Jakarta Slums

Known locally as kampung kumuh, Jakarta's urban slums are an eyesore the government would prefer you didn't see. Slum dwellers are regularly evicted to make way for toll roads, golf courses, canals, stadiums, shopping malls or simply a more pleasant view. In the Ramadan holiday period in 2001 alone, municipal authorities evicted an estimated 35,000 slum dwellers from their roadside shacks, often violently. The obstacle to modern urban development, so the municipality's official budget includes a hefty allocation for eviction initiatives. Some evictees were offered humiliating 're-settlement compensation' to the tune of Rp 100,000($10). Others received nothing at all. The scale of forced evictions in Jakarta has been staggering. The 2007 UN Global Report on Human Settlements estimates that 500,000 Jakarta slum-dwellers were evicted between 2001-2003 alone, which would make it the world's fifth largest forced eviction wave of the past half century. 

The most striking thing about Jakarta's slums is their close proximity to shimmering skyscrapers and luxury housing, often in the very heart of the city. You can probably guess who lived in the area first. Jakarta's Central Business District is now a curious juxtaposition of rich and poor that has yuppie executives looking down from high-rise office windows onto landscapes of ramshackle huts and open sewage. The bizarre contradiction often seems to go unnoticed by yuppie and slum dweller alike. Spirited local NGOs such as the Urban Poor Consortium are active in representing slum dwellers' interests and in trying to close Jakarta's painful socio-economic gap. But these organizations are fightin an uphill battle and regularly face resistance by political interest groups and the authorities.