With the world population reaching seven billion, soon the question comes as to what effect that has on our living conditions.
Rapid urbanization in the last fifteen years has been accompanied by an increase in slum settlements and according to UN-HABITAT, more than thirty percent of urban residents now live in poor-quality, overcrowded houses.
Fleeing conflict, extreme poverty, natural disasters or looking for better opportunities, every year, millions of people converge towards cities and end up living in slums. There, they face extreme degraded environments, diseases and daily violence.
With this group project, executed in collaboration with Médecins Sans Frontières' teams on the ground in Bangladesh, Haiti, Kenya, Pakistan and South Africa, five NOOR photographers, Alixandra Fazzina, Pep Bonet, Stanley Greene, Jon Lowenstein and Francesco Zizola, give a view into the living conditions in urban settlements, showing what is at stake globally for the world's urban population.
Note to editors: to publish the features from the project Urban Survivors please contact the NOOR office by clicking here.
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Capital of the richest country in Africa, Johannesburg attracts a lot of vulnerable migrants. Each day, thousands of Zimbabweans attempt to flee to South Africa, those who make it, are often met with hatred. The violence against them is ruthless, random and unpredictable. Many migrant residents of Johannesburg live in slum buildings: a breeding ground for violence, crime and disease.
© Pep Bonet
June 2011
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Nine months on from the floods that devastated much of Pakistan in July 2010, an estimated four thousand Internally Displaced Persons are still squatting in a single three kilometers long urban camp known as "Super Highway One". Unable to return home to their villages, residents are supported by MSF who provide medical facilities and potable water.
© Alixandra Fazzina
April - May 2011
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An estimated 400,000 people live in the Kamrangirchar Peninsula.
Previously a dumping ground for Dhaka's waste, it is now a highly populated area where migrants from other areas of Bangladesh live in houses made from wooden sticks above the dirty water and families share rooms with up to ten inhabitants.
© Stanley Greene
June 2011
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In the Martissant Slum in Port au Prince, like elsewhere in Haiti, many women are made victims of rape and domestic violence. The massive destruction of the earthquake has lead to further dislocation and insecurity and abuse of women. These Haitian women have little or no recourse either through their family or the law and the shame for this type of violence leads many women to hide and deal with the pain in isolation.
© Jon Lowenstein
June 2011
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Flooded for decades with rural migrants in search of job opportunities in Nairobi, Kibera slowly turned into the Kenyan capital’s biggest slum. Just a stonethrow away from the UN agency for human settlements’ headquarter (UN-Habitat), Kibera's inhabitants are considered "squatters" by the Kenyan government which, as a result, does not provide for any essential public services or basic infrastructure.
© Francesco Zizola
June - July 2011
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Since the 1980's, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been responding to health issues related to living conditions in over populated urban settlements in the developing world. In association with Darjeeling Productions and NOOR, MSF launched an awareness campaign on this ever-growing global concern.
To visit MSF's Urban Survivors website, featuring five photo-films, please click here.
The NOOR Foundation is an international non-profit organization creating and distributing compelling photojournalistic works with the aim to raise awareness, enhance an understanding of the world and to contribute to the visual history of mankind.
In supporting the production of visual reportage, and in the tradition of journalism in the public service, the NOOR Foundation seeks to stimulate positive social change, impact views on human rights and other issues of global concern.
For more information about the NOOR Foundation please click here.
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