Homelessness as a global human rights crisis that demands an urgent global response 2016, para. 80
Paragraph- Paragraph text
- Homeless people have begun to reassert their identity through human rights claims through both social movements and legal action. In South Africa, the shack-dwellers' movement, Abahlali, has emerged as a vibrant social movement, claiming the right to housing through both legal and political means. In Uganda, the Uganda Network on Law, Ethics and HIV/AIDS provides free legal representation for homeless widows dispossessed of their homes and properties as a result of discriminatory property and inheritance laws. In the Simon Community in northern Belfast, homeless people, with the assistance of the organization Participation and the Practice of Rights, launched the Homelessness Action Charter to promote the human rights of homeless people. In Canada, homeless people and supportive organizations challenged as unconstitutional national and subnational governments' failure to effectively address homelessness, while simultaneously lobbying for legislation to create a national homelessness and housing strategy. In the United States, homeless peoples' organizations have systematically and successfully challenged laws and policies that criminalize homelessness and have lobbied for federal, State and municipal housing strategies. In El Salvador, local community members formed a national commission for residents to advocate for housing rights alongside other civil society organizations.
- Legal status
- Non-negotiated soft law
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Means of adoption
- N.A.
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Year
- 2016
- Paragraph type
- Other
- Reference
- SR Housing, Report to the HRC (2016), A/HRC/31/54, para. 80.
- Paragraph number
- 80
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