Human Settlements and Eradication of Poverty

The Report for Turkey explores key problems of national and local development in Turkey with special focus on urban management and on the eradication of poverty. It provides an overall assessment of the country’s human development performance and offers an analysis of Turkey’s comparative standing vis-à-vis other countries, and within the country through disaggregated analyses of data for regions, provinces and for gender. In-depth analyses and critique of the key components of the human development index are also provided by the report with particular emphasis placed on education and health services delivery issues and on gender disparities. These analyses are followed by the two main themes of Habitat II and poverty alleviation. In the section dealing with the themes of Habitat II, human settlements and local governance have been selected as the two principal issues for review in Turkey with emphasis on participatory processes, collective decision-making and civic responsibility in all aspects of urban and rural living and development. A profile of poverty in Turkey is provided and the central elements of an anti-poverty strategy are proposed. The approach outlined would help enable the pursuit of people-oriented economic growth, increasing employment opportunities and targeting public spending on development programmes and social services. This is in line with Turkey’s keen interest in implementing the Declaration of the World Summit on Social Development and the Programme of Action directed at the eradication of poverty at the national level.