Today, more than one in 10 people on the planet lives in a slum. Rapid urbanisation has swelled existing slums and spurred the creation of new ones around the world.
To highlight the critical humanitarian and medical needs in urban settings, Médecins Sans Frontières MSF (Doctors Without Borders) is now launching Urban Survivors – a multimedia project in collaboration with the NOOR photo agency and Darjeeling Productions.
Slum emergency
“Slum residents live in a constant state of vulnerability,” says Loris De Filippi, operational director for MSF.
“Not only do they live in places that are unfit for human habitation, they also face discrimination and neglect from other parts of the society.
"Through the Urban Survivors project we want to put a human face to the humanitarian emergency that exists in many slums around the world.”
Urban Survivors
The Urban Survivors web-documentary – at www.urbansurvivors.org – takes the visitor on a virtual journey through five slums where MSF is actively running projects:
-
Dhaka, Bangladesh
-
Karachi, Pakistan
-
Johannesburg, South Africa
-
Port au Prince, Haiti
-
Nairobi, Kenya
Featuring the work of award-winning NOOR photographers, Urban Survivors lets the visitor discover more about the daily lives of people in these slums, the humanitarian issues they face, and what MSF is doing to address these problems