A/HRC/22/46 informal settlement has become common, but many other terms are used, such as ―slums‖, ―bidonvilles‖ and ―favelas‖, among others. 30. The category of informal settlements includes diverse categories with varying degrees of formal recognition—in other words, with ―ambiguous‖ or ―hybrid‖ tenure status. They include regularized or unregularized use or occupancy of land and/or housing, on public, private or customary land, unauthorized subdivisions on legally owned land or housing, and various forms of rental arrangements, whether formalized in some manner or not. 31. There is debate about the most appropriate term to use in describing these diverse arrangements. For the purpose of the present report, the term informal settlements is used, recognizing its widespread use, while being sensitive to its shortcomings. Indeed, the term informal settlements is not only a major simplification, it also reflects a false dichotomy between the dominant paradigm of formality and the complexity of urban settlement processes (see section II, subsection E below). Furthermore, informal settlements, like other commonly used terms, has generally negative connotations. In addition, the inherent ambiguity in the status of these settlements has a number of political, operational and human rights implications. It generally results in the settlements not being recognized as belonging to the city. It often leads government authorities and private actors to consider the settlements or their inhabitants fully ―illegal‖, thereby justifying forced evictions or denial of rights. D. The primacy of individual freehold 32. Despite the prevalence of a great variety of tenure systems and arrangements worldwide, in the past few decades, most models of urban planning, land management, development and legal regimes have centred around one particular form: individual freehold. This common fixation on freehold has been supported by the predominant economic doctrine of reliance on private property and market forces. 33. As a result, the financial sector and the private housing market, coupled with support for households to take on credit debt, became primary mechanisms for allocating housing solutions. Foreign assistance from international organizations greatly influenced the development of market-based housing finance and boosted housing market activity in developing countries. Despite some diversity in housing policy experience, most countries opted for promoting housing markets and individual homeownership, privatizing social housing programmes and deregulating housing finance markets. This was evident in most formerly planned economies, which in the 1990s privatized public housing on a large scale, leading to radical changes in tenure structure. In many of those countries, owner-occupied housing now constitutes more than 90 per cent of the housing stock (A/67/286, para. 6). 34. In developing countries, Governments were encouraged to undertake individual land titling programmes as a key means of not only increasing tenure security, but also of facilitating access to formal credit and reducing poverty. The underlying assumption was that secure tenure—understood as having proper titles—increased housing investment.18 Also influential was the claim of a direct correlation between property ownership and 18 8 See World Bank, Housing: Enabling Markets to Work (1993).