Zawaya

Social tragedy

By: Salah Zeghidi

No one disagrees that the problem of homelessness is a social tragedy that cannot be compared, in terms of seriousness, to any other social issue, especially that it has been affecting a growing number of children. Moreover, some Maghreb countries have been recently recording a remarkable increase in the number of little homeless girls.
Morocco and Algeria – with a lower rate – have witnessed a notable occurrence and growth of homelessness. However, there are almost no exact statistics available in the official departments that are in charge of this issue… but anyone roaming in the streets of major cities, especially Casablanca, will easily realize the importance and seriousness of this phenomenon. Tens of thousands of elderly, youth, and children are homeless and live in the streets, spending a night after another in harsh conditions, with no hope of finding a stable and decent shelter in the near future.

Homeless people who used to “settle down” (so to speak) in major cities in the past, came mostly from surrounding or even distant rural areas. However, in the last twenty years, the situation changed with the emergence of a new segment of homeless people who belong to the cities, which means that they were born there.

Many factors are behind the spread of this phenomenon, namely the speed of the demographic growth in Morocco and Algeria between 1960 and 1990, as the annual growth rate reached 3% within a few years in this period, before officials in both countries started to realize the need to conduct a birth control policy which led to the significant and gradual decrease in the population growth rate. It should also be emphasized that the slow growth of the enrollment ratio in Morocco resulted in having a large number of children out of school. The enrollment ratio of children aged between 6 and 12 became stable between 60% and 70% until the late nineties… Moreover, Morocco has also been witnessing a continuous exodus from the countryside towards cities, albeit with a lower rate compared to the period from 1960 to 1990.

It is interesting to outline the particular situation of Tunisia on this front… The first thing that we should point out is the Tunisian policies in a number of fields that affect the emergence and growth of the homelessness phenomenon that we are tackling… Tunisia started addressing this problem early, immediately after independence, by following an active policy in the field of birth control, and reducing the demographic growth. The country has been recording a steady decrease of the demographic growth rate, reaching a rate of 1.2% yearly as of today, after it had recorded a rate of 3% half a century ago…
Tunisia took off quickly, especially in 1958 with the “Al-Msaadi Program”, which was a bold policy to promote education. This policy continued without interruption making the enrollment ratio of children between 6 and 12 years exceed 90% since the late eighties, and reach 99% today… In addition to that, Tunisia is a country where the urbanization rate is relatively high since the mid-twentieth century. In an effort to stop the exodus from the countryside towards the cities, which was an important phenomenon in Tunisia during the first decade of independence, the Tunisian authorities proceeded to the “civilization” of the countryside where they created a number of housing projects, and transformed villages into small cities that widened gradually to become modern cities, thus reducing the exodus almost completely. These factors and others, including a continuous voluntary policy to build social housing, have almost eradicated homelessness in Tunisia.