A/71/310
Report of the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a
component of the right to an adequate standard of living,
and on the right to non-discrimination in this context
Summary
The fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights provides an important opportunity to reflect on the impact of
dividing the unified rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into two
categories. Of particular importance was the choice to separate the right to life from
the right to adequate housing.
The right to life does not actually belong to one or the other category of human
rights. Lived experience illustrates that the right to life cannot be separated from the
right to a secure place to live, and the right to a secure place to live only has meaning
in the context of a right to live in dignity and security, free of violence.
The right to adequate housing is too frequently disconnected from the right to
life and core human rights values, treated more as a policy aspiration than as a
fundamental right which demands timely rights-based responses and access to
justice.
Violations of the right to life have been addressed primarily in cases where
direct action or deliberate omissions by States have deprived or threatened to deprive
individuals of life. The failure of States to address systemic deprivations of the right
to life tied to poverty, grossly inadequate housing and homelessness have not
received the same attention. The urgency and outrage that should be provoked in
response to the conditions in which millions of people are forced to live seem to have
gone missing; so too has the political will to address those conditions.
Relying on emerging jurisprudence in domestic, regional and international
human rights law, responding to the lived experience of rights holders, int ernational
human rights mechanisms, States, domestic courts, civil society and the media are
well placed to bring forward an integrated understanding of the right to life. Now is
the time to reunify these two rights so that homelessness and grossly inadequ ate
housing are seen and addressed as unacceptable violations of the right to housing and
the right to life.
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