our work several times and highlight the importance of capturing data on COVID-19 in a manner that adequately reflects the real-world situation for marginalised groups which is disaggregated  according to sex, ability, age, status etc. Throughout, they acknowledge that communities that were previously poor are being plunged into further crisis by the pandemic.

The report offers many recommendations for how aid from the UK can better organised. You can find the UK Government’s response to the report here.

We welcome the report and are grateful for the opportunity to provide evidence. Moving forward, we will be following future Select Committee inquiries and supplying data from our work where useful.

 

 

 

International Development Committee on secondary impacts of COVID-19

ARISE inputs inform UK International Development Select Committee

0

On the 26 January 2021 the UK Government International Development Select Committee published a report on the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kate Hawkins explains what’s in the report and the evidence that ARISE submitted to the process.

The International Development Select Committee has a mandate within the UK government to track and assess international development spending and policy and make recommendations where change is deemed necessary. In April 2020 they opened an inquiry into COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries and then moved into a second phase later in the year that looked at the secondary impacts and how aid from the UK might mitigate them. It focused on:

  • Non-coronavirus health care
  • Economy and food security
  • Treatment of women and children

Our evidence

We felt it important that we shared evidence from our work in India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Sierra Leone. You can find a shortened version of the points we made in our blog for World Cities Day. We highlighted the effects of violence and mental strain brought about by the pandemic and measures to tackle it. Our evidence explored how daily wage earners were particularly hard hit and that particularly marginalised people in urban informal settlements – such as waste-pickers – were feeling the brunt of the pain. It highlighted the gendered affects of COVID-19 and its impacts on the most vulnerable.

The International Development Select Committee report

The inquiry found that routine healthcare in some countries is grinding to a halt; vulnerable economies risked failure under rising levels of national debt; people across the Global South were more in fear of threats of job losses and starvation than the pandemic; and the virus, and its counter-measures, were increasing levels of gender-based violence, child marriages and other challenges to girls access to education.

The findings of the inquiry echo many of the challenges that we have seen in the course of our work. They cite our work several times and highlight the importance of capturing data on COVID-19 in a manner that adequately reflects the real-world situation for marginalised groups which is disaggregated  according to sex, ability, age, status etc. Throughout, they acknowledge that communities that were previously poor are being plunged into further crisis by the pandemic.

The report offers many recommendations for how aid from the UK can better organised. You can find the UK Government’s response to the report here.

We welcome the report and are grateful for the opportunity to provide evidence. Moving forward, we will be following future Select Committee inquiries and supplying data from our work where useful.

 

 

 

International Development Committee on secondary impacts of COVID-19

ARISE inputs inform UK International Development Select Committee

0

On the 26 January 2021 the UK Government International Development Select Committee published a report on the secondary impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Kate Hawkins explains what’s in the report and the evidence that ARISE submitted to the process.

The International Development Select Committee has a mandate within the UK government to track and assess international development spending and policy and make recommendations where change is deemed necessary. In April 2020 they opened an inquiry into COVID-19 in low- and middle-income countries and then moved into a second phase later in the year that looked at the secondary impacts and how aid from the UK might mitigate them. It focused on:

  • Non-coronavirus health care
  • Economy and food security
  • Treatment of women and children

Our evidence

We felt it important that we shared evidence from our work in India, Bangladesh, Kenya and Sierra Leone. You can find a shortened version of the points we made in our blog for World Cities Day. We highlighted the effects of violence and mental strain brought about by the pandemic and measures to tackle it. Our evidence explored how daily wage earners were particularly hard hit and that particularly marginalised people in urban informal settlements – such as waste-pickers – were feeling the brunt of the pain. It highlighted the gendered affects of COVID-19 and its impacts on the most vulnerable.

The International Development Select Committee report

The inquiry found that routine healthcare in some countries is grinding to a halt; vulnerable economies risked failure under rising levels of national debt; people across the Global South were more in fear of threats of job losses and starvation than the pandemic; and the virus, and its counter-measures, were increasing levels of gender-based violence, child marriages and other challenges to girls access to education.

The findings of the inquiry echo many of the challenges that we have seen in the course of our work. They cite our work several times and highlight the importance of capturing data on COVID-19 in a manner that adequately reflects the real-world situation for marginalised groups which is disaggregated  according to sex, ability, age, status etc. Throughout, they acknowledge that communities that were previously poor are being plunged into further crisis by the pandemic.

The report offers many recommendations for how aid from the UK can better organised. You can find the UK Government’s response to the report here.

We welcome the report and are grateful for the opportunity to provide evidence. Moving forward, we will be following future Select Committee inquiries and supplying data from our work where useful.

 

 

 

Hand drawn map of Dholpur

Remote GIS mapping in Dholpur: Co-production with co-researchers

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Abdul Awal and Imran Hossain Mithu explain how Geographic Information System (GIS) was used by the ARISE team in Bangladesh to map Dholpur in Dhaka.

GIS mapping is a commonly used technique for visualizing an area. It can be used in a variety of ways to visualize health service utilization as well as consider the many factors related to location, which may limit people’s ability to access care from acquiring proper heath care.

Location-allocation models can identify how gaps in health services among specific communities can be reduced. Existing health services are mapped along with road networks which are used to identify and facilitate patient travel pathways and related challenges. Valuable information such as population distribution, income and poverty levels, can also be depicted to determine the best possible placement of new services, as well as to identify specific regions that are underserved.

ARISE is using a community-based participatory research approach to understand community dynamics and health and wellbeing related vulnerabilities, practices, challenges, needs and priorities. Participatory GIS mapping is one of the methods the ARISE Bangladesh team has chosen to map and document the layout of slums, infrastructures (health facilities, religious places, educational institutions, bazars, government offices, water, and electricity supply offices etc.), roads, health facilities etc.

A transect walk is a systematic walk along a defined path (transect) across the community/project area together with the local people to explore the water and sanitation conditions by observing, asking, listening, looking, and producing a transect diagram. Initially, we had a plan to co-create GIS map in April 2020 with the help of co-researchers during transect walks and then synchronize information collected through social mapping into GIS map to complete the mapping.

Suddenly the dark shadow of coronavirus loomed over us and Bangladesh was not shielded from this heinous pandemic. It seized the country from the beginning of March 2020 and is continuing. The country went into lockdown resulting in a suspension of all research field activities to ensure the safety of researchers and co-researchers.

As a result, the ARISE hub decided to apply innovative remote methodologies to research, especially data collection. The ARISE Bangladesh team came up with an innovative idea of testing remote GIS mapping and involving co-researchers remotely in the process. We were a little bit baffled at the beginning about how to complete the remote mapping, but we were able to devise a way forward.

The search for accurate data

We used QGIS 3.10.6 software for drawing the maps. However, the first challenge we faced at the initial stage was to locate our study slums from the QGIS Open Street map. We could only clearly locate Kollayanpur slum among three study slums. One possible reason could be that Kollayanpur is an old and well-known stable slum established in public land. The other two slums – Dholpur and Shaympur are comparatively new settlements and the boundaries of these slums were not identifiable using Google or Open Street maps. Therefore, we decided to search other secondary sources. However, the challenge we faced at this stage was accessing required secondary data about the three selected study sites due to unavailability of the proper data, which is essential for producing GIS maps.

In Bangladesh, slum specific data is limited and unavailable for most of the slums.  The available online sources are also not updated. We found some data form the Census of Slum Areas and Floating Population 2014, however, we couldn’t use that 15 years old data as most of the slums in Bangladesh are not stable and the landscape has changed over the period. We also found some other data sources, like some survey reports or published papers from other research. However, again that data were either too old or did not have our study site specific data.

Then we explored Dhaka city maps from both North and South Dhaka City Corporations. We could only manage a digital map from Dhaka North City Corporation, unfortunately that was also not updated. We could not get a digital map from Dhaka South City Corporation as the process of getting map requires physical visit to the City Corporation office which we could not do due to the lockdown. It was also difficult to identify the specific slums from the available sources. Therefore, we applied different strategies for different slums.

In this blog, we will share our experience of conducting remote GIS mapping of Dholpur slum where we were able to involve a co-researcher remotely in the mapping process.

Mapping Dholpur

Dholpur, a slum located in the southern part of Dhaka city under Dhaka South City Corporation, is home to approximately 135,000 people and most of them are City Corporation workers, rickshaw pullers, waste collectors and daily wage earners. People from ethnic minority groups live there, such as the Telegu community. Schools, colleges, mosques, temples, churches and healthcare facilities are some important infrastructures around the slum. Also, there are some informal health facilities for example drug shops.

To create the GIS map of Dholpur slum, we synchronized data from multiple sources, multiple digital maps and mapping software. A co-researcher from Dholpur slum guided us throughout the whole process from the beginning to the end by providing information and validating our maps at different stages.

Step 1 – Drawing the outline

We were unable to identify the area outline of Dholpur slum from the QGIS Open Street map, Google Earth Pro, online sources, and digital maps from Dhaka South City Corporation. Earlier in the research we had met some enthusiastic members of a local youth organization in Dhlopur slum who have been actively involved in many community-based activities. We decided to reach out to them again and request their support in the remote GIS mapping as they know their community better than us.

Hand drawn map of Dholpur
Figure 1

Anwar Rana expressed an interest in working with us as a co-researcher and helped us with mapping. After explaining to him our purpose over the phone, he shared a hand-drawn community map (Figure 1) through WhatsApp. The members of the local youth organization drew the community map for the purpose of managing their organization’s activities. We were surprised and amazed by the level of detailed information in their map. That map gave us an initial idea regarding Dholpur slum area.

Then we identified Dholpur slum area in the QGIS Open Street map and drew an outline with the help of the hand-drawn community map and shared the screenshot of the map with the co-researcher through Facebook Messenger for validation.  After seeing the outline, we made, Anwar marked the Dholpur slum boundary in the Google map and shared his screen with us which helped us to finalize the boundary.

Step 2 – Drawing roads and pathways

After finalizing the area outline, we started the next step of drawing roads and pathways. We identified some broad and major roads and pathways in our GIS map with the assistance of Google map, Google earth pro, Arc GIS satellite map, QGIS open street map, and GeoDASH. We also used the hand-drawn community map to draw some roads and pathways inside the slum which were not identifiable in the online sources. At that stage, we again reached out to Anwar to verify roads and pathways and he made some corrections.

Step 3 – Identifying infrastructure

After finalizing roads and pathways, we started to pin different important infrastructure like health care facilities, educational institutions, clubs, religious places, open spaces, community centres, cinema halls, bazars, government structures, water, and sanitation facilities, etc. with the help of the Urban Health Atlas, Google earth pro, Google map, and QGIS street map. We found many formal (e.g., hospital, clinic, satellite clinic, etc.) and informal (e.g., pharmacy, drug shops, etc.) healthcare facilities from the Urban Health Atlas.

To precisely pinpoint location of the landmarks, we searched for the coordinates (latitude and longitude) and placed it on our desired map. We tried to identify infrastructures inside the slum from the hand-drawn community map Anwar shared. However, we could not find specific geospatial data of those infrastructure from online sources and it was also not possible for Anwar to collect GIS points for us as he does not have access to required technology. As a result, in this remote method, we could not identify important infrastructure including healthcare facilities located inside the slum. Anwar marked and identified some informal health care facilities within the slum which we could not identify through the online sources.

The final map

After validating and adding different landmarks, we created the final GIS map of Dholpur slum (Figure 2). We also shared the final map with our Anwar. He was so excited to see the output. This digital GIS map is an additional support to visualize the different facilities within and outside the slum.

Dholpur final map
Figure 2

Although, the remote method of GIS mapping was very new for us, but we went through a memorable and exciting journey. The challenges we encountered at different stages of mapping process gave us the opportunity to think creatively and identify innovative alternate options and solutions to overcome the challenges. The involvement of Anwar from the beginning made our journey a lot easier. It was really challenging to connect with him remotely because of his engagements in other work and slow internet connections. However, we are very much grateful to him for his time, support, and guidance throughout the mapping process.

Once Indira Gandhi said, “every new experience brings its own maturity and greater clarity of vision,” which we realized throughout the journey of the remote GIS mapping.

 

Building equitable partnerships in safeguarding.jpg

Building equitable partnerships in international research

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Lynda Keeru summarizes what was learned at a recent webinar on building equitable partnerships in international research programmes.

International research has increasingly been taking on an equitable partnerships approach – an intentional tactic that clearly articulates the distribution of resources, responsibilities, effort and benefits within consortia. This approach also includes ethical sharing and use of data which responds to the needs of communities where the research takes place. Equitable partnerships are based on mutual respect guided by values like trust, accountability, transparency, active communication, constructive engagement and mutual learning. At the core of this approach is the importance of acknowledging the different inputs, interests and desired outcomes of all involved

The UKRI GRCF Action Against Stunting Hub hosted a webinar ‘Equitable Partnerships in international research’. The meeting sought to explore how different Hubs and institutions build, maintain, and evaluate equitable partnerships and help ensure that research outcomes are beneficial.

So, what makes for a good partnership? Some of the reflection made during the webinar included that good partnerships include:

  • Joint agenda setting
  • Clarity of roles and responsibilities
  • Fair recognition of incentives and interests of all partners
  • Building trust which requires transparency and accountability
  • Regular communication to avoid assumptions
  • Structured time investments in the partnership because building and maintaining relationships is a long term process
  • Regular reviews of the health of the partnership
  • Dispute resolution systems

Fairness and equity were identified by the UKCDR community as key factors that help to mitigate the risks of exploitation, abuse and harm. They not only reduce power imbalances but also ensure that all key stakeholders are consulted and engaged in the research process.

Chris Desmond, a Co-director of the Accelerate Hub spilled a number of gems including that even the most well-intentioned interventions have their own challenges such as systematic racism, how to make the process meaningful and not a tick box exercise and being realistic about what can be achieved during the five year horizon of most research partnerships.

Sally Theobald, the Principal Investigator of the ARISE consortium and Linet Okoth of LVCT Health shared their experience of the ongoing journey of promoting equity in partnerships guided by their theory of change. To be most effective, they agreed on shared values right from the start at the proposal writing stage and ensured that there was ongoing review of these values throughout their partnership review process and made adaptations to systems and structures as appropriate.

Equity in voice, power and resource mobilization, commitment to ethical interactions at all levels of the programme and transparency and accountability in all processes are some of these guiding values. In addition, they have put in place management structures that ensure that all partners can propose and lead sessions during monthly webinar series and partnership meetings. Their executive committee also comprises of a representation from all partners with a rotating chairing position and membership from the early career researchers’ network. Additionally, they have created thematic working groups to ensure shared responsibility and they are co-convened and led by partners from both the North and South.

Linet discussed how the ARISE safeguarding process has been developed with a focus on equity and partnership, learning and sharing, and an iterative, ongoing learning journey that is critical, reflective and inclusive of vulnerable people.

In conclusion, strong partnerships require strong foundations with clear management structures and joint responsibilities that ensure ownership. Flexibility, focus and openness are vital for strengthening partnerships.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBLbH8ZHAF8[/embedyt]

Webinar Presenters/Contributors:

Chair: Professor Claire Heffernan, Principal Investigator, Action Against Stunting. Speakers: Sian Zarkow, UKRI, Chris Desmond, Accelerate Hub, Sally Theobald, ARISE and Linet Okoth, ARISE.

 

 

industrial waste in the informal settlement

Secondary impacts of COVID-19 on informal urban settlements

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This blog was written for World Cities Day, 31 October 2020. The theme this year is Valuing Our Communities and Cities. People in informal urban settlements deserve our support and solidarity. In the blog we explore how they are experiencing some of the secondary effects of COVID-19 and mechanisms that could strengthen the ways that they are involved in the pandemic response.

Current upheavals highlight longstanding socioeconomic inequities that continue to raise difficult policy and accountability questions. Some forms of vulnerability are more discernible than others. Nearly one billion people live and work in informal, under-serviced, and precarious urban conditions. Before COVID-19, these communities occupied a peripheral and precarious space, both physically and in the imaginations of those in power. Such spaces are often rendered invisible and excluded from city-wide processes of development, at other times hyper-visible as sites of chaos or calamity.

Non-COVID-19 related health care

Our colleagues in Sierra Leone have argued that people living in informal urban settlements are more pre-disposed the chronic conditions which affect COVID-19 but that this is under-explored.

“The ‘slow violence’ of informal settlements includes everyday exposure to poorly managed waste, dust, smoke, fires, floods, disease vectors, long journeys across cities on overcrowded shared transport which can spread infections, occupational hazards, crime, but also insecurity, stress, lack of accountability, discrimination, abuse, invisibility, exclusion from economic and political power, and an inability to claim and maintain basic rights or services.”

In all contexts we work in lockdown has led to mental health strains and greater stress and anxiety are reported as precarious existences deepen with continued containment. Lockdown itself is troubling but also the loss of income that comes with it. In Sierra Leone we have documented detrimental psychosocial effects on health care workers as well as interventions from the Ebola epidemic that may help alleviate some of this burden. In Kenya as in other settings, access to healthcare has been disrupted. This has impacted particularly on mothers and children, residents with chronic conditions and the elderly.

“Individuals with chronic illness suffer a lot as they need specific medical attention, yet …we lack timely and adequate information on treatment of chronic illness…. Sometimes when they access the information, we lack money to buy drugs during this outbreak as many people have lost jobs…”

In India the heightened cost of transport to facilities and of services is having a troubling effect. Fear of infection is leading some to rely more on private pharmacies.

Economy and food security

COVID-19 has pushed previously financially stable people across informal settlements into poverty. For example in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the pandemic led multinational companies to cancel orders to garment factories plunging this workforce, who mainly live in informal settlements, into precarity. There is risk of malnutrition and starvation as day labourers are prevented from earning an income. COVID-19 has disrupted traditional networks of support. People are resorting to loan sharks as rent and food are hard to buy on credit. They are relying on community/family members, collecting cash from friends. Local crime rates have also risen. How long can this go on for?

When people are in ‘obhab’ (scarcity), people tend to fight more, they tend to resort to stealing. There is a chance of increasing crime in this community. I am worried that theft and crime will increase in our community.

In India, as elsewhere the work of ‘waste pickers’ and other sanitation workers is vital to the cities they work in, particularly now when the need for a sanitary environment is at its greatest and there has been an increase in biomedical waste. Yet, they remain ‘invisible’. Despite their key role, the provisions put in place to ensure their safety in the pandemic are inadequate. For example, aid meant for vulnerable populations, is often based on certificates of citizenship which denies these communities eligibility for many forms of relief, leaving them no resort but philanthropy and luck.

“We are Indians! I have all the documents like you have, to prove that I am an Indian: voter ID, ration card, Aadhar card…But we do not get rations since the ration cards are based at our homes, which we moved from six years ago. I transferred my Aadhar card because we cannot get jobs here without an Aadhar card and PAN card.”

This has been exacerbated by brutality in policing of lockdowns, targeted as informal communities, a troubling pattern that has been seen in many countries including Kenya. A community member in India said:

When we tried to resume work after the lockdown, we were troubled by the police. They said we give rations and all that, then why do you need to get out? But rations are not much. If the NGO had not supported us then, we don’t know what we would have done. We would have died of starvation before corona hit us.

The health system alone cannot solve these issues which require multi-sectoral approaches to address the structural, economic, patriarchal and social inequalities poor people face.

In Bangladesh, as elsewhere, we have seen stigma and discrimination against households affected by COVID-19. The coronavirus is seen as contagious and fatal disease. As a result, there are fears of quarantine and isolation or being locked up and never seeing one’s family again. Red flags are placed in homes of infected people and the media pictures of death, and bodies being thrown in separate burial grounds stokes fears that people will be buried without the appropriate religious ceremony. Fears of getting the virus have resulted in surveillance of others, under-reporting, harassment of family members with spouses returning from abroad, harassment of people with flu-like symptoms and suspicions about outsiders.

Treatment of women and children

In Kenya and elsewhere there have been increases in reports of Gender Based Violence (GBV) in informal settlements since COVID-19 began, and lockdowns and curfews were put in place.

Women are the hardest hit by COVID-19, they are primary caregivers of individuals who are ill during COVID-19 pandemic… Women are not the decision makers in most families and as such, the money they make in a day to day activity ends up in the hands of men in the family.

In Kenya, people with disabilities make up 10 percent of the population, an average of 4.4 million people. 66 percent of these people live in rural areas while 44 percent are in urban settlements, mostly for work purposes. Due to the rise of sexual harassment and domestic violence, disabled people have been majorly affected and abused by a spouses, parents or caregivers. The frustrations of lack and mental stress makes them among the more vulnerable victims. This causes unwanted pregnancies and contracting sexually transmitted diseases.

Conclusion

We need to address the situation of the urban poor through context-specific policies and action in the COVID-19 response. We should not think of the urban poor as a homogenous group, so data must be disaggregated (by gender, age, occupation, ethnicity and other axes of inequity). Longitudinal qualitative research is critical to capture impact now and post-pandemic. We must also reframe health beyond a biomedical (disease model) approach and put in place socially just models with the well-being of communities and people at the centre. Health decisions and policies must be balanced with social and economic interventions.

Communities have the potential to mobilise and take action to address life-threatening experiences. For example in Sierra Leone, FEDURP members’ action in Thompson Bay supported quarantined homes with drinking water while government support was delayed. In Funkia FEDURP members used the fund generated from the public toilet they manage to give out revolving loans to their members to revitalise their livelihood sources.

There is an urgent need to bridge the gap between formality and informality through recognition and inclusive participation so that the needs and aspirations of informal settlements can be addressed. There is a growing need to recognise and draw on community knowledge, creativity and capacities, which is the basis of first responses during pandemic.  Governments should place communities at the centre of development aspirations and actions and work with them to develop appropriate support.

This blog draws on the work of Kate Hawkins, Sabina Rashid, Joseph Etyang, Janice Cooper, Bintu Mansaray, Rosie Steege, Caroline Kabaria, Sally Theobald, Blessing Mberu, Laura Dean, Haja Wurie, JK Lakshmi, Joseph Macarthy, Hayley Macgregor, Karsor Kollie, Joanna Raven, Lilian Otiso, Rachel Tolhurst, Annie Wilkinson, Abu Conteh, Beate Ringwald and Francis Anthony Reffell.

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