ONE UN - Priorities of the new Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing - Consultation for Stakeholders (WUF13)

Good afternoon, ladies.
Muhammad S S Muhammad become Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights supporting the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing since several years.
It's a great pleasure to have you here.
I'm just going to say something how we want to run this session as interactively as possible.
First, I will hand over to Mr.
Colo Kessler, then to distinguished representatives of UN Habitat, Habitat International Coalition.
And United States and local governments to make a first comment.
After that, we want to be as interactive as possible because it should be your session.
So we very much want to devote 80% to this session to questions, answers from the floor.
This is a public event.
It's, of course, also transmitted on UN TV.
Given that, I want to also say that any civil society representatives or state delegates or representatives from other stakeholders who want to engage more bilateral on a concrete issue with a special rapporteur are welcome to come after the meeting to me or to Mr.
Cold and we will see how we can arrange a follow up.
Thanks so much.
With this, I give over to Mr.
Colo Kessler, who is Special Rapporteur on the right to Adequate Housing.
Hello, thanks everybody for making the time in the busy schedule to come here and thanks to the co panelists.
The purpose of this session really is for you guys to be able to present your priorities and to present To me, what do you think I should be focusing on.
As you may know, I've been in the role of UN Special Rapporteur on the right to equate housing for three weeks.
This is very early days.
This, this forum is really helpful for me to get to know many of you and to get to know a lot about the system.
Apologies in advance if I make mistakes, there is a lot I know, I don't know, and there is a lot I don't even know.
I don't know.
I will need some time for that.
Um, the Special aporte is an independent position, so it's a UN position, but it's independent from the UN, as many of you, if not all of you know.
I'm not a UN official.
I don't work for the UN.
I don't get paid by the UN.
It's a pro bono role.
It's independent.
It's also independent from my country or nationality.
It's also independent from civil society.
It's a resource that you guys have at your disposal to raise awareness to connect your concerns, your day to day concerns, your information and advocacy from the ground with the spaces at the UN level for what they're worth.
Use it if you want and if you can, I'm here really for you.
The work of the Special Rapporteur is as good as the interaction with civil society, in my opinion.
My own background, if I may, very briefly since I'm just started in the role, I am an academic.
My bills get paid by the University of Essex, which is my employer.
I am a lecturer in international law at the Human Rights Center at the University of Essex.
But my background very much comes from advocacy and activism.
I've been an activist for human rights since I was 15-years-old.
In 2001, I joined An International.
I was a coordinator in a local group and then a spokesperson in the region where I'm from, in the north of Spain in the Basque country.
I work for a national human rights institution in the Basque country.
I worked for small NGOs.
I was the first staff member of one NGO on social rights in England.
I know what it's like to work for an NGO that has a $40,000 budget.
I know what's that like.
I also know what it's like to work for a large organization like Amnest International.
Now I'm learning my ways in the whole UN system, which is a whole new beast for me.
So this session really is for you guys.
We have the wonderful volunteers that we have have the microphones.
So when we finish, you're going to have hopefully some 70, 75 minutes in the session for you guys to talk and ideas for you guys to say as much as you want to say.
And I say that because this is being recorded.
This will be on our website.
And I'm mindful that not all of you will feel comfortable saying everything you want to say.
So after this meeting, I'm here the rest of the day, happy to talk about things.
Do not disclose anything confidential place in this forum.
Do not put people at risk.
In addition to that, after this week, I'm going to have at least one online space similar to this, but where people can on Zoom or Teams or Google Meets or something, share basically like this, but private really, not recorded.
That's the idea.
So you're more than welcome and also colleagues of yours, friends of yours who couldn't be here or decided not to come to Baku.
Please tell them and we will also circulate the call.
I hope to see many willing to participate.
Okay, so I think that's what I wanted to say.
Now let me introduce my co panelists today who are going to make very brief remarks.
Thank you very much for making the time.
First, we have Umbretta Temper.
She's the Chief of Land Housing and Informer Settlements section in U habitats.
Umbreta, thanks very much.
Thank you, Special Reporter.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for being here and welcome again to on behalf of the inhabitat.
Thank you for the invitation at this important session.
We just had actually a meeting with our executive director and the special Rapporteur first of all, to highlight the importance that the inhabitat attaches to the relationship with the Special Rapporteur on human rights.
Other special reporters as well, of course, but particularly the one with their portfolio on housing.
As you know, habitat has been refocusing housing has always been at the center of habitat mandate and interest, but we have significantly refocused on this area.
As you can also see at Wolf is a team of Wolf.
We are particularly happy about your appointment.
Again, congratulations, and we look forward to actually define in the coming months a bit more specifically the exact areas of collaboration.
I What we started to look at are a few areas, particularly, of course, the importance of putting the human rights at the center of all the housing work that ourselves we do, but also member states we do.
Sometimes we see that other considerations take over and the fact that housing is primarily a human right gets a little bit lost.
Sometimes it's packaged really as a manufacturer as a construction aspects.
A lot of emphasis sometimes put on the number of units being built or the materialistic aspect of it, which are obviously very important economy, but primarily, actually, the housing need to fulfill the need of the people and therefore without a strong focus on human rights cannot be achieved.
We will work with you on amplifying and keeping the focus on this aspect of housing.
Secondly, evictions, again, again, has been at the center of your habitat to mandate for years and is an area where we are involved at the country level and we just discussed as well how to strengthen and clarify this articulation and make it more predictable for our own benefits, but also the benefits of our partners so that we can work as a system to address this aspect.
The social and ecological function of land and housing was raised.
This is both a very clear interest of our management and I believe is a shared one.
And then two more points.
One, clearly the aspect of housing in informal settlements.
This is where the most vulnerable are is more than 1.1 billion people, a population that keeps expanding and areas where we really hope with our member states to really change the progression, the trend, and also reframe how informal settlements are seen when this solution puts in place.
Lastly, but importantly, the Unhabitat is the Secretariat of the intergovernmental open ended working group on adequate housing for all, which is the only UN intergovernmental process on housing.
Human rights are clearly at the center of that and it really provides a unique avenue to bridge the technical and the political discussions.
And to reach out to member states on how to shape their housing interventions and portfolios.
This is also an area obviously is member states led, but many partners are also participating actively, accredited partners and definitely we worked with your office before you and we look forward to continuing work with you do on that.
With this, I thank you and just briefly mention that I will stay for a bit, but I have a parallel session.
I will be leaving quietly in a bit, but thank you much again for the invitation.
It's quite all right.
Thanks very much for making the time.
Next, we have Emelia Syth.
Amelia Syth is the Secretary-General of United Cities and local government.
Thanks, Emilia again.
Thank you very much, dear Special Rapporteur, Dear Colo.
Well, the story that I bring to you today is really perfectly reframed as a tale of two cities in this topic.
The local and regional governments that my World Organization represents are those that are evicting many of you.
Many of the local governments are doing that, that are selling land and are speculating with land.
That are not taking into account the human right aspect of this.
That is one of the tails.
But there is also another part of the tail, and that is many local governments that are trying to pay attention to human rights, that are trying to have more competencies so that they can change the situation and make the international and national community understand that even when housing is not always in their competencies within their competencies, it is a responsibility that they want to be and that they need changes both legal frameworks, but also capacity and financial frameworks to change the trend of housing understood as a commodity.
And so that is also a reality of our constituency.
And then there is another layer, which is the one that I represent, which is the layer of the collective agenda that we are trying to build for local and regional governments around the world with partners, organized civil society such as Islam dwellers, internationals, but also with institutes like IIED, with habitat and international coalition with the platform for the right to the city.
With that organized civil society that are a structural part of our decision making, we are pushing for housing to be understood beyond infrastructure, beyond built infrastructure.
We're trying to seek the link between local service provision and housing in its broader sense.
We are trying to ensure that housing is democratized, that we realize the value of community housing and co creation.
And that we make sure that housing is truly conceived as an infrastructure for care.
And so trying to go from an agenda of individual human rights, which are critically important to even an agenda around justice and accountability.
So dear Special Rapporteur, Dear Caldo, thank you for taking up this challenge.
It is a big one, believe me, particularly in this context in the world.
What our constituency expects from you will be two things.
It would be acknowledging the critical role that local and regional governments need to play in changing the housing dynamics and addressing the housing crisis through competencies, through different financing, but also through the acknowledgment of local and regional governments as political actors that can interact with communities undefined agendas.
So asking for the acknowledgment of that responsibility.
But also, we are asking you as constituencies to hold us accountable, to showcase what is working and what is actually not.
How can we address issues such as the decisions that local and regional government leaders are facing almost every day around a trade off or so called trade off between local development and human rights and livelihoods of people.
Avoiding evictions, for the development of the city or not.
I think the role of the special rapporteur will be very important in documenting and mapping what is happening in these areas and helping us scale up the good things that are happening so that we go beyond pilot projects to actually structural transformation.
I'll stop here because many of the people in the room know what we're trying to do and what we are failing to do as well.
I look very much forward to hear what they have to say.
Thank you for having us.
Please do count on us to continue the better tale of the two that they have just presented.
Thank you.
Thanks very much, Emilia.
I appreciate very much that you started with that self critical collective critical recognition.
I think it is to your credit.
And as you know, the point about acknowledgment of the critical role that local authorities play and hold them to account, as we discussed yesterday, I see local authorities as duty bearers when it comes to human rights is not only central governments, local authorities are also duty bearers, and that's how I will treat them.
That's how I think the UN should treat them.
Um, and yes, I intend to focus on what local authorities are doing, the good and the bad.
I want to share the practices so we can all learn from them.
And very briefly because I missed the chance with UN Habitat also just to put on the record, because we discussed earlier, I'm so glad that you provided the space to involve civil society to anticipate and stop forced evictions.
I told that to the executive director of UN Habitat earlier.
I think that is so important.
And I also praise your commitment to the social and environmental or ecological function of property.
Because as I have said before, it is so important that we talk about who owns property, private property, and we talk about that.
We democratize that as a tool of fulfilling the right to housing, and it's great that your habitat is on that as well.
Finally, we have Maria Silva Emmanuel who is the coordinator in Latin America of Habitat International Coalition.
Thank you very much for the invitation, Colo.
I will just to add something on what was already said because I think we are on the same line with you and Avita and USLG Around wars and genocide, we think will be good to still use the domicide concept that was built in a way by the former rapporteur Raji Bopal.
Um, speaking about the relation between property and right to the city and right to land, we know that rapporteur wants really to focus on that and the social function of habitat of the city, we think that it's really important also to connect this social function of housing to the right to the city.
You know that this is an element, a fundamental element of the right to the city that we have in the habitat agenda also related to property, and the difference between that right to housing.
We spoke in the last few days on evictions many times, but we think that we should not only see massive evictions that is still a big problem, also what we call invisible evictions or market induced eviction or market induced dispossession.
We know that data are really difficult on eviction when we come to eviction, but when we speak on invisible evictions that we see every day because we have in many countries, really weak laws, for example, on rental housing or around tosification, financirization, is even worse, really trying to understand the numbers of these invisible eviction.
It will be good really to try to focus on that.
Finally, I Yes, we totally agree that we need to changing the trend of housing as a commodity.
Financirization debate were made from Rakl Runk to Leilani Farah.
We have a big need to still working on that.
Maybe we can follow up on the negotiation on the post 2030 agenda.
Maybe we can put this issue also in that debate.
But what about also, I understand that you are interested on how to make human rights local and understand good practices.
Maybe we can also look at fiscal and tax mis that can be used really to curb real estate speculation.
I think this is really important and sometimes we have not maybe all the capability in a way to go through this part of the debate.
Well, this is everything at the moment from our side and thank you very much.
Thanks very much, Mary Silvia.
Very quickly, initial responses to your points about domides.
Yes, definitely, I intend to continue using the term because it helps put in the focus on the effect that the systematic and deliberate destruction of the homes have on people's lives in armed conflict.
As a as a resource to call attention to that reality.
The term domicide is really, really helpful.
So yes, I will continue calling that out.
About right to the city, yes, I think it is very important to, as you know, general comment number four in the paragraph eight, I believe it is talking about what makes housing adequate includes location and accessibility of services.
I think we need to define collectively what we mean by that.
We need to think of housing in the context, in the neighborhood, in the community.
We need to talk about a about the relationship with work.
You know, we want hospitals, we want to live near a hospital or live near healthcare providers, but we need to ensure that people working in those spaces can afford rent in the neighborhood.
Otherwise, people are near will have access to the neighborhood so they don't live too far.
We need to talk about that holistically.
We need to talk about green spaces.
We need to talk to access to transport.
We need to talk about schools, about that collective dimension.
So definitely right to the city is a good frame.
Um Invisible evictions, definitely.
Maybe in the 1990s when we talked about evictions, or they were thinking about evictions in the large massive evictions, like the ones that you can have when you have large development projects and you get rid of uncomfortable communities to be the flashy development.
That is a force eviction.
That is a very visible false eviction that we need to denounce or it can be.
But also, I think rental evictions, evictions for mortgages, those can be forced evictions as well if they don't comply with international human rights standards, and we need to talk about that as well.
And yes, I'm interested to know more, hear more and learn more from you guys about fiscal and tax measures to prevent speculation.
Definitely, I think we need to talk about how states can be held to account, about what measures they are taking to ensure that people who are the housing remains local, the housing remains available for the people who live there or intend to live.
And housing is not used, so people can invest in there and make housing unaffordable for everybody else.
And that's something that probably local authorities cannot do by themselves.
They need national regulation, national legislation to allow them to do that.
So we need to talk about speculation.
We need to talk about how we make sure that housing is not left vacant.
There is no used for pure speculation, and the housing is used for people to live in them.
That is the first purpose, the main purpose the housing must serve and we need to states we need the states to do that.
Okay, thanks very much, Umbrea, Emelia, Celia, it's been great.
I know Area, you need to go soon, if not now.
But Celia and Emilia, I also invite you to engage with people, but now we have 65 minutes or so for you guys.
We have full microphones, I believe.
Please be kind to the people with the microphones so I do not take the microphones from them.
I know you will help us with this.
If you can raise your hands, please.
There's interpretation as well, and the volunteers will pass on the microphone so you can speak.
And keep it as short as you reasonably can, please.
Here, first and the second row, please.
Yes.
Thank you, Rapporteur.
First of all, congratulations for your appointment.
My name is Samuel Ligua.
I'm with the Habitat International Coalition and also with the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism for participation at the UN Committee on World Food Security.
Now, my submission for part of your priorities is that it is very important that the right to adequate housing is integrated also with the right to adequate food.
We see with housing infrastructure development, there is also tension with the right to food, where agricultural land, especially surrounding urban areas, is now being changed for land use into concrete infrastructure development.
This previously agricultural land was being used for household food security as well as livelihoods and people end up being evicted from their agricultural land, they lose homes, they lose livelihoods as well as food security.
It's very important not to promote housing and forget food security and ensure that there is no conflict between the right to housing and the right to food.
I hope that as part of your work, we can also engage with the special rapporteur on the right to food, who is now Sophia Montserve that also even other rapporteurs on water, land also contribute to your work, that the right to development does not lead to violation of other human rights.
Also, I would appreciate if part of your ongoing work, the civil society can have meaningful participation.
In most cases within the UN system, we are taken as just observers.
But it's very important that civil society as representatives of the people we are listened to alongside the member states and other actors because at the end of the day, We are the recipient of the policies, but instead, we should be active participants in their developments.
Thank you.
Please, the second row on my right hand side, please.
Good morning, prosecutor.
First of all, congratulations on starting this process.
My name is g of Guatemala and I would like to say two things.
First of all, the possibility of a follow up to the report about the condition and situation of the indigenous lands about house and about an adequate house.
The last report we have is from 2019, how could we follow this up? On the other side, last year on July, we had a visit to the country of Guatemala on which I think in our case, actually, it is important.
The follow up, as I was saying, from this visit about recommendations to the state of Guatemala specifically related to housing, about evictions in indigenous territories, and we think it is important to do this follow up to also know that this has been a recommendation that we had in the theory exam last year.
So yes, I would basically like to ask you for this follow up of this visit.
Thank you very much.
Also on the right hand side, please.
La at the end.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
My name is Facundo from Argentina and I'm also in the coalition P International Habitat Coalition.
I would like to remark the impact of temporary rentals that are taking place in the cities.
We collaborate with other organizations from HEAT that I'm president of, but also within the cities of Raconi and the ST for Nefara and other organizations through the Global Observatory.
We have to take care and look on the local regulations.
This is something that is completely linked to housing financing, but there's a specific mechanism we have to take care of because there's a central debate and I imagine the rapporteur knows this because this is a constant debate in Spain how to regulate these platforms and dynamics about centrification.
Also linked to mega events, huge events that are also very specific.
This is happening in Mexico with a with the global events, the Olympic Games and it happens with events organized by the UN that actually in some cities has happened as well.
For example, it happened in Berle, in Brazil with the scope.
I think we have to work with the impact of temporary rental and the house cities create organize these events.
Thank you very much, this year.
And the full role.
Thank you.
Hello Hello.
Good morning.
I'm Ana Onalz from Mexico and I am participating with Hake and other platform of Latin America for local materials.
What I want to say is two things.
One related to rural housing.
There are many initiatives related to housing in the cities and there are many programs to treat this matter, but no one talks about rural housing and the identity of the people in those areas.
In many days during this forum, I've heard the criminalization or the difficulty for these people to use local materials for construction.
I think this is something we are not really talking about, but that is very important for the identity of the people living there.
The right it is obvious because it goes within the housing right.
Another thing I want to talk about is that in many countries such as in Mexico, we've worked with the enacing the housing, public funds, zero taxa and reconstruct the buildings, but I think we have to do something and work on climate change and also on financing actions for housing in order to be able to face global heating and the use of energies and so on.
I think these are two matters we should be talking about.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
The full throw, please.
And then if I may, I will say a couple of if that's okay there, please, the full throw and then I will respond and then we'll have two people there.
I'd like to add to the first question here where he was talking about agriculture outside of urban centers, when there is a focus on green spaces within an urban center and there's discussion of food forests or food availability within that, I think part of that discussion needs to include having farmers to work with people.
It's grand to say everyone's going to have a garden on their balcony, but if you don't have someone working with them, and available for what to plant, how to management, pest management, green spaces and green walls inside of apartment buildings.
We need to remember that the people in those apartment buildings are busy and they're working and they're not plant managers, meaning actual green plants, and so planning to have horticulturalists or farmers there available for those green spaces in an urban living space.
Again, if you're looking at beautification, we have the cities with significant asthma and allergy problems because only male trees are planted, which puts more pollen out, which creates more allergies because they didn't want to clean up the fruit from female plants, but that would provide food.
So looking at your urban green spaces being food available, but also having food managers for that.
That's really good.
Let me respond quickly to these initial observations.
I think it wouldn't be fair to have you guys for 1 hour talking and then I can wash my hands and that will be okay.
I will do it later with in English and Spanish.
About the first and the last point, the connection Above the first and the second and the fifth points, the connection between agriculture and lands.
Yes, I mean, I've been for three weeks in the role, but I look forward to connecting with the Special Rapporteur on F.
I don't think we do not know one another, but I see what you're saying.
I see the connection.
I see that it's very much part of this holistic view of what makes housing goods.
Do you talked about livelihoods.
Do you talk about green spaces, the final contributor, there's a lot I do not know about housing.
I, I am a special rapporteur.
I know a little bit about housing issues, but there are many things that I do not know.
You guys and people outside this room are much more knowledgeable about many things that have to do with housing.
For instance, these observations you made about green spaces, certain types of trees, I have so much to learn, but I see the value of it to have a holistic perspective of housing that takes into account food, takes into account green spaces.
I see the value and I will learn.
By the way, if you have a number of resources that you think I, I should read, please send them my way.
Of the special Rapporteur on food.
There was a recent report also on food and access to land that I hope will be valuable because my predecessor, one of his last reports was precisely the relationship between land and housing, and there was also another one on food and land by the special aportur on food.
I want to follow that path, trajectory.
Eva I think she was from Guatemala in Spanish.
Yes, I do want to do a follow up of the Guatemala report.
I think it is important Because the reports of UN, they are not useful if they do not have a follow up.
So I think, yes, it is our responsibility to check what we've been doing.
Yes, please, I just need some time to figure it all out and to see how can I do a follow up, but I do want to do a follow up.
And the same about the 2019 report on indigenous people, because I can tell you I do not have it right now, but I'm going to check it, and I'm going to guarantee that we will follow it up.
Facundo from Argentina about temporary rentals and tourism.
Yes, this is very important.
I would say that my first communication this month was about Argentina, about the low about non violating the law that the actual government has right now raised.
I think this is a dangerous initiative because it goes against the initiatives of Argentina and it maximizes the protection of property despite the right to housing.
This started the second day that I started as a rapporteur, I would like to start with this.
I must say that Argentina responded that same week and you can see that on the web.
But about temporary rentals, I was talking yesterday with colleagues from Mexico that they also have this problem because this is a big matter in the city of Mexico.
It is very important that the states at the state or municipality level, they regulate these temporary rentals because if not, they can contribute to speculation and it can become a huge problem for housing and it can make housing not available for people that are actually living in those places.
I think that in this event or events like COP, treat these matters.
Of course, I'll take it into account.
Vivian and Ana Gonzalez from Mexico, rural housing identity.
I must confess, it's something I actually need to learn things about.
Also the meaning of it.
I, I theoretically understand what the land means for indigenous people, but I do not feel it because I don't have that expertise, that experience of what it really means, so I do need to learn a lot about how indigenous people live this matter and I hope I will be able to learn it.
If you have documentation or any papers about this, I would love to read about it.
If you can please send me information about these indigenous people and how do they feel about living on their land and about the energy that we've talked about.
How the construction of buildings can damage the environment that is also important.
Please send me everything you have for me to read.
Let's keep going.
I think there was.
I think there was a colleague there in the second row.
Then back here and then there.
We're going to start the second row here, the gentlemen, please.
Thank you.
First of all, I want to say hi.
My name is nan from Bolivia.
First of all, congratulations for this amazing space that we have able from the representatives of the UN to be listening.
So from the perspective of the indigenous people, I would like to say that housing and territory are not separable.
This is a construction that is within the territory and is linked to the cultural heritage of the people, and it is not possible to guarantee an access to adequate housing if the indigenous rights are not considered.
The second thing I want to say is that we want to have the right to decide and participate.
With an housing that has an identity that is adequate and also to apply the free consignment for the indigenous people that probably may affect indigenous populations.
But the thing is that from the beginning, we must be able to standardize that there are some affordable housing that they are adequate with the participation and the pification of urban areas that might affect indigenous populations.
This is basically the two things that I wanted to say and that really concern us from the perspective of the Indigenous people.
I would love that you could consider it in the framework of possible regulation.
Also, I would like to say that if there's a possibility of visiting Bolivia, maybe that would be helpful to help indigenous people and that is within the framework on the right of applying.
So thank you very much.
Then we have many other people.
Thank you.
I'm Thomas.
I'm from Chile of the Chile Chamber of Construction, so I'm representing the private sector here.
I think that due to the problem of the advocate housing and the housing supply and housing accessibility today involves many actors, it will be very important that your report or your investigation in different countries and situations involves For instance, the water supply companies or the utilities companies today in Chile at least are critical actors to provide feasibility for housing development.
You can have urban land, regulated land, you can have all the conditions, but the water supply company who is private, does not want to give you the service, the project doesn't work.
Or the project is unb expensive, it falls out of any kind of a accessibility possibilities.
On the other hand, it's also important to have the finance sector.
You have to look at it.
I think you should look at it because in many countries, for instance, we don't have the instruments or the adequate instruments to allow for example, for vulnerable people or for low income households to have any kind of instrument to allow them to access to housing.
It's also a failure on the market, but the policy doesn't even cover that.
So there is like a limbo there, like a gray area that nobody covers and there's hundreds of thousands of people at least in Chile, and I think many countries can relate, particularly in moderate income households that has no solutions.
They don't falls in the social housing category and they can access through market.
So that's also important.
Of course, as I said, I come from the private sector, and it's also very important that you hold us accountable for instance, in terms of productivity.
In terms of how we are developing or innovating into bringing new technologies into housing to scale up any solutions or to provide better solutions or lower costs or things like that.
It's also important to consider it in a vision of all the ecosystem of the housing today that is much more complex than probably that it was 20 or 30 years ago.
Thank you.
Um, it was the gentleman here in the first row and then back to the gentleman in the fourth row on the left.
Then I think there are two more hands, but we'll see where we are days time.
We still have 45 minutes, please.
Awesome.
Pedel based in Finland, Nepal, and Australia representing Iified co housing and University of Sydney, I just wanted to talk about the access to legal protection against the abuse of authority from city officials also cities.
I don't know if you are aware, but just last week in Kathmandu, parts of the city were wiped out.
I saw that in my own eyes.
It's terrifying and there is no way the population or us as a company can legally fight that.
We have no means to hire a bunch of lawyers to fight cities either in Nepal or in Finland.
In Finland also, there's abuse of authority from city inspectors, which then claim things that go into Kafkan process of a court procedure, administrative court, and then the press also picks it up, creates defation and then how can entities, legal entities like ours or even individuals access to legal protection before they get bankrupted or completely discarded from society? I think this will be super important.
You have a hard task ahead of you, but congratulations for your position, but really tough.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you.
We'll go there and then I will respond and then we have two more hands on the extreme right with your permission, extreme right side of the room.
Yes.
Thank you very much and thanks for your space also.
This is really great to have an interaction like this.
My name is Matthias Van Ostrom, I work with and habitat.
We've been collecting data actually on informal settlement eviction.
If you've had a chance to look at the latest edition of the World Lease Report, we actually have data now on informal settlement eviction 2003-2023, at least 64 million people evicted from informal settlement in that 20 year period, and this is just the visible an eviction, so to speak, there's many more probably that were missing.
But I wanted to pose a question to you or an issue about process in two ways.
One is that the violations of the right adequate housing are often framed or seen as events, events of eviction.
In my work, I've seen a lot of things happening before the eviction.
The threat of eviction itself is extremely debilitating and people receive notice and they may remain there two, three, four, five, six years before finally something happens or something doesn't happen.
But in that entire time in between, they are scared psychologically, they don't want to invest.
The threat of eviction can sometimes be as powerful as the eviction itself.
Then the second part of the process is what happens after the eviction.
Actually, while you were talking about legal battles and so forth, I After the ection it's not over, it's only starting.
People come back sometimes to decide to recover possessions, to recover materials, sometimes at risk of their own security.
It takes years for them to build up the money, try to find perhaps another parcel of land, try to get the resources together to fight the legal battle, trying to fight this legal battle without then again being harassed.
I think also not only protection for the people who are affected by evictions, but also protection for the people who are fighting with them to fight these evictions.
I'm talking about journalists, I'm talking about NGOs that we know in many contexts are, you know, shouldn't allow to report on these kind of events and if they do our arrest.
That's my first point about process, the before and after as well as the eviction itself.
Then the second one, some of the insights from what we learned on collection data on informal settlement eviction is that in some countries, in some cities interventions, the way I see it are more procedurally.
There is something in place in terms of eviction.
There are some protests, there are some notice, there are some compensation, but there needs to be improvements there.
You have a local government that is sort of recognizing that eviction is an issue and they have a pros in place and it's perhaps more about procedurally improving.
I'm thinking, for example, about Mumbai that has institutionalized this for many decades now that still, in my opinion, has issues of human rights in there, but they have something in place that requires improvement.
Then there's other kinds of countries and cities where you see that informal settlement eviction is, you know, purely punitive, revenge measure, even part of war crimes, sometimes where selective communities are targeted by governments.
Cases where fires are started, the government may not be involved.
I think those perhaps require a different attention and a different approach of there's abuses going on in both cases, but I think the intent may be quite different.
I'll leave it there.
Thank you so much for the opportunity.
Thanks.
Thanks very much.
Some initial remarks, by the way, Maria Sylvia and Emilia, if at any point you want to jump in, feel free to do so.
I first, some responses.
It's Sunnen.
Olivia, Sonan olive in Spanish regarding the importance of housing and territory, culture, spirituality, the connection, the right to side participation, connecting that with what Anna was talking about about the value of the indigenous perspective and the right to learn.
I intellectually recognize that, but I have a lot to learn from that and I totally understand from the concept point of view and part of the vital experience.
It's really important also to recognize and connecting that with the social function of ownership and the link between ownership and pride of housing, a good part On this, there's a lot of legal background coming from the American and African systems that connect indigenous rights to land, cultural expression, and housing that I believe contributed to put on the table a different idea of ownership.
I believe the traditional idea of ownership in the Western world as individuals, exclusive extractivist.
There was some jurisprudence in the Inter American and African system that helped to change that not just about indigenous people, but also for the context.
And I'm very much interested to listen from you if this jurisprudence was useful or maybe you think that something is lacking and that we could explore.
As far as I know, I believe it was quite valuable, but if you believe that there's something that is not yet explored, I would like to hear you.
A visit to Bolivia I would have to look how many visits Bolivia had who went there who didn't.
But at the end of the day, as you know, the reporter can request visits, but then can only go to countries where the government invites him to.
That's what I have on that, but I'm going to take a look at it.
Yes.
Clearly, private actors have human rights obligations as a matter of international law, but they have extra obligations when they are private actors performing public functions.
There's a number of standards we can refer to the guiding principles, the Committee on economic, social and cultural rights, G Comment 24, paragraphs 21, 22.
But the idea is that the states should not be allowed to do through private actors what is not allowed to do by itself.
I think that's the bottom line for me.
The state has obligations to fulfill social rights, including housing.
The state cannot say, Well, private actors are committing may be committing human rights abuses, but it's not me, but then the state is externalizing the provision of public goods that are necessary for the fulfillment of housing.
In countries such as Chile where through the principle of subsidiarity, the state is actually relying on private providers for a lot of social rights provisions.
I think we need to look with a very critical eye.
The state cannot wash their hands.
The state should not be allowed to do privately what it cannot do publicly.
We need to state that principle, very clearly.
One of the public functions, by the way, I think there are certain areas where it is clear, education, health, water, housing as well.
You know, housing, there are states out there that have very little public housing, if anything, if any at all.
There are states out there that I don't know, the Netherlands has 32% public housing, but there are countries that have 1%, 2% or nothing at all.
If that is the case, then that state has in relative terms, a country with no public housing and a country with 32 public housing has in normative terms the same obligations in relation to the right to housing.
Some will be richer, some will be poorer.
I get that, but they have the same obligation.
So a country with no public housing has to tell us people in the country, researchers, UN mechanisms, what it is going to do in the private sector to hold to account the private actors, to regulate private actors, so they contribute to the fulfillment of the right to housing.
Again, a country with no public housing cannot wash their hands and saying, because I do not have public housing, I don't have the resources.
No, you need to tell us if you rely on the private sector, how are you going to regulate the private sector? How are you going to hold them to account? So they have become a tool to fulfillment of the right to housing and all of the rights.
Um, the colleague concerning Kamandu several cases.
When it comes to cases, I will encourage you guys to submit, as I did the other day when we talked, submit your cases, your information to the special rapporteur ideally using the platform, the online platform.
You can also do it via email, and we will do our best to look into the case, into the circumstances and help.
About Kammanu, yes, that's something that about which I express my concerns together with Paola, the special rapporteur on IDPs.
Last week, I believe, I believe it was last Monday.
We also had high level meetings with the Nepali mission.
We raised concerns.
My understanding is that it is a new government that has been in place for 40 days or so.
They have grand ambitions of change.
They have promised change, transformation.
But the first measures that they seem to be taking seem to be not compliant with the rule of law, not only with international law, which is one thing, but also with their own domestic standards, constitution and domestic legislation, not only in relation to evictions, also in relation to trade unions.
It is my understanding that they have suspended.
Some trade unions that were uncomfortable.
That is not acceptable both as a matter of domestic law and as a matter of international human rights law.
And we expressed that a with the right authorities representing the Nepali government and in the press release that was issued last week.
And I hope to continue the dialogue with them, but we have raised the issue of evictions in Kamandu.
Matis, is it? About the data, I'm not sure right now whether I know that website or that data, but I look forward to maybe I do, but frankly, right now, I do not remember.
I will make sure to familiarize myself with that database.
About the process.
Yes, two points to say, I think it was Joseph wasn't here yesterday perhaps in the event that you guys organized that was talking about the principles of reparation of international human rights law and how we need to apply them for the context of evictions.
I think it's important to look at reparation holistically beyond compensation, obviously.
One of the standards of reparations international law is guarantees of non repetition and we need to explore that.
We need to hold the states to account about what they are doing to make sure that the structural causes by which evictions happen, that the underlying reasons why there is an eviction in Kammanu, for instance, the structural conditions are addressed.
It is not sufficient to fix one case or another case.
We need to look at the structural conditions, and for me, the hook will be the principle of non repetition, guarantees of non repetition.
And and the impact that evictions have in advance and after years ago, I did research on evictions, rental evictions, some of the invisible evictions in Madrid and Barcelona.
And I interviewed lots of people that went through evictions and or were at the risk of evictions.
And yes, I learned I discovered that eviction is not an event.
Eviction is a threat that is hanging over your head, a sword hanging over your head for months or longer.
If you are afraid that it's going to happen, and then it happens, and then it's your situation afterwards.
It's a very long process that has huge impact on children, for instance, for instance, in the case of rental evictions, there are some courts that say, the parents signed a contract, the parents cannot comply with the conditions, and there is an eviction.
Well, even if we were to accept that freedom of contract, what about the children? The children do not sign any contract and the children are entitled to the right to housing and the right to protection of the home just as much.
The impact that it has on children on their education, on people with disabilities, the gendered impact when I did interviews in Madrid and Barcelona, most of the people that I talked to, and I reckon maybe 90% were women.
Who were talking not about their own experiences, but experience in the families and experience in the community.
So definitely I believe me I'm sensitive to that.
I'm sensitive to the recognition that an eviction is not an event, is a problem, is a threat that affects communities for a very long period of time.
Okay.
Okay, so maybe back to you.
There were two hands raised on the last row on this side, and I believe there was another hand That, please.
Thank you.
Hi.
Hello, good morning.
Thank you so much for this session.
Very interesting.
I'm Rosa Turk.
I'm elected counselor from Barcelona.
I'll be building from what Emilia was saying as a representative of local authorities.
I just raised the hand to reinforce what is the main idea.
I think that this would be the main topic that you should work on.
I would like to say that this is my request to you.
As we were saying, cities are the ones that we are seeing in front of us.
Invisible evictions, how the temporary rental is putting people out of the city, housing is still a commodity.
You were saying and everyone was saying here that we need the law, I mean, how national law are protecting all the events that we are seeing ourselves.
From local authorities, we are being, I would say, very creative with the tools that we are having.
We are trying to protect the cities with the tools that we can implement at the local level, but this is not enough.
We need the national law.
And we are seeing how national parliaments are not in the same idea that we are having here.
Because if we want national laws, we need the majority and parliaments, you know that.
My request is that this main idea that housing is for people to live in, that is a common agreement here, is a common agreement in these global arenas, we need to put this idea on the national level and the national parliaments because if we are not getting this, we are not getting the law to protect us.
So putting this in the center because at the end, we need to push these national governments and these national majorities to really protect the cities.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Please, yes, a second row on the side as well.
Yeah.
I just wanted to place under my name is Mia Menon and I work with Working People's Coalition, which is a coalition of informal workers in different states in India.
I also work with HIC.
I just wanted to place the question of housing informal housing is very closely linked with informal work and very often that link is somehow not stressed enough.
When solutions are sought, we'd have to look at occupation, livelihood, money because there's not enough social protection.
Unless housing is also linked As part of social protection, in fact, in a broader sense, it will be very difficult to solve the problem because very often when slum dwellers are evicted, they have no option but to go and find another place and the struggle of building another slum.
You know, in India, we have over 500 million informal labor.
So you can imagine that at least 70%, I mean, very, very, very estimate that they would be living in informal sector.
So please let us put both and involve organizations of labor, not necessarily even those who are organizing informal labor, but even those who are organizing central trade unions, et cetera, in this battle because it's both ways.
The housing people don't look at labor and labor doesn't look at housing.
Thank you.
Yeah.
I want you to leave a thought in the room that is not new for many of us, but it doesn't usually come up when we have these conversations, this there and as kind of division is sometimes a very fine line, difficult to define.
Local governments and national governments around the world are winning elections based on people that want people to be evicted.
Because they want places to look nicer and based on people that consider houses as a private commodity that they want to make money on.
In Barcelona City, many of my neighbors are very interested in keeping everything they can, this temporary money making machine with tourism and it will be very difficult for any government to actually go as far as to regulate that in the way that they should be regulated.
I'm just putting it in a provocative manner because it is not government versus us.
Is us also defining what government is doing.
This is also a very important part of the picture that we will need to paint.
The last intervention is actually the one that triggered this thought for me because in this informal work and informal housing, when I talk with many mayors around the world that are using informality as a word, they are in fact thinking about illegality.
That is also linked with human mobility and migration.
The notion that you can qualify someone as illegal per se, is a very disturbing thought.
We have been able to overcome the linguistics, but there is no way that the legislation is going with this.
There is a legislative part of this that needs to be addressed.
No, and the paradigm between government and people is not as clear as it would seem to be in this room and that is something that we from the side of local and regional governments, we would need to see addressed because a lot of governments are also losing elections because they are trying to avoid evictions.
They are trying to regulate Airbnb.
They are trying to regulate destructive platform.
For us, it would be very important that that also comes about linking local government service provision and regulation with this whole discussion.
I want Samuel to go next, but if I may on this, I think it's spot on, of course, I think for us in the human rights community, we also need to be a little bit self critical as well, I believe, with your permission.
I think we need to reflect about the language that we use, the tools that we use, So we believe in the power of human rights.
We are convinced people in this room, we believe in the significance of the tools and the fact that these standards are recognized in international law.
We believe in the importance.
We either be in the system or at the very least, we believe that there is nothing better than the system, and therefore, we use it and we argue that housing is a human right and that in itself should be sufficient to hold state to account.
I believe that as well.
However, Alva There are lots of people who are not yet with us and we need to be clever, I believe, in the way we articulate our priorities and our concerns.
There will be people that we never managed to convince.
There's no point really in hitting our heads against the wall because there are people that will always be against us.
But there are some people out there that we might manage to reach if we speak the right language, if we connect, if we listen to them, first of all, and if we use language that is relatable, that is understandable.
I think that is one of the contributions of the idea of localizing human rights is not only about looking at local authorities, it's also about being understanding and flexible about local ways of talking, local ways of identifying priorities, local expressions, local language that maybe is less international, less about treaties, and more about the local realities and whatever we can do to learn and speak that language, I think is helpful.
Also, the idea of social determinants of health, which is something I would like to explore in the first two or three years of my mandate is important here.
The idea of social determinants of health is that good housing policies or work policies or environmental policies are good in themselves, but they are also good as means to the end of improving health conditions.
It is amply demonstrated that effective policies in housing that target those who need them the most are not only good for those who need them the most are good for society as a whole.
Improve the health conditions of society as a whole, reduce health inequalities, increase life expectancy for society as a whole.
That is an argument that many people can grasp, can understand.
It's not only a human rights argument.
It's not an Article 11, an Article 12, ICSC arguments, technical legal human rights argument, but it's an argument that we can engage with, we can use, and maybe some people will engage with it a bit more.
That's one suggestion that I have.
Samuel, please.
The second place on this side, please.
Yes.
Thank you.
As part of your work, we suggest that it will be important to look at the relationship between financial architecture and the right to housing since because we come from countries over 50% of our public revenues is going to repaying loans and the architecture here has been designed where our countries pay sometimes up to eight times more than the countries in the global north pay.
That means the public funds that we have They are used to repaying the loans, and then we borrow to repay the same loans, and that means there's not enough budget to invest in housing and other social services.
So this is used to rate our credit score and we are told no, you cannot get more finances, so the available finance goes to private capital and the private capital is being used to develop the market for housing, and that means there's no investment in the social and public housing.
Another important point that you have raised is on the importance of local authorities in developing housing.
You find that through the law, through the constitution, the local authorities have the function of implementing public housing.
But this constitutional function is not always followed by the finances from the national government to implement it.
You find that you have the legal mandate to implement, but you don't have the funds to implement.
It will be very important to look at this holistic financial architecture, both at the global level, national level, as well as how it relates at the local levels.
Let me respond.
I see that we are getting ready for lunch maybe.
But let me respond to these three points and then we will see whether there are more hands and otherwise we can wrap it up.
Rosa from Barcelona, yes.
For me, Barcelona is one of the examples that inspire me, actually, how they are very interesting initiatives at the local level with this administration and previous administrations that are stopped by the competence distribution in Spain.
That's why I think it's so important to look at the local authorities, to hold them to account as duty bearers, to demand that they have the right competencies connecting to the last point that Samuel just raised, but also to demand to be aware, to be mindful that these structural and institutional limitation of what they can do, not only the resources, but also there are certain things they cannot regulate.
We need to ask national governments, national parliaments to ensure that they adopt the right measures to prevent speculation, to give the normative tools for local authorities to make sure that the people living in Barcelona are the ones who have access to housing in Barcelona, people currently living in Barcelona or people who want to live in Barcelona, but not speculators.
Mia, thanks for raising the needs to connect with labor movements.
I reminder for me.
Otherwise, I might miss it.
So thank you for making me take note of that.
Samuel, the local authorities, well, I think I addressed that.
Important to recognize that they need the finances.
Um Yes, the financial architecture, sometimes I think some people believe that when country A owes debts to country B, maybe some people get the message that citizen country A owe money to citizens country B.
But the truth is that the people it is the banks and the investors and the private and capitalist class in country B.
Or internationally, that is the creditor here, not the citizens in country.
It's not the citizens in country that are benefiting from that supposed debt that is being owed.
Yes, we need to talk about that.
There is much I need to learn about it as well, but it's something that I hear at different levels as well.
Yesterday, we were talking with Emilia about how local authorities in a different context, but I think it matters in the context of Europe, we're asking for the investment in housing not to be accounted for in the debts that they have for the deficit when calculating the deficit.
We need to talk about that sort of thing.
We need to talk about how we shield housing provision from financial calculations of deficit and surplus.
It's something that I need to be mindful of.
And remembering that it is private actors that are the creditors here.
It's not private citizens in country it's private actors.
On this, and I had the opportunity yesterday to meet with the people in the booth of the government of Ghana, and I told them that I praise them really.
I mean, and I endorse and I congratulated them for the principles that the government in Ghana is advocating for recognition of reparations for historical injustices.
And it's important to recognize the historical injustices that put some countries in a difficult situation to fulfill rights.
And also we need to be consistent with that.
It's not just about normative recognition that yeah, slavery happened, colonization happened.
It's also important to recognize that, now what sort of mechanisms we're going to adapt, we are consistent with the recognition of those injustices.
And Ghana is putting the government, Afghan is putting that on the table in international forums.
I told them that I think it is very good.
It's an important contribution that I share and I hope to do so in the coming years as well.
For the record.
Okay.
No more hands raised.
It's 10 minutes before the hour, but every now and then we can finish meetings before the hour.
Why not? Should we have one more and we finish that? Yeah.
Please.
Thank you.
My name is Nathan from the Uganda Housing Cooperative Union, but also a member of HIC.
In pursuit of the right to adequate housing, I think there is a need to urge member states to recognize community led housing solutions as core housing delivery mechanisms rather than alternative niches, because some of us come from countries where Save 80% of housing is self constructed or in the hands of individuals, and you find that the private sector will only produce for those who can afford those who need it.
So there is need to recognize these community led models such as housing cooperatives because we know uh I individually producing houses, you cannot really do much in terms of size.
But under the community setting with housing, you find that even accessing financing becomes easier.
But also to urge the member states to fund the adequacy part and not just a unit because when we are talking about adequacy, we are talking about all the other parameters, accessibility, affordability, access to basic services, and once enough of it is missing, then you find that, of course, the pursuit of the mandate becomes a challenge.
Thank you.
Yes.
In the idea of localizing human rights, I intend to include not only local authorities, local institutions, but also community led initiatives.
I believe that a a radical approach to democracy means that we recognize that people should be allowed to should be empowered to do what they can decide to decide on their own lives and what they can and for what they cannot do, that's where we need representatives.
That's why we need delegation.
But we need to trust people with the knowledge and with the resources to deliver in everything in life, but including housing.
I think community led initiatives is an example of that and is part of the things that I have in mind when talking about localizing human rights.
Okay.
I think we can wrap it up.
I mean, because I'm conscious of time.
If it is very brief.
Yes, please.
Yeah.
Microphone there, and then we are going to finish it.
Just as a little bit of a follow up to that, including the need for waste management and safe water.
If you have people who are building their own homes, there needs to be a mechanism for the infrastructure to make sure that for disease control, that you're having safe water, that you're having trash taken away so that you don't have small water receptacles for mosquito borne illnesses.
And in those more rural communities where people are responsible for building their own homes, you still have to have the infrastructure for safe housing and safe environment.
Thanks very much.
We're going to stop and finish there, but I want to give the chance to Maria Sylvia and Emilia, if they want to say anything and then Gnar to finish.
Thank you.
Thank you about community housing, just to say that I will share with the rapporteur some documents on that because I think many people were speaking around this and also local materials.
I know that is something that maybe is not in the center of the debate, but the last, the former apporter Raj was doing something around it, but I can share with you some more information about the importance of this way of to really solve the problem around habitat and housing for many, many people.
We want the state to put money also to this kind of processes.
Then, just to say, I think was really interesting even for us, Hick, to listen to all the participation.
I think that something that is basic is the relations everyone was built from one right to another.
Indivisibility is fundamental, I think that was really clear on your participation.
I will just leave it to this.
Thank you very much for the opportunity, Codo to be here with you.
Thank you very much, Ecoldo and friends.
I was very happy to learn with you today and to confirm that also from the perspective of the collective agenda of local and regional governments, We will certainly take your your comments into account.
We have a structural partnership with HIC, and we are creating an international Housing Justice Academy to ensure that local and regional governments around the world take this into account.
One issue that I'm very grateful came up on the financial architecture, is that we need to add to the issue of debt, the very hard reality that most local and regional governments are not able to be indebted.
They cannot borrow directly and they cannot access directly to financing.
And this can also be a great problem when addressing some of the social housing needs and general planning for cities, something that I think is worth looking into.
And on behalf of the constituency that I represent, which is not doing a good job, the only thing that I can say is we will keep on the good fight and make sure that together we can change heart, minds, and above all, law and resources.
Thank you very much.
I would like to thank everybody in the room for this very good and thoughtful discussion.
Even myself have been six, eight years, supporting different special raptur the mandate, pick up always new dimensions or reiterate Newman dimensions that are so important.
Therefore, many thanks for that.
Many thanks also to the co panelists who are long time also partners and friends working also in close relationship with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights with us to advance not only the right to adequate housing, but in an integrative manner, various human rights that all need our attention.
I'm so thankful we are available also now.
Also, we have the right to food ourselves supporting these events, including the many volunteers and interpreters who sit there and make all this happen here.
This is really a pleasure.
Many thanks and have a good afternoon.
Thank.