inaction and sloth
26 Aug 2005From a review of Neuwirth’s “Squatter City”:
Neuwirth notes the irony that the world headquarters of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme—known as U.N. Habitat—is located in Nairobi just a few miles from the Kibera shantytown. The officials of this world agency almost never visit Kibera and seem barely aware of its existence. This is typical, Neuwirth reports, of an agency whose record shows a “dismal 25 years of inaction and sloth” across the world. The U.N. housing program instead specializes in holding conferences attended by well-paid international civil servants and private consultants.