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Every day many tens of millions of people throughout the world face the very real threat of eviction and the permanent loss of their homes. Numerous human rights standards equate forced evictions with the violation of housing rights. Nevertheless, too many governments continue to view eviction as an acceptable policy tool during broader efforts of urban beautification, city rejuvenation or economic development. COHRE (Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions) identified more than 6.7 million people worldwide who were forcibly evicted during 2001-2002 and acknowledges that the real number of evictees is far higher. African and Asian governments have carried out the largest proportion of the world’s evictions in recent years. As of early 2003, COHRE was involved in efforts to prevent the planned eviction of a further 6.3 million people. Planned evictions are set to take place on a large scale in China, South Africa, Thailand, Nigeria, Uganda, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Pakistan, the Philippines and other countries, during the remainder of 2003 and beyond. Though the scale of this violation of human rights is considerable, there is a growing understanding that evictions can be avoided successfully, if the right mix of factors are in place. COHRE has found that creative combinations of community-level resistance, with the support of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other political forces, together with carefully selected international interventions by groups such as COHRE, can bring positive results. This integrated approach to eviction resistance appears set to guide the emerging efforts of the United Nations’ (UN) Forced Eviction Advisory Group which is currently being established under the auspices of the UN-Habitat Programme. There is good news to report on the struggle against eviction. In 2002 in Ghana, the day after attending a housing rights training programme, a government minister publicly announced that a planned eviction of 8000 people would not go ahead, due to human rights considerations. In Indore, India and in several other Indian cities, a national housing rights movement has used the process of developing master plans (documents outlining citizens’ entitlements) as a tool to prevent planned evictions. Some 70-80% of planned evictions can be prevented through intervening in the development of master plans, a manoeuvre that holds hope elsewhere. The positive role that can be played by the UN is also important. Beyond the well-publicised case of eviction prevention in the Dominican Republic in the early 1990s, in recent months a UN human rights body requested the government of Thailand to refrain from planned evictions scheduled to affect some 22 Bangkok communities. Brazil’s much heralded ‘City Statute’ is helping communities throughout the country to gain security of tenure through a creative mix of formal and informal tenure rights and to protect them from the sort of evictions that used to dominate its shanty towns. Among other things, the City Statute requires local authorities to take concrete measures, in recognition of the social function of property in the city, through formal recognition of adverse possession rights. These rights are set within the broader context of the right to sustainable cities, which includes housing rights for all urban dwellers. Some of the most positive developments in de-legitimising evictions have taken place in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, South Africa, Tajikistan, Mozambique and throughout central and eastern Europe. Millions of people evicted during wars or by authoritarian regimes in the past have been formally accorded housing and property restitution rights under peace agreements and new national legislation. They have been allowed to return to and repossess their former homes. Also in a positive vein, the UN - recognising that women suffer disproportionately from forced evictions - has begun to take an increasingly firm stand on the rights of women to have equal access to protection against eviction and to inheritance rights to land and housing. These moves and many others point to progress in the struggle against the de-housing of people everywhere, but they are clearly not enough. Evictions are still very much with us, and until this practice is treated as the human rights violation that it is, the global housing rights movement will need to develop new and innovative ways of preventing evictions before they can be carried out.
Source(s): id21 Research Highlight: 3 November, 2003
Further Information: Tel:
+41 22 734 1028 Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions COHRE’s Eviction Monitoring Programme Contact the contributor: evictions@cohre.org Other related links:
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