Special Session - Building from the ground-up: From resistance to alternatives (WUF13)

Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Mariana Gallo.
I work for World habitat and I'm honored to moderate today's dialogue on building from the ground up, from resistance to alternatives.
We meet at a critical moment, as you have heard from the discussions in the forum so far.
We have 1.1 billion people in the world living in informal settlements, often without secure tenure.
Over the last two decades, 64 million people have been displaced from these settlements with millions more facing eviction annually.
The alternatives that many communities are facing are stark, forced eviction or collective resistance, often met with violent repression.
There are many other issues, as you are mostly aware, gentrification, lack of affordability, amongst other issues.
But there is a paradox.
The housing that most closely reflects people's own understanding of adequacy is often self built or developed through local collective initiatives.
Across the world, communities have transformed contested land and informal settlements into vibrant generational homes through cooperatives, community land trust, and collective tenure arrangements.
These approaches have proven to be gender responsive, inclusive, resilient, and long term affordable in ways that market led systems have consistently failed to achieve, yet they remain largely absent from mainstream housing policy.
We are here in this session to ask, what would it take to move community led housing from the margins to the mainstream? What legal, financial, and institutional reforms are needed, and how do we ensure communities themselves have access to the decision making that shapes housing policy? Have an incredible group of experts to learn from today.
Our speakers and panelists will explore protection and visibility of community led approaches and the challenges of scaling and enabling through partnerships.
We will hear from community representatives, policymakers, development partners, as well as from government ministers who can speak to political commitment.
The outputs from this session will feed directly into the backup call to action and the open ending intergovernmental working group on adequate housing for all process.
So this is not just a conversation, it's a contribution to reshape housing policy globally.
So let's begin.
For the first conversation, I'm going to invite our two first discussions, Colo Kass, who is the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing.
Thank you, Kaslo.
He assumed his function on 1st of May 2026, his senior lecturer in International Human Rights Law at Essex Law School and leads the Human Rights Local Project at the Human Rights Center of the University of Essex.
Our second discussant at the moment is Samsk Bunia Banging, who currently serves as a chairperson to the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights and chairperson of the Ban Ma Kong Program Committee.
She holds a degree in architecture from Chulalongkorn University and received an honorary Doctorate of Architecture in 2023.
Thank you very much for being here today.
I'm going to join you for the conversation.
I would like to first start thinking about The fact that we are amid a global housing crisis, which has particularly devastating effects for those subject to historical exclusion.
The current situation is not a coincidence, but a structural issue.
I'm going to start with one first question for both of you.
How are community led housing initiatives already responding to some of the key drivers and manifestation of the global housing crisis? So sup.
Thank you.
I would have to speak very brief because I have many important point to speak about.
See, I think that we have the big problem about housing, some billions of backlog and so on.
If we all it, one of the key issue is that the existing system of housing production or housing delivery may not go may not alone may not enough to make it possible because it's always the government led, private sector led, project led, supply driven from some expert above to the people who are in need of that.
No, the people on the ground are increasing and have more problems, which means that this demand led government led, private sector led alone is not sufficient.
If we want to achieve solving the problem in the real scale, we may have to be very very silence to assess this.
I think the demand, community, you do it the other way around.
Instead of the institutional let down to the people, we look at the people who are in need of housing problems.
This is what I have been doing to the ACHR and also in the process in which we implement in Thailand, which is looking at where are the poor people in the city scale, city by city, Adré the real needs, bringing the real people into a process of making change.
So let the poor people become a more passionate actor.
They always want to change.
Out of all these actors, the community people, the professional, the government, the private sector who are more serious or passionate about solving the problem, it's the people on the ground.
They want to be free, they want to have secure housing, they want to change.
The key point is open up the space and link them into an active solution solving process, a In this way, we address the scale, we prepare them to be the active actor and we support the people to be able to get into the resource, the finance, the architect to help them plan.
They may negotiate with the landlord in the area or try to talk to the government, propose the government for whatever possible solution they want.
You equip this demand side into an active actor and let them make a move in a big way.
So this is a very, very important thing because in the housing process in general, we always have people with technical thinking, construction thinking.
But in reality, if we want to attain housing, it's a political issue.
It's a power relation.
It's a social issue, because people live together, people solve many things together.
There are a lot more dimension than a technical issue of just construction or, you know, delivery, you know, I So this is my point that we need to change the approach into more demand driven and look at the real scale of problem and let the scale become the solution.
Scale of problem becomes scale of solution.
Everybody to be active in the process, how to make them active.
Start with the survey.
If we start the survey of how many poor community, poor housing people who are in need of housing in this or this city where are they? Map the area, linking all the people into a discussion in this room.
Get a discussion, what are the problem? What do you want to do? How to do this, how to do that, and so on.
Some group may like to propose what they want to solve the immediate problem.
Let them go ahead so that they have the action to start doing things together and whose land are you staying? Whose land are you staying? Should we set up a team to start checking about the landlord? And go to talk to the landlord.
Either it's government land, it's a private land, it's a weon land.
So we're going to be a group of people who are going to expropriate land in the city for housing.
You get this actor on the ground to be active forces of change and equip them, support them.
This is the only way that you can deal with the scale of the problem by the people themselves and by doing that, they will start learning, they will start equipping themselves, they will start understanding the law, the rules, the way to go, the belief in themselves and start organizing.
I think this is the very important way to go.
Instead of pretending that the supply side going to deliver housing as we have been after the Second World War, you have to add another big alternative, which is demand driven, community driven and get the community people become an active actor to solve the problem.
So what we have to know is how to activate this.
How to organize it and let the people the new space of freedom to change the housing development, together with the civil society, together with the university, together with whatever institution in the city.
In some way we mobilize all the key actor in the city to be active actor for housing solution.
Housing solution is not to be listed by the Department of Housing Development.
Of the municipality or ministry of urban development, ministry of this and that or the private sector who look at profit as the main thing.
No.
Now, there are more actors who are going to be an active force of change, who are going to work together and use your linkages.
By working together, you have build the network and the network will become a strong force to negotiate with the city, to negotiate with the landlord.
Use a political process in a proactive way.
This is a proactive way instead of you being defensive, you went for eviction.
Most of the all the slum in the world are living on somebody land, you will be evicted.
You are waiting for eviction to happen.
Why don't we start linking, start working and start negotiating and become a force of change and determine the process ourselves.
I tell you, we have the institution in Thailand, which is supporting people for such a process.
We working in more than 300 city in Thailand.
It is going very easy.
Go why? Because people want to change.
The layer up there are not going to change, then it's not that problem.
You go into the people who want to change and boost them and allow them to negotiate.
Two things which is very important to make this possible.
One is the kind of collaborative institution.
In our society, we have an old kind of institution, which is not changed very much.
Ministry department, this haven't changed much, but the world changed a lot.
Institution are not changing.
Therefore, you need a collaborative institution, which could be a kind of a collaborative program or setting up a new institution where people, civil society and the government can sit together and decide things together and work together.
So you need this institution.
The second thing is that we need finance.
The The present financial system, the banking system is really old fashioned that you need to be bankable.
People are bankable.
I manage a process in Thailand and we give loan to community.
Until today, repayment from community is 98%.
People get the loan as a group, a collective group, and then they work together, they strengthen each other, they have a welfare system, they have many other things when people work together.
They're not developing houses only.
It's not only physical, but they would develop many things at the same time.
We need to decide the system of finance and the institution that's supposed to work more with finance like World Bank, like ABB like this, I think need to be more equipped how to work with the poor because now they get the poor out of the financial direction.
But the people are financially feasible and their payment is no problem at all if they work as a group.
That is the tool that we have to understand how this active expert on the ground can solve the problem in a big way with the right kind of finance to the group, more friendly, more understanding, and they can repair.
That's not a problem at all.
Thank you, Sk.
I think you have already touched in so many issues that we're going to discuss in the next 2 hours.
But thank you very much.
I will ask C also to give us some answers to that question.
Thanks very much.
Thanks for the invitation as well.
I will perhaps start with two points that some Sk made at the beginning of her intervention.
You said that you stressed the idea of recognizing the freedom of the agency, letting people decide for themselves and take control of their lives.
Then the second point, which is that we need to think of housing solutions beyond the technical.
It's political, it's about power.
I think these are two very inspiring ideas.
It reminded me the first one in particular, both together.
Reminded me of a definition of democracy by someone who said once that democracy in a radical sense is the idea that people should have the power to decide for themselves to the extent that they can for issues that are within their control, and for those issues which are not within their control, they should be able to decide through delegates, through representatives, through institutions.
But the first step is to trust the people for those decisions that are within their control.
I think this is an example of how there must be a lot of ideas, initiatives at the local level where people can be trusted, they know the local context, and with a little bit of help, a little bit of resources, and a little bit of trust, they can perhaps come up with better solutions than many institutions and definitely better than many private businesses because they have a better awareness of what is good for the local community.
That takes me to what I wanted to say at first, which is that precisely for these reasons, I would like to I focus in my first report as special rapporteur on the local dimension of the right to housing, on what local authorities, local communities, local initiatives are doing on the right to housing.
I want to highlight the good practices and the examples that exist out there yes, local institutional initiatives, yes, but also local communities are themselves advocating for community led initiatives to fulfill the right to housing beyond institutions and certainly beyond private businesses.
I do this for two main reasons.
Well, The reasons.
One is that I'm hearing already from loads of you who know more than me about the subject, that there is a lot of good stuff out there that we need to put on paper, we need to put on the table, we need to raise awareness about, and I want to make a contribution to that end.
But additionally, I think we live in a time where there are many governments, many public institutions who are either unwilling to fulfill rights or claim to be unable to fulfill rights because they say that they are constrained by a number of structural limitations.
If that is the case, Even in those countries, there are a lot of local initiatives, there are a lot of good practices even in those places of people who managed to mobilize resources locally and institutions that managed to mobilize resources locally, and we need to talk about those.
Those initiatives that despite the odds are doing good work.
We need to talk about that.
The second reason why I think it's important to focus on this is because I believe in the idea of localizing human rights very much.
I think the power of human rights is not measured by what happens in flashy institutions in Geneva or in Strasburg or in Arusia or in San Jose, Costa Rica, or even in New York.
Or even in beautiful spaces like these ones.
I think the power of human rights is measured by what happens on the ground at the local level, in schools, community level, in factories, at work, within the family.
I think by focusing on the community level initiatives on the right to housing, we can highlight the real value of human rights.
We will know whether human rights are making a difference if we go on the ground and we see what's going on locally and if human rights is adding value to that community, then what happens in New York or in Geneva is a very secondary importance.
I'll stop here and maybe we can move on to the next question if you want.
Thank you very much.
I think you partly answered already the next question, but I will give you the opportunity to both of you to add something if you would like.
Our second question for you was, what is the role of community led housing in supporting a rights based approach to housing? See the reality on the cloud is that I think if people are keep invisible, inactive and waiting for eviction to happen, then you'll be evicted.
No matter how the housing human right is putting the nice word here and there or even the government say on the television every day.
They will be evicted sooner or later.
Except we deal with eviction ourselves.
We have to be visible, we have to be proactive, we have to be link, we need to start the planning, we need to start the information networking, an event last year, for instance, we have the World Habitat Day event in Thailand where the movement all over the country get together make a mach.
Through the government and propose that we are the group who want to solve the problem housing problem and land, you know, we have to be proactive on the housing right direction.
We don't need to wait for the government.
But when they see the number of people from the community coming and they're saving, they have information, they want to make the decent housing, and they start negotiating this and that and so on, even make some plan possible.
What the government going to say, very difficult because these are the force who want to find solution, the right kind of solution in which it should be your duty.
The government are not doing that.
Sufficiently.
So we have to manage in such a way that people attain the housing right, the human right themselves and do it in a proactive way.
And in this process, of course, we could propose for a joint committee in which the government, the community, the professor could sit together to address and to elaborate the meaning of lies and so on.
So in this political process, it's not just a legal process, it's not a legal a system itself, but it's a political process where the force of the people who want to make a proper change with the government are visible and in a number it's a big number.
Okay.
In this way, you could negotiate.
So I think this is the way to deal with that because all the slum will be evicted sooner or later.
We cannot wait until eviction happen when this one and that one.
If we're going to be evicted, we have to work today.
It's a lot of homework to do.
It's a lot of linkage to be done.
It's a lot of network, it's a lot of negotiation to do.
So homework have to start actively.
And that's the only way to deal with eviction or housing rights in the reality.
The question was about the role of community led housing in supporting a human rights based approach to housing.
Perhaps following from the end of the previous response, perhaps two points because I wouldn't want to overstate the local dimension.
I mean, of course, You know, we need it for the reasons that are being put on the table and I truly believe in those.
But at the same time, we need an institutional framework where the state must play a role and certainly probably international financial mechanisms as well.
But let's focus on the state for a moment.
If this is going to work, I think it seems to me that we will need some sort of institutional mechanism by which we ensure that property is regulated in such a way that it's put at the service of the the general well being.
We need to talk about that, I think.
We need to talk about how community led initiatives are going to have the right institutional framework to allow them to fulfill the right to housing because property is recognized in the domestic legal framework in such a way that we recognize that property must serve the interests not only of those who own but also those who do not own.
Um, and that means we need to democratically define the parameters of property, including those who own and those who do not own.
Property cannot be a right only for those who own because if it is so, the majority of people in the world are not benefiting at all for that so called right.
So we need the right institutional framework for that.
I suspect that in most countries, the local dimension will not be enough for that to happen.
We will need some national umbrella framework to ensure that property is regulated in such a way.
That is one reason.
Then the other reason why I think we need the state is because we need the state to ensure that there is no speculation, that there are certain mechanisms by which the local community is given priority.
There are a number of initiatives out there that exist where, um, where the needs of the local people are given priority, where if you do not intend to live in the local area, you are going to be prevented from investing.
These are measures to stop speculation, to prevent speculation, to ensure the housing serves the interests of the community.
Those who live there have lived there for years or those who are intending to invest in order to live in the area.
And again, that needs certain rules that probably cannot be only local, will need to be state level, national to ensure that we have the right institutional framework to prevent that sort of speculation.
So as much as I think that we need human rights at the local level and I am a true believer in that, we also need to accompany it with the right institutional structures to regulate property adequately and to prevent speculation to make sure that housing serves the interest of the local community.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
I think that's a very nice introduction to our next panel where we're going to be talking about legal frameworks as well.
Thank you very much to you both and give a round of applause.
Thank you.
I'm going to call our next panel, which is about protecting and making community led approaches visible.
For that, we have three amazing panelists.
I'm going to call Dorothy Bziwe who is the Director of Shelter and Settlements Alternative in Uganda and a social worker and urban planner.
She currently convened the Urban Informity Working Group in Uganda and the Women and Habitat Africa Working Group under the Habitat International Coalition.
Welcome, Dorothy and please have a seat.
I'm also going to call I'm also going to call Maria Silvia Mali, who is a specialist in human rights, housing and urban issues with over 20 years of experience.
She serves as an advisor to the Mexico City Housing Secretariat, and as a coordinator of the Latin America Office of the International Habitat Coalition, coordinating the work of more than 100 organizations and social movements in the region.
Welcome.
And last but not least, Grasa Zavier, who has been an activist In Brazilian Housing Movement since she was 14-years-old, she holds a degree in law and is a specialist in Gender strategy and feminism, public policy and human rights.
She's the coordinator of the National Union for Popular Housing, the Women and Habitat Network for Latin America and the Caribbean, an executive coordinator of the Union of Housing Movements, Asha Social Fellow and executive coordinator of the National Council of Cities in Brazil.
That was a very long introduction, but welcome all of you.
Thank you for being here.
I would like to start this panel with the statement that community led approaches are often invicibilized and criminalized, thus not seriously considered within policy frameworks.
I'm going to start with Dorothy, if that's okay, I have a first question for you and the microphone.
Dorothy, I'd like to know what are the examples of legal instruments to support community led approaches and leverage the social function of housing.
Thank you for the question and thank you for the invitation.
I'd like to first of all, say that informality in my reality means the system is not working.
There's something that has failed the community and they're trying their level best to find a way to live.
You will find in terms of housing, communities come up and they will make their own systems, they will get their own water sources, they will build their own sanitation, and they will find a way to live.
In informal settlements where we work, the first thing that would really be pertinent for us is recognition of these systems that are actually working for the community.
More than them being invisible and criminalized, we need to recognize the good that is coming out of the community led initiatives.
How can we recognize the people who are supporting waste disposal? How can we recognize the unpaid work of women? How can we recognize the community efforts to be able to build over time without the support of the government or the regulation of government? We need to recognize those efforts.
The second thing that we see a lot is communities being able to articulate their land rights.
This is a very big problem where I come from because a lot of the land rights are not documented.
So in a community that has a lot of undocumented land, there's need to document land, and how do we do this? We do this with the support of the community.
We need community participatory land documentation processes where the community is involved and they're able to engage in the mapping.
They're able to engage in the remuneration of these land parcels, and this brings out more accurate data, and it will actually support the development of housing.
Then the third thing that I want to talk about is community participation in the development that they are seeing.
When communities are given the opportunity to engage in physical planning, when they're given the opportunity to engage in budgeting processes, when they're given the opportunity to engage in community processes, then you'll find that they have a bigger sense of ownership, they have a bigger sense of responsibility, and this is actually the way that these approaches can be regulated, and then they can be functional for all communities and spread to other areas.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Dorothy.
I'll pass the microphone to Sylvia and I would like to give you the opportunity to tell us how can legal and regulatory approaches contribute in supporting the social production of habitat and ensuring security of tenure.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for the invitation to this dialogue.
Well, I was first wanted to say that during the preparation that I did to be able to talk to you today, I checked as we're making 15 years, I started to search the origins of this debate.
I searched for the A one declaration that is already 50-years-old as well.
When I checked that the organizations of the civilian society that were all committed with Habitat one mainly the Southws, they were really talking about the need of change of attitude related to the urban processes that are usually qualified as irregular.
Back then, the organizations that were all gathered parallel to the official forum, they were asking themselves, what regulations are we talking about? The relations that make poor people that need to do criminal things in order to have a ziling, for example, occupying properties that are not theirs, or should we see as an irregularity and state regularization that does not consider the reality and the economical and social realities of these people, the most relevant needs of these people that need a proper housing and That's why they don't anything for them.
There was a question raised 50 years ago back then, they talked about the citizens' participation, the needs of the people to participate in order to get help, get aids and civil society said, no, they do need to have power in order to participate, but it is not just about organizing or participating in order to get help.
If organizations and movements know what to do.
Back then, as I'm saying, 50 years ago, we achieved in the official declaration the recognition somehow of the territorial right and the importance of promoting housing cooperatives.
After this declaration, 50 years ago, the organizations and people that work in this matter about the different solutions coming from the people to satisfy their right to a proper housing that in Spanish, we call habit as social production.
Or housing led community or housing solution or habitat solution.
For the people working with this, we've been doing this for many time.
Some organization has done this and many other organizations have done this and they're all here, sit it down.
We've worked a lot, not just in housing, but also in habitat.
We've search for the best articulation for social and cultural and physical and environmental, not just giving people the ceiling, but the relation among this situation and we create and we found a series of obstacle.
What have we achieved? In many countries in Latin America, we've achieved a legal framework that recognizes the social production of the habitat, that recognizes the outer production, the self production, focus on the needs of the people under the control of the people that create the processes, and we've achieved legal instruments, financial instruments, and some of them are pretty focused on what Samsung was saying.
That are not just depending on banking, but also on people, but we are facing a legal framework that is not flexible, that is not adequate for these processes.
It is not adequate, for example, to the times that participation requires.
What the state wants when they support these processes is that within a year, we can say, I did through this production way, this number of housings.
But what we do is to check and to see what type of housing were made.
Is it an adequate house? Is it a house that allows people to live quietly and with quality, does it respect environment.
In many cases, we have lack of land policies.
That's why the support for this productions are so important and focus on who already own a territory.
We do not finance easily the acquisition of new territories.
By people that do not have it.
These are institutionalized processes that are usually focused on the individual and not on the communities and that do not allow to support the people that don't already have a property.
They are not considered as possible investors.
We do not invest public money for these people to have another relationship with territories.
But despite this all and despite we have actually achieved some things, but we're still facing many challenges, communities have kept on developing these processes that talk about their own right for housing.
They are doing it, as I'm saying, in a very conscious way of the of the land and also doing it by guaranteeing the right to the beautifulness of having a housing so that people from every social state can have a property.
We can see this in many prices that support, for example, world habitat, spaces where we talk about the rights and where we coexist within the environment.
There are countries that have better legal frameworks than others, but usually there's a lot of need to keep on improving these instruments, and that's why we don't have just to answer your question, we don't have one unique answer because there's no country that has completely achieved the best solutions to satisfy what everyone needs.
So just to finish with my statement, I do think it's very useful what we're talking about here.
What shall we do in order for this production manners that are focused on people to participate in the fight that we should be doing against the housing crisis.
This crisis is very difficult to face as we've listened during these days.
But I think that not just here in this space, but usually in all spaces, I think we haven't reached the answers that we need.
I just want to remember that producing housing, it is not just about satisfying the needs, but also to inace people's lives, to transform people's lives, to transform communities, and it goes beyond the personal satisfaction of the right to a housing.
But it creates other alternatives that are very interesting and that we can see in many places, for example, in Norway, in the case of Latin America, is one of the most relevant examples.
What should we do after 50 years to prove with data, with experience that there is a way of producing housing that is worth to follow? Sometimes we are worthless, and what we want is to make a decision from the states that moves forward in the satisfaction of these rights? I think that we're lacking real understanding of what's happening on the land, but probably There's a lack of interest from the political point of view towards these ways of constructing that are actually the one satisfying the needs of housing access in our countries around 70, 60, 70% of the population of our lands.
So we shall keep on working in this direction about elaborating legal frameworks that are adequate to this housing production and not just adapted to the market and the social production of the habitat.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Maria Silva.
A lot of really important work that we will continue to talk about and also we have the experience of Uruguay that we will hear more from later.
I'd like to give the space to Grasa and I would like to see if you can tell us a little bit about how can governments partner with communities to improve housing policies and address gaps.
Good afternoon.
First, I would like to thank you for your invitation.
It is a pleasure to be able to be here and to contribute to this debate.
The National Union is close to 40-years-old and for those close to 40 years, we started at the beginning of this union with a claiming part.
I After that, we organize ourselves and now we are already built over 1,000 units through self management.
But further to that, we not only just built housing, but sustainable housing from the size of the house, how does the families would evolve in the construction of that house, and how to involve also government.
That's also part and it's responsible for the building of that house.
During that period, most of that members About 80% are women and in that period, what people have been doing, they have of Popular Initiative, first project that in Brazil from National Fund of Popular Housing, from the National Union Initiative with over 1,000,001.200 signatures for law and then we started with another law that is called self management and collective property, a bit similar to the one that happened in Uruguay in Fulpa and that is already in the Congress that, um, Bill and they would have their own resources to build a house, but especially for the regularization, eupannization, and human settling.
Human settlers during the pandemic process of COVID 19, we got many complaints for the amount of forced evictions the forced evictions and over there wen a campaign in Brazil, of evictions zero.
During that period, what we did was, we had a huge mapping on how all the different populations, poor populations, black population, and women were living in communities.
Then we articulated that with academia Institute trade unions and we mapped out the who of Brazil and today we have subsidies as a wizard for that mopping, so people who live badly are the ones that have low income and most of them are women and especially black women.
For that, the union has a sentence house is the entrance gate for the gateway for all other rights.
Further to that, we believe that the housing is not just to build a house with four walls, It's to build a house plus especially it would allow you to build citizenship because when a person has a house and I was in one of the panels yesterday with Anna Claudia and all the people, people were saying, I'm going to tell you this story.
I had no house.
When I got my house, no a Go back to school, but now my son is a lawyer.
I didn't have a house.
When I got my own house, I not only got my law degree, I'm a lawyer, but also have a son who is a doctor, a medical doctor.
That's what it means.
A house is not just for walls, but it is in fact to build your citizenship.
When governments start investing, and give that as the main guideline as a priority.
When that happens, that's totally is going to be a game changer because from that point on, the whole citizenship, the whole population will be able to access to the decent housing.
That's it.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ga and a lot of important points there and clear examples from the ground that I think more than one person here can relate to and have seen in their own work.
You've done all sets really interesting aspects and before we move to the next panel, I would like to give you maybe 2 minutes to reflect on what your colleagues have said or what you have heard so far.
Would you like to go first, Dorothy.
Thank you.
I think from what colleagues are saying and from what the earlier speakers are saying, I think some of the things that I feel should really be emphasized are the legal and regulatory frameworks around security of tenure, first and foremost.
We're looking at enforceable documentation of land rights for especially women and other vulnerable groups that are enforceable.
So when I talk about enforceable, I talk about the fact that sometimes women where I come from, own land, they have access to it, but they do not have control over this very important resource.
So if they're able to articulate how they are enjoying these rights, I think it's very important for all of us.
The second thing I also wanted to talk about is the recognition of responsive service delivery within the informal settlement.
We need to have structures and policies that speak to the fact that we deserve to have clean water and a safe environment.
We have the houses, but for them to be functional, we need to service them, and this also needs to be recognized on a national and international level.
Thirdly, I also wanted to talk about community driven data.
A lot of the times our national duty bearers come to us with already perceived data.
That is not functional in our communities.
It is not responsive to our needs.
It does not relate with our situation on the ground.
I think this needs to change because the community is also collecting data.
We know what our needs are.
So if we the community can work together with the duty bearers to come up with data that is responsive, that will drive the development programs in our areas, this will give us a better security of where we are living.
This will reduce forced evictions.
This will be able to reduce the number of challenges in the informal settlement.
Lastly, the investment packages that we have currently.
One of the previous speakers said that the people in the informal settlements are not bankable.
They are not to have any income or not considered to be able to pay anything back.
But we have seen from the community driven approaches, housing cooperatives, we've seen community village and saving loan associations.
We've seen savings groups that are coming up out of people who are just banding together and trying to find an investment structure that works for them.
So I think it's high time that we change the story around and make sure that these investment packages and the financing packages actually work and responsive to the needs of the community.
Thank you.
Thank you, Dorothy.
Sylvia.
Well, I just want to say and to talk about the joy that we have because of the fact of the actual thing about housing is talking about property.
I think it's a matter that we know it's very delicate and that we discuss the too little, and I think that we should keep on discussing about this, not just in the country, but in all countries because we've made many efforts in this sense, and I think it's difficult to find the real tip to discuss about all these things.
Many of the Latin American countries think that the social function of the property is the focus of all and it's of course, one of the main elements of the rights for the cities that we've been impulsing for many years and has international recognition.
In the habitat agenda that is turning 10-years-old.
But we have a high difficulty to specify this historical principle in our legislation because of obvious reasons.
I think that the fact that today we can talk again about this matter from the perspective of the human rights and also linking to what we said before in the previous panel and also linking to what we've all said today about the need of the safety of the property of having access to land politics.
I think that it's very important that we can keep on reflecting on this matter and that we can go deeper on them and also to find through all these discussions some answer that might be some useful to face speculation that we are living nowadays in our territories and that has created the actual housing crisis.
I think this debate should be very welcome and I think that many organizations will be very joyful to participate on it.
Thank you very much.
Yes, it's really important to mention that rather to having the right to housing, access to housing, and as we started that most people are women.
But also, we work a lot on the law and as a way to protect women.
So in Brazil, through the My House My Life program, at the beginning of the management of the administration of President Lula, the first thing we did was to have an amendment to the program where women are victims of violence, have 100% subsidy to get their own housing unit anywhere in Brazil.
That same law we're replicating in a number of municipalities and on different states.
So they have a resource and ask the question, how governments can contribute.
And over there, what we're doing is we're approving a number of municipalities and states.
There's also not just about housing, but that the ownership of the house that is in the name of the women as a way of fighting gender violence.
Even more, we have been working in the process of education and awareness on the regularization and organization process.
Yeah.
So there's an online training that happens every eight days in Latin America and Caribbeans with different professors, not just from universities, but also the leaderships from popular movements, explaining step by step how to regularize and how to urbanize, and then taking advantage of realators here, it's important to say that this is a really important system.
It's not just regularization and urbanization in communities.
Because if you take the idea of the environmental impact today who suffers more the impact of climate conditions and so on, is poor population who lives in slums and these kind of places.
It's really important for these people to be able to be cool, to have a meeting with communities, with leadership so they can talk about these issues, and therefore we can call the government to have a joint event at the municipal, state and federal government level so we can solve that.
But it's really important to bring that to the global platform, that debate because it's something that don't happen just in Brazil, it happens all over the world.
It's really important to do that.
In order to do that and to conclude, to say one of our sentences without proper house, there's no climate justice.
Thank you very much.
With that very powerful statement, we close this panel.
Thank you, the three of you and I'm going to call our next panelists.
The next panel is focused on scaling and enabling community led housing through partnerships.
We still keep looking for solutions or answers.
And we are going to invite Josef Maria Borrell Bro is an architect with a postgraduate degree in innovative real estate development and management.
He's currently general manager of Inson, the public housing agency of the Barcelona metropolitan area that promotes a high quality public housing model, contributing to transforming cities and improving lives.
Thank you, Yousef.
Our second panelist is Delphine L Doufre, who is an urban engineer and a highly experienced housing expert with nearly 20 years of experience in France and abroad.
She has led major urban and housing projects across diverse context, working for the city of Paris and later as a task team leader at the French Development Agency.
Based in Paris, she currently leads a sustainable housing initiative within AFTs Urban Development Division, supporting public authorities in designing and implementing inclusive housing policies.
Thank you for being here.
And last but not least, Lumani Yasim is an Nepali community architect with a strong focus on community driven development and urban poverty issues.
Since 2008, she has been working with Lumani Support Program Group for Shelter, where she currently serves as the housing program manager.
She's also actively involved in regional networks, including the Community Architects Network and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights.
Thank you all for being here.
I'm going to start the next panel with an issue statement, which I saying that community led housing plays a key role in offering emergency response and alternatives to those often excluded from formal housing markets.
However, they still remain largely fragmented and excluded from systemic housing policy frameworks.
Yousef, I would like to start with you.
Sorry.
And my question for you is, how do we support public works or housing investment towards participatory governance and planning? Okay.
Thank you for inviting us.
Our context is Barcelona, is the metropolitan area of Barcelona.
And I represent the ISL, which is the public promoter of the metropolitan area of Barcelona.
We already discovered some years ago that the more involved the community is, the greater the chance of success we have.
The point is that now in Catalonia, we have the mission of constructing 50,000 units of housing.
The point is that we have to do it not only for allocating people, but for creating communities and changing mentalities.
One point is that every building that we are going to construct will last for more than 150 years.
It matters what it constructs.
It's related that maybe some technical help has to be there.
The other point is that we have to construct is not only buildings, its social infrastructures that have to be resilient and flexible because we know who we are and how we are living nowadays, but we do not know nothing about what will happen in 50 years.
So this is another point that happens.
We receive land from municipalities, so we are like a public enterprise and we get agreements with First point is that when a mayor calls us and ask us for develop a social housing promotion, is the program.
Our answer is always to generate processes, a participation process between the citizens in order to decide what they need.
We contract sociologists and we analyze what do they need exactly, and we organize like these sessions in order that the young people or the elderly people tell us what do they need in order to configure the tenders for the architectural competition, and then there's a winner.
And then once we have the project, we organize another participation process in order to empower the citizens in order that they can decide for example, the shared, which are the users of the shared spaces of the building.
When we are constructing, we are going to, you know, the theater or the social center of the municipalities in order to explain why this building is like this and how did we decide in order to do this because of this participation process.
But in order that everybody is applying to this building already knows why it's like this because the focus is always on the challenge, socio economic and environmental challenge.
The other point is how we do construct the community.
This point is very important.
Like we generate we call environmental and convent manuals, and we debate between them about this and we monitorize not only the behavior of the dwellings in their actions in order to know how the building is working against environment, but also socially, we have people engaged with the building in order to revitalize the shared spaces and revitalize the people.
The BNS model, for example, Now, when a private actor construct a building, then the municipality puts a mediator in order to revitalize the community.
This is more or less one phase, what they insult us.
The other point is that when we can get some land and we cooperate with cooperatives, because the other point is making cession of rights with the land in order that the communities can do their process as well.
But for example, in Barcelona, what happens is that the coarivist model is more or less linked to, I would say, far left parties and not everybody is engaged with that moment.
So what we think is good for everybody is mixing everything.
Another point that I forgot to say before is that we always think that the social, sustainability is always mixing everything.
If you think about 50 years, it's mixing everything.
Our buildings there are owners and people that live there with right of surface and tenants and vulnerable people.
When we work with competitives, giving them rights of surface of land, we are always try to cooperate together in order that we learn from them, but they learn from our knowledge as well.
In the building, we can have part of the competitives, but there are some dwellings for rent, so they can a take the most of them.
Regarding the land and the community and Trust, where we are trying to because the law is very strict in Spain as well, I would say four keys regarding the previous speeches.
Probably everything is easier if the land is public and we have to look for non speculative management processes.
I would say that political stability is the key because these processes are slow and require time and resources.
It's been said that the financial mechanisms have to change, so we have to look for systems that do not focus only on speed and profit and the other point is probably transparency about everything it's a highlight.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Yousef.
I have a question for Delphine next, which is about how do you consider that community led approaches and community participation in housing policies and in project investment.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for the invitation to this panel and also thank you to the other panelists for their sound presentation which strongly resonates with the challenges we face as a Development Bank too.
As Mariana mentioned, I have worked for more than 20 years on urbandon housing projects in France, but also abroad with the French Development Agency.
Something I strongly believe in is that housing lies at the crossroads of many challenges, economic, technical, environmental, and as Joseph said, social, because housing is obviously a social infrastructure.
Working for AFD, the French Development Agency, we are active in more than 160 countries and we have a growing portfolio in housing and urban sector.
Three years ago, we launched a dedicated facility, the Sustainable Housing Initiative, which aims at supporting our partners in the formulation of their housing policies.
And during the first phase of this facility, we achieved more than 20 studies in 15 countries and we've observed many insightful way of formulating housing policies.
Very often, we observe that housing policies focus primarily on quantitative targets, which is obviously very important, but it's not enough.
Because while focusing on quantitative targets, they pay less attention to the quality of urban integration, existing neighborhoods, social inclusion, or community dynamics.
And this is partly because housing policies are often designed at a national level, while local authorities frequently lack the financial and technical capacity to develop projects that are truly adapted to local realities and needs.
Whereas from my perspective, housing is fundamentally about building the city itself.
This is why it is essential to take local needs into account.
And what I am deeply convinced of is that we need three level of commitment simultaneously.
First, we need some strong national housing policies.
This is what bring consistency to the system and the sector.
Then we need strengthened local authorities because they are the ones who will bring relevancy to the projects that are funded.
Of course, we need a genuine recognition of communities and local dynamics.
This will bring social inclusion, but also long term success for the project.
These three dimensions are absolutely essential if we want to create lively cities and resilient cities.
But we know that it is not easy.
As the investment project level, we try to promote participatory approaches in urban and housing projects when we can because these dimension are often key condition for long term success.
I would like to briefly mention one concrete example, a project that is financed by AFD, but a project that is implemented by a partner we have in Brazil.
It is a long standing partner of AFD, it is a municipality of Cour Chiba.
And the municipality is being implemented together with a public company cohab, the municipal public housing company, a very important and challenging project and This project concern a community of around 1,700 households currently living in highly vulnerable, flood prone informal settlements.
The project includes the resettlement of the whole community into new homes built very close to their original neighborhood in order to preserve social ties and community networks.
At the same time, around 500 households will benefit from land tenure regularization, allowing families to remain in place under safer conditions.
A vulnerability assessment was conducted to determine which families could safely remain at their place and which one needed to move in new housing units.
What is particularly interesting in this project is the effort made by the municipality and the public housing company from the very beginning to integrate into the process the community participation approach.
Concretely, the project relied on extensive community consultation regarding housing typologies, public spaces, neighborhood organization, and social proximity between families.
AF they also financed a gender action plan in this project in order to better understand what are the specific needs of women because around 70% of the community families headed by women, which is obviously very important.
This work help better identify vulnerabilities, constraints, and women priorities, but it also provided the opportunity for these women to have a voice in this project.
This project illustrates an important lesson for us, even when development banks mainly work through public institutions, housing policies become far more sustainable and inclusive when they fully recognize community as partners and built on existing social dynamics.
Because we know that housing is not only about delivering housing units, it is also creating resilient and inclusive communities.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, T.
We're going to go back again to the points both of you have mentioned, hopefully by the last part of this session today.
But I have a question for Lomani as well.
I'd like to give you the opportunity to tell us well, if you can answer this question, I'll congratulate you, but the question is, how do we provide financial credit and collateral for community led housing? Thank you, Mariana, for the question.
It is very difficult to answer.
But thank you for providing me this opportunity to share our experience of working in Nepal and also across different regions in Asia.
When we hear from our panelists and also from the previous panelists and also across all the different sessions we've been hearing in the World Eban Forum, there are a number of challenges which we see in making housing accessible for everyone.
One of the critical challenge which we as an organization working in the field of housing and also I think for the communities is the access to flexible, affordable finance to address their housing needs.
Because as Somsuk said, the formal banking sector or the government agency, think that the low income communities are not bankable.
They're not able to repay the investment which the formal banking system does.
But from our experience of working in Nepal for the last 34 years, this has proved wrong because we work a lot with women who have started this collective saving, So it's not just one city where a group of women are doing the saving, but it's spread across, uh, in a citywide range.
So it's not just focused on one community where a few women are doing the saving, but it's like a number of such groups are working in different clusters in a city and also across different, uh, uh, different cities across, and then also across different Asian cities where Asian Coalition for Housing rights are working.
They're not just working for addressing small issues like their livelihood or their daily needs, but these funding collective saving, they're using it for investing in improving their houses as a community, building solidarity.
Saving for us has been a backbone of how we organize the community, how we bind the community, and also, uh, to build solidarity across different, uh, uh, network of, uh, communities.
So from our experience, what we have seen is that this saving, like this collective saving has not just been limited to the group itself, but they've been able to leverage funds from the other stakeholders in the city as well.
So, uh, in case of Nepal, we have a number of such saving groups.
We, It is completely led by women.
We call them cooperatives.
Small saving groups are linked together at the city level as a cooperative, and then they also have a network of different cooperative linking together in different cities, which is called a community women's forum where they support each other, they provide a technical assistance to each other.
It's not like it's like we as an organization only play the role of a facilitator, but it's like a horizontal learning which they are doing, So this group of 30 cooperatives in Nepal, they have a total number of, uh, uh, 50,000 plus members and a collective saving of $2.5 million, which they have been investing in housing improvement, improving the livelihood.
So what is lacking right now is to for the policies and the government to recognize the strength of the people led financial system.
That is what is necessary for the government officials, the policies to be recognized.
I would like to give an example of a city where we are working currently.
It's Kala.
It's a secondary city which is growing secondary city where many of the communities are marginalized communities.
What we did is we use the saving as a tool to bring them together as one collective and have their own agency.
Through this saving, they were able to leverage funds from the local government.
They built a city level fund, which we fundly urban community support Fund, which is completely managed by the women.
But also, they are able to leverage annual funds from the government, which they use for housing improvement, doing a collective housing processes on the ground.
This process has been replicated to other cities as well.
But the challenges where the local government authorities are positive towards this.
This happens quite easily, but in the other cities, it's difficult to be replicated.
What is required is this to be built in the national policy itself so that this can spread to the other cities as well.
We've seen through these processes that the women, the community have been able to build different ways of how they address the housing needs they have land sharing, they uh, renovation, on site upgrading, different different approaches which they apply.
The thing is that the government and the other stakeholders should recognize it and use it as an example to set a policy level.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you Kilmani and nice to hear also some points in common in terms of things that have been proven to work and how do we make them more mainstream? Which is the idea of this session as well, but great to hear about so many examples of things that we know work.
Before we close this panel, I'd like to give you the opportunity also for the three of you if you'd like to do a couple of minutes reflections on what you've heard so far.
Would you like to start yourself? Yes.
I would like only to highlight for us the importance of the mixture in order to find, to mix everything in order to find social sustainability in the future in Barcelona.
A very high problem that we have is with rehabilitation.
Most of the building, 80% of the buildings that we have constructs constructed was from the mid 90s.
So we have this kind of problem a little bit because, you know, in these buildings, people do not have enough money to rehabilitate.
So we are in kind of poverty.
So cooperation with the public and private in order to empower the people and help them to find systems of financing and to generate new models because, for example, in this kind of buildings, probably copying by France and opportunities to increase the density of these buildings in order to pay the rehabilitation of the building.
But these kind of processes to have to be dealt between, you know, the owners or the tenants and the administrations.
More or less, it's that.
Thank you.
Delphi, would you like to contribute? Maybe a few words of conclusion on my side.
I was very glad to be part of this panel and just to conclude, I would say how important it is for us to be able to rely on consistent housing policies.
For us, the first step is, of course, to support government partners who are willing to improve their housing policies.
In a more inclusive and sustainable way.
As we saw during this panel, there are many way to provide some inclusive, affordable, and sustainable housing and a consistent housing policy must take into account this diversity of needs and solutions.
It is very important.
At a project level, I think it is very important to build on community relations that already exist because it is a strength in every project.
Thank you.
He? I would also like to conclude by saying that it's very important to keep people at the center.
They should be the driver of the process because they are the ones who are facing the challenges, they're the ones who know what is actually required for them.
The other thing is for the government, the policymakers at the national level and also at the international level needs to understand this and the policies should be people friendly, people putting the people at the front and given the scale of the challenge we are facing 1.5 billion people are living in slums.
Given the scale of the challenge, it is very much necessary that there's a wider collaboration between different sector of the society, it can be professionals, academia, government agency, private sector to come together and collaborate with the people so that this issue of housing which we've been facing for a long time is addressed at the scale.
Thank you very much.
Thank you to the three of you for a very interesting conversation and we'll keep working towards more community led housing in all of your work.
Thanks a lot.
Our next speaker is coming all the way from Uruguay.
I'm going to call in Tamara Posido.
Tamara Pacedo Marin is the Minister of Housing and Land Use Planning in Uruguay and the 2026 President of Minorb, the Forum of Ministers and Highest Authorities for Housing and Urban Development in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Welcome, Tamara, and we look forward to hear from you and the experience of Uruguay.
I know.
Good afternoon, everyone.
It is a pleasure for me to be here.
I would love to be able to talk with all the people that were talking before because I think what they said was impressive.
Just to gather all the information before talking about Uruguay about cooperation in Uruguay, I think it is important to talk about some ideas we've talked about.
I understand that it is so important to recognize that cities already being built by the people that historically were out of the decision taking and the territory distribution.
That's why the previous people said things that were so important.
It is very important to construct within the existing communities.
It is important to put people in the focus in the center of the matter and understand that housing, it is a fundamental right that is the door that leads to other rights.
That's why it is so important for communities to participate in the building in the construction of housing.
Just to give an example, when in Uruguay you get to the poorest neighborhood, For the programs of an AC in the neighborhoods, communities are always there.
That's why I'm saying that we need to construct and build within the communities that already exist and that have already built their own houses on a regular basis or the way they could.
It is very important to participation when we know that mostly women are the ones sustaining the spaces, creating these organizations, creating communities So it is impossible not to take the voices of these women into account in order to construct, to build the new neighborhoods, the new houses, and the new safe areas.
When we arrive to different neighborhoods to work, we create follow up commissions that are created by the constructor company and by the state and by the people that work in the neighborhood and also by the community because the community, and this is linked to something they said before, the community needs to have power in order to be able to participate in.
It is not just about being there, participating is having the power to decide.
In order to be able to decide, we need to have information.
That's why it's so important to have communities to take communities into account.
Also talking about what my colleague said before about cooperation in Uruguay.
In 1966, a group of workers, female and male workers started to organize themselves in order to build their own houses because they weren't able to access a house.
In the year 1968, this was transformed into a Lee World framework.
It was financed by the state and it had technical teams to work with this cooperation and these groups of people that started to create their own housing.
So that's why the cooperative system shows that it's not just about building housing, but about building houses in a collective way because we are building the way of living for different people and we're creating a way to change neighborhoods So what experience proves is that when community organization has institutional support, access to financing, and politics that support them, it is possible to build affordable and quality housing.
I also want to say something that's very important.
The cooperative system, it's of course a basic tool, for example, for Uruguay.
We have so many cooperatives.
I cannot even say the number because we are 3 million people and probably I will forget many corporations.
But I think that the important thing is that the 50% of the budget of the housing ministry in Uruguay is going to these cooperation system.
I also think it's very important to share with you because I was listening before to the other panelists.
And when they talked about how to create solutions within cooperation, I want to say that is very important, of course, to cooperate all together.
I think cooperation, it is not for everyone.
Cooperation.
It is not possible in the way that No.
I was talking to you before.
It is not possible to take this to the most vulnerable populations with this legal framework and this financing framework.
It is very difficult because we know that people and families that live in these poorest neighborhood and informal neighborhoods, they need other kind of ways of participating.
They cannot build and cooperate with building.
Why? Because cooperation it is about workers.
That are within this building system, they get paid by hours.
So we have to achieve these hours in order to be able to achieve our goals.
We know even though it is a very beneficial system, we know that it is not a system for everyone and not for the most poor neighborhoods.
Even the corporations know that these challenges exist and they know that these neighborhoods are not able to participate in this way, but they do want to collaborate together.
Now in Uruguay we're starting with a pilot project, That's very important.
There's a collective in Uruguay that is called met and so it will be translated or is not everything is lost.
It's a group of people that were able to organize and they are not extremely vulnerable.
I mean, they are vulnerable because they don't have a house, but they have some other opportunities and they've created a cooperation and they want to work together In order to build their own houses.
They are vulnerable people, but they are willing to all work together in order to build their own houses.
We are willing to work with them in order to help them to build their own system.
Tamara.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Tamara.
I would love to keep on talking to you for a long time.
But anyways, I hope we will be able to talk afterwards.
Thank you very much for being here and telling us about the experience in Uruguay.
We're coming to the end of the session, but not yet.
I would like to get some reactions from the public here if you're still awake and listening.
I think we have some microphones there.
Thank you.
You've heard different perspectives from different parts of the world, but also different types of organizations presenting today.
And we repeated many times the challenges on how to help these community led housing initiatives move forward.
I'd like to see if we can get some reactions on one commitment that you think that could come from member states, international organizations, development finance institutions, civil society, what commitment could help most for these community led solutions to advance.
You can dream.
Yes, there is one day.
You can introduce yourself briefly and share it with us.
Yes.
Thank you.
My name is Bina Neprim and I am the moderator for the Indigenous Roundtable, which is scheduled on the 22nd.
But for this particular session, we would like to really stress on solutions which are traditional and Indigenous led for Urban Forum for 2026 to 2029.
We also request for adequate financing.
For instance, much of the conflict, much of the climate crisis, and the financial institutions, they are only giving 1% to indigenous peoples, 1% while we take care of 80% of global biodiversity, which is going to help in ensuring that we build a more equitable world for all of us, the conflict climate crisis, unless indigenous peoples are put in the planning of building homes, urban spaces, because right now many wars are in our territory.
So we just wanted to put forward this particular recommendation from the Indigenous Caucus here at WO 13.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Well, I would love to make a question.
During these days, I found that there are different populations from different parts of the world that do not really trust cooperatives, but now we've heard two experiences that are here now and that they talk about cooperations that really work.
For example, in the case of Uruguay our colleague was talking about in the case of Brazil as well.
The Graa talked about, they told us how it worked.
Maybe I don't know, they could tell us the secrets for these cooperatives to really work.
Thank you.
A, I think we have a reflection there first.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I think there has to be a strong monitoring mechanism after we go back from here.
In the next two years, what's going to happen until the next Forum 14 takes place.
There has to be a strong mechanism and that mechanism, if it's been created or I mean, The communities, civil society organization must be represented there and there has to be a systemic process.
It's not only one time that you invite the civil society or community representative in the process, but there has to be a systemic arrangement that they are there all the time, and that I think is very important.
Also it's important.
I mean, we've been talking, we've been hearing for the last few days now.
It has to be also very important to recognize the communities and civil society as an equal partner of the process.
The member states also have to practice this, get into action.
Not only sign in the light the call to action, but then how do we ensure that they really practice the commitment that they are making really get into action.
That's very important.
Also just to again, reinforce the statement that the adequate budget must be available for the communities.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Is very important.
I don't know if Tamara or Grassa did want to intervene after the last comment on cooperatives.
Well, about your question about why cooperatives are actually working? Well, from my point of view, community organization, what they need is exactly support from the institutions and this support must be reflected on a specific budget, a budget that it is a long term budget, actually, and also supported by stable policies.
Because as you know, since 1966, till now, we've had many different kinds of governments, but the cooperative system has still been working the same and has been respected by every government and it is still being part of the housing plan that, as I said, gets 50% of the ministry budget.
That's what I think is the key organization with financing, within support of institutions, and with the economical support.
I think that would be the way to the solution.
About the civil society and organizations, for me, we Ray, we work a lot with organizations from civil society, because we understand that while the state is not participating, it's the civil societies who are participating and who support all the commit processes.
So I do agree on working together with the communities and with the civil society organizations.
It is something very important for collective construction.
The point that you mentioned or in the meantime until the government is there, not replacing the government but taking that space at least for some time.
Bond.
In Brazil, we've worked with three points that are really important.
First, change of legislation.
The government doesn't do it, so we make the law and we present to the government.
Second thing, training and education for the communities, for leadership, so we can act and we can collect from the government.
The third one, Strong coordination and network with a number of organizations.
So these issues make us the union had resource and we produce more and more with quality.
This really makes a difference because you can get in our website and the difference is the same thing that the government gets to build 42,000 square meters.
We get the same resource and we built a 60 or 70.
So this is housing with quality of life.
That's it.
Thank you.
We.
I think there is another reflection there.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
My name is May Kan J from Uganda.
One key recommendation I would like to put across is actualizing affordable housing may not really be easy unless we implement the special plans or physical development plans.
Was the, the plan on paper is different from having the plan on the ground.
You may have a structure which is really beautiful, but look at the neighborhood.
How is the neighborhood to support? The real beautiful picture of the overall appearance of this structure.
My emphasis is on the implementation of the plans to support the entire neighborhood.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Any other comments or reflections? Yes.
Commissioner for Human Rights.
One thing is structural.
That is having a protected civic space for local committee initiatives to work together in collaboration with the government where they can bring their issues to their attention, not being seen as only critical of the government, but as core partners for the government.
That is basically about the right to participation to freedom of expression, to freedom of assembly, to organize together.
Of course, our office tries to support that to the degree possible, but that is a big challenge and conditions I think to be successful for having laws to found corporations, having training to do that, having a space to say their words, discuss about different solutions, which could be different views, I think this is very important to mention here and to promote.
In this respect, I hope that future world forums further strengthen this and also the work of human habitat will further strengthen this approach.
Thanks.
Thank you very much.
I think we all hope that that's going to be the case.
Any other comments or reflections? Well, we have one more speaker.
Simon De Press from UN Habitat.
He's an expert second from the Office of the Executive Director in and Housing and Shelter section.
Simon is good to see you again and he's going to give us some closing remarks.
Thank you very much for the invitation.
I'm sorry.
I've been part of the fantastic team that developed this session and the concept note and the speakers, but I was not able to participate.
I was involved in paralezation of the opening working group on adequate housing, which is a member state initiative to develop and to formulate housing policy recommendation.
And here I would like to make connection between these two processes, the normative process at a global level and the many rich community led initiatives that happen on the ground and that should feed this normative thinking.
Yes.
The opening working group has a very complicated name.
It's not that complicated.
The idea is that for the first time, we have an intergovernmental UN facilitated platform to discuss housing policy recommendations.
So far, there is 70 countries that name national focal point and the process is going forward until 2029.
The key aspect is that recommendations are discussed, adopted on an iterative way through intersectional discussion.
We just had one with member state on resilience and sustainability and recommendation are validated at annual session.
The next one will be in November 2026.
We already had four sets of recommendation validated last year in October 25, and these recommendations are available for anyone to advocate for better housing policy at the national level.
I believe that what has been discussed today, the many tools that exist and the many tools developed and implemented through community led initiatives on tenure tools, community generated data, CLTs cooperative, et cetera.
None of these tools are new.
Communities have been developing solutions often without complete legal recognition and sometimes under the threat of eviction for decades.
The lesson is not that solution are lacking, the solution exists.
What is missing is the scale and sometimes the evidence for decision maker to bring them into policies.
And it is precisely what the open ending working group process is designed to change.
And the discussion in parallel to this session we're highlighting the fact that if we want to develop housing sustainability and resilience policy, we need to learn from informal settlements.
We need to learn from community led approaches to better adapt the way we approach housing at scale.
Um So just to remember, if you follow the QR code and the link on the screen, you will be able to see which country have nominated focal point.
We believe this is a way to advocate at international level so that more country nominate focal point and that the resources that are available on the website are used for advocacy on policy recommendation.
An important bit of the global agenda and the work at the global level by UN Habitat on housing is housing knowledge platform, which is also a recommendation by the member states on your habitat to develop a platform that acts as a repository of data, knowledge, publication, tool, and especially practices on housing.
These practices should act as a support for the identification of better policy recommendation and once these recommendations are adopted, they should as guidance for implementation of this recommendation.
The platform is under development and it will be launched at the third section of the working group in November.
So we are working very hard so that this is a very useful tools not only for member states but for every housing stakeholders.
I would finish by, emphasizing that I believe that community led initiative no longer have anything to prove.
The challenge is now the effective integration of these approaches into housing policies at both the local and the national level.
So from my perspective, I'm very involved in the opening working group.
I think the ball is now on the court of the opening working group to help develop recommendations that are genuinely adapted to the need and constraints of communities while advancing habitability, sustainability, resilience by building on what's already work in practice.
Um, and there I think there is a a very important matter is that we shall not only adapt what is proven and what exists, but we shall also integrate a right to try a part of the policy, you need to integrate the initiative and what we have in law in France, the permit experiment, which is a lot to experiment and all to test new approaches and to try to develop and to try to improve in an incremental way and in an empirical way so that we can come with new solution.
And I think it's very, very important.
And even if this may challenge long standing assumption about our housing market function and particularly the persistent difficulty many actors still have in imagining housing systems that are non speculative, non incremental and could support a broader diversity of tenure and financing arrangement.
So this is also very important.
And just to finish, another particularly strong message emerging from today's discussion and literally in all the sessions have been part is the importance of understanding community based approaches to housing production, in particular, long term accessibility and affordability, resource management, especially the governance of comments as practiced by indigenous and local communities, both from the global north from the global source.
This experience illuminate and help illuminate alternative pathway for all we may collectively inhabit, produce and govern our living environment in the future.
Thank you very much.
Please visit the website of the working group.
Thank you, Simon.
Thank you to all our speakers today, but also to the participants for a very rich conversation and also for holding on in the difficult hours of the afternoon where everyone is tired.
I appreciate you're still awake.
Over the past 2 hours, we heard powerful testimony to what community led housing can achieve and also some articulation on what is blocking that from happening in many places.
I'm not going to repeat everything that has been said.
I have noticed some themes that emerged clearly on visibility and protection, land and regulatory frameworks.
We discussed my shift from seeing communities Community approaches as problems in some cases to recognizing them as valuable solutions.
We talked about data and planning and about community generated data, participatory mapping, incremental upgrading that could and should be integrated into formal planning systems.
We talked about finance and tenure.
And I'd like to repeat what many of the panelists said that this is not about whether these models work.
We have seen them work in many places, is whether there is a political will to resource and to scale them as we have also seen happening in some places.
We talked about partnerships and about the need to recognize communities as rightholders and co producing of housing solutions rather than people to ask about what they think sometimes.
I'd like to remind everyone that the commitments that we discussed today must be reflected in the BA call to action.
We need member states, local authorities, development partners to make concrete commitments to recognize, enable, and resource that's very important people led housing delivery.
At World habitat where I work, this is central to our mission.
We have been working in the World Habitat Awards for 40 years and we have spotted and celebrated and supported community led innovation that demonstrate what's possible when people are placed at the center of their housing provision.
Many of those examples have been discussed to days and there is a lot more evidence that we have built over the last 40 years.
We have a lot of information.
If you're interested, you can visit our database, you can talk to us, and we'll be happy to show you some of the trends that we have seen in the last four decades.
So to conclude, community led housing shouldn't be about the margins anymore.
It's about recognizing that people experiencing the housing crisis have already developed and continue to develop the most effective responses to it.
Our job in policy, in finance, in international frameworks is to stop blocking them and start enabling them.
Thank you all for your participation and your commitment to this work.