Global Strategy for Shelter for All by Year 2000 asked at climax of International Year.

Global Strategy for Shelter for All by Year 2000 asked at climax of Inter- national Year

The formulation of a Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000 by the UN Commission on Human Settlements has been endorsed by the General Assembly as a climax to the observance in 1987 of the International Year of Shelter for the Homeless.

The Strategy will be aimed at providing shelter for all by that year, including a plan for its implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The Human Settlements Commission is to submit the worldwide plan, through the Economic and Social Council, to the Assembly in 1988.

"Shelter conditions of many people all over the world are in fact deteriorating, even as demand expands in the wake of population growth," Assembly President Peter Florin told delegates assembled to officially observe the International Year at two plenary meetings held on 12 October.

Renasinghe Premadasa, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, said his country had proposed the International Year because "the great industrial and agricultural development visions tended to bypass the nexus of human development, -- the home ... The efforts of the International Year must continue".

The problem is not only providing a roof but creating a human environment that offers the possibilities for a person to fulfil himself or herself socially and economically, said Stefan Staynov of Bulgaria, Human Settlements Commission Chairman.

The International Year "has stimulated improvements in shelter and services in many countries", the Secretary-General reported (A/42/378) to plenary. "However, the scourge of homelessness ... is far from having been eradicated ... The need to follow up on ... the International Year of Shelter is ...obvious."

After the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) considered that report, the Assembly pronounced itself on other aspects of shelter: recognized it as a basic right; determined that a squalid living environment is a threat to health and life, adversely affecting social and political stability; and expressed concern that more than one billion people have inadequate or no shelter at all.

Governments were urged to implement their own programmes in line with the Strategy's guidelines, renewing this commitment annually on World Habitat Day, observed on 5 October, by citing targets to be achieved during each successive year. Guidelines for national and international action in adopting shelter strategies were outlined, stressing the need for co-ordination between public and private sector and special attention to marginal groups.

Arcot Ramachandran, Executive Director of the UN Centre for Human Settlements (Habitat), reported that 800 projects were under way in 139 countries in 1987. The Global Report on Human Settlements, recently published by Oxford University Press and detailing sectors of development and problems of homelessness, is the first world-wide study on human settlements undertaken since the first Habitat Conference was held in 1976 in Vancouver, British Columbia.