1. Manshiyat Nasser, Cairo
Population: 262,000
Dubbed "Garbage City," this slum at the base of the
Mokattam hills in southeastern Cairo is home prdominantly to Coptic Christians who work as
Zabbaleen, or garbage collectors. As such, it's a hive of recycling, and
vital to the functioning of the Egyptian capital, yet most homes lack sewers,
electricity or running water. A move to slaughter all of Egypt's pigs
following an outbreak of swine flu in 2009 hit Manshiyat residents
particularly hard, since they use pigs to consume organic waste and earn
extra money by selling the meat. A remarkable mural looms over Manshiyat's
streets, painted in pieces on dozens of buildings in 2016.
2. Cite-Soleil, Port
au Prince, Haiti
Population: 300,000
In Cite-Soleil, criminal gangs outgun the police. Health care and
education facilities are scarce and sub-standard. And until 2017 the district was effectively
sequestered from the rest of the Haitian capital by the armed soldiers of
MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, deployed to
wrest the slum from the control of criminal gangs.
3. Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa
Population: 400,000 to 1.2 million
The last census pegged the population of this sea of ramshackle wood and iron shacks at
400,000 in 2011, but activists estimate the real number of residents could be
three times that. It was set up in the 1980s as a ghetto for black workers
who migrated to Cape Town in search of jobs during the apartheid era, though
it grew rapidly after the oppressive system was abolished in 1994. Some
residents must line up for hours at communal water pumps to fill a bucket or two that must serve all
their needs for the day, thousands of homes aren't equipped with toilets,
unemployment runs around 70% and local police say they handle
four murders every weekend due to criminal gangs and other violence.
4. Tondo, Manila,
Philippines
Population: 600,000
Built on a dumpsite on the outskirts of metro Manila, Tondo has a population
density of 80,000 people per square kilometer. Dirty water and other hygiene
issues mean that disease is rampant, and sorting through the rubbish for
items that can be sold or recycled is the only source of income for many
residents who are lucky if they earn $2.50 a day. In one area of the slum, known
as "Happyland," residents eke out a living
by collecting chicken scraps from the garbage and boiling them to make a dish
called "pagpag" for sale to other destitute slum dwellers.
Population: 1 million 5. Dharavi, Mumbai
Population: 1
million Romanticized in the
Oscar-winning film "Slumdog Millionaire," Dharavi is a sprawling
warren of narrow lanes, interconnected shacks and single-room living spaces
that double as factories.
Residents work as potters, leather tanners, weavers and soap makers amid the
slum's open drains; some estimates peg the teeming community's annual sales as high
as $1 billion.
6. Ciudad
Nezahualcoyotl (Neza), Mexico City
Population: 1.1 million
While some contend that Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl, also known as Neza, has
evolved from a slum into a suburb, the brick-and-mortar
houses are scattered among improvised shanties, and the neighborhood is
considered extremely dangerous, even by drug war-plagued Mexico's standards.
Community action prompted the government to formalize land titles, start
garbage collection and build some other key infrastructure. Now, about 70% of residents work within the area, which
is Mexico's most densely populated municipality.
7. Kibera, Kawangware
and Mathare, Nairobi, Kenya
Population: 1.5 million
More than two-thirds of the residents in the
Kenyan capital live in three slums crowded into just 6% of the city's land.
Kibera, for instance, is a sprawling community of 15 interconnected villages of mud huts
and tin shacks. Though infrastructure improvements like piped
water, tarmac roads and streetlights are improving lives in Kibera and other
Nairobi slums, criminal gangs, political violence and extrajudicial police killings are still
serious problems.
8. Orangi Town,
Karachi, Pakistan
Population: 1.5 million to 2.4 million
This cluster of 113 settlements on the outskirts
of Karachi, on Pakistan's western coast, sprawls across some 8,000 acres and is home to at
least 1.5 million people, though many estimates peg the total closer to
2.4 million. Residents live in houses made from concrete blocks, with eight
to 10 people sharing two or three rooms. Deprived of government services, the
community has financed and built its own sewer system — with locals taking
responsibility for maintaining it — and many residents are employed making
carpets, leather goods and other products. But overcrowding and lack of
access to clean water (or any water at all) contributes to health problems including malaria,
drug-resistant typhoid and water-borne diseases like Naegleria fowleri, a
brain-destroying amoeba.
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