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Title | Date added | Template | Body | Legal status | Document type | Year | Document code | Original document | Paragraph text | Thematics | Topic(s) | Person(s) affected | Year |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 16 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | State compliance with the right to adequate housing must ultimately be assessed in relation to the circumstances of rights-holders. A human rights framework for addressing the financialization of housing must challenge the way in which accountability to the needs of communities and the human rights obligations of Governments has been replaced with accountability to markets and investors. Mechanisms must be established for rights-holders to be fully heard and engaged in decisions that affect them. States must ensure that financial institutions and investors are responsive to the needs of marginalized communities, behave in a manner that is consistent with the full realization of the right to adequate housing and provide complaints procedures and access to effective remedies. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 17 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has suggested that the obligation to fulfil incorporates both an obligation to facilitate and an obligation to provide. In the context of the critical relationship between housing and financial markets, the articulation of a State's fulfilment obligation to not only provide housing when needed but also to facilitate the implementation of the right to housing is helpful in capturing the wide range of States' obligations to ensure that financial markets and the actions of private investors work towards the realization of the right to adequate housing. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 54 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Claims have recently been brought against the Dominican Republic and Panama, for example, on the basis that government decisions to cancel planned luxury developments in order to protect indigenous territories or environmental resources violated investors' rights under bilateral investment treaties. The Government of Mauritius is currently being taken to arbitration by a group of property development companies from the United Kingdom that invested in luxury real estate developments in Mauritius and are now seeking damages for a decision on the part of the Government to change its planning policy to restrict such developments. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 55 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The mere threat of those kinds of claims can have a directive effect on State housing policy. Investment treaty arbitration frequently involves millions of dollars in damages, and thus acts as a disincentive for States to enact and enforce any regulatory measures restricting the profitability of housing or real estate assets purchased by foreign investors. Those whose right to adequate housing may have been infringed by States' failures to regulate the activities and speculative profits of foreign investors, on the other hand, have few if any avenues of redress, and certainly no ability to seek damages in the amounts claimed by private investors. The imbalance in access to remedies creates an imbalance in State accountability and priorities. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 44 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The housing sector in the global South has not been subject to extensive financing of homeownership. Only about 17 per cent of the population in Botswana, Kenya, Namibia and Zambia, for example, would be eligible for mortgage finance based on existing criteria. Low-income, informal and indigenous communities have nevertheless experienced, first-hand, the power of financial corporations to appropriate land and real estate and to generate vast disparities in wealth by treating housing and land as commodities. The displacement of Garifuna communities by model cities containing luxury developments for tourists and wealthy residents in Honduras is an example of the kinds of displacements of communities and forced evictions that are occurring in many countries (see A/HRC/33/42/Add.2, para. 56). Many local and national governments looking for capital investment have opted to sell land to major developers at the expense of indigenous and impoverished communities and those living in precarious housing. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 25 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Housing and urban real estate have become the commodity of choice for corporate finance, a "safety deposit box" for the wealthy, a repository of capital and excess liquidity from emerging markets and a convenient place for shell companies to stash their money with very little transparency. In addition, corporate tax havens that generate massive amounts of profit immune from taxation, estimated at 30 per cent of global gross domestic product, are particularly attracted to housing and real estate. In most countries, residential investment provides many tax advantages, so that the housing system itself provides a tax haven for the rich (see A/67/286, pp. 11-12). |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 72 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Some Governments have chosen to encourage a more inclusive approach to private investment in housing in the form of financial incentives to encourage the development of affordable units. The Government of Algeria, for example, finances the development of rental housing for households earning less than 1.5 times the minimum wage, on free government land. It also provides a lease-to-own programme for households with little down-payment capacity. Other Governments require that developers include a proportion of affordable units. The Mayor of London recently announced that builders will be required to ensure that 35 per cent of new homes that are built are genuinely affordable. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 50 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | In many developing and emerging economies, the World Bank and other international and regional financial institutions continue to actively promote the financialization of housing as the dominant strategy for addressing the critical need for housing, despite evidence that such strategies fail to provide housing options to the households that are most in need, and lead to greater socioeconomic inequality. World Bank development programmes concentrate on what they consider to be the building blocks of housing finance such as title registration, foreclosure procedures, lending regulations, long-term funding instruments, and improving the liquidity of mortgage assets in order to reduce the costs of credit-risk underwriting for investors. Those policies, combined in many cases with austerity measures that reduce social protection and housing programmes, have meant that development programmes frequently support the emergence of a financialized housing system that may be at odds with States' obligations to prioritize the needs of those in the most desperate circumstances. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 52 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The excessive financialization of housing is directly related to systemic patterns of inequality in investment treaties and in domestic law that fail to recognize the paramountcy of human rights over investor interests and deny access to justice for those whose right to housing is at stake. Ensuring meaningful accountability of financial institutions and private actors to the right to housing will require a significant transformation of current systems of law and accountability and new avenues of access to justice at the local, national and international levels. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 28 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Massive investment of capital into housing markets and rising prices should not be confused with the production of housing and the benefits that accrue from it. The bulk of real estate transactions of that sort do not create needed housing or long-term secure employment. When rented homes or mortgages are owned by remote investors, money mostly flows out of communities and simply creates greater global concentration of wealth. The new corporate interest in developing rental properties from homes sold in foreclosures has also raised concerns that there is a greater incentive to pursue foreclosures rather than modify a loan agreement to avoid an unnecessary eviction. The proliferation of foreign and domestic investment in short-term rental properties, such as for Airbnb, in countries like Portugal, has contributed to escalating prices of housing and changes to the make-up of neighbourhoods, without creating affordable housing or other benefits for the local population. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 29 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | What is so stark about the pouring of those vast amounts of money into housing is that hardly any of it is directed towards ameliorating the insufferable housing conditions in which millions live. If even a portion of those amounts was directed towards affordable housing and access to credit for people in need of it, target 11.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals, to ensure adequate housing for all by 2030, would be well within reach. Financialization under current regimes, however, creates the opposite effect: unaccountable markets that do not respond to housing need, and urban centres that become the sole preserve of those with wealth. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 77d | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | [The Special Rapporteur suggests that the way forward requires a shift to take hold so that States ensure that all investment in housing recognizes its social function and States' human rights obligations in that regard. That requires a transformation of the relationship between the State and the financial sector, whereby human rights implementation becomes the overriding goal, not a subsidiary or neglected obligation. The Special Rapporteur believes that can be achieved with more constructive engagement and dialogue between States, human rights actors, international and domestic financial regulatory bodies, private equity firms and major investors. In order to create those new conversations and achieve that shift, the Special Rapporteur recommends the following:] Business and human rights guidelines should, on a priority basis, be developed specifically for financial actors operating in the housing system; |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 33 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Many residential rental properties are now owned by bondholders or holders of public stock with no direct connection to properties. It is difficult to know who is accountable for human rights when the owner of housing is a multibillion dollar fund, bondholders, public stockholders or a nameless corporate shell. Tenants living in housing owned by absentee corporate landlords have complained of sharp increases in rent, inadequate maintenance and conditions as a result of substandard renovations that have been undertaken quickly to flip the home into rentals, and an inability to hold anyone accountable for those conditions. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 34 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Increased prices of housing and real estate assets have become key drivers in the creation of greater wealth inequality. Those who own property in prime urban locations have become richer, while lower-income households confronting the escalating costs of housing become poorer. Surveys of ultra-high-net-worth individuals show that more than half have increased the proportion of their investments allocated to residential properties, with the most common reasons being in order to sell at a later date and to provide a safe haven for wealth. The "economics of inequality", in fact, may be explained in large part by the inequalities of wealth generated by housing and real estate investments. Buying a home with a mortgage becomes a speculative investment depending on volatile financial markets, which may generate considerable wealth on leveraged equity or, alternatively, deprive households of a lifetime of savings. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 37 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Financialized housing markets create and thrive on gentrification and the appropriation of public value for private wealth. Improved services, schools or parks in an impoverished neighbourhood attract investment, which then drives residents out. The transformation of an old railway line in West Chelsea in Manhattan into a public walkway and park has attracted wealthy investors to a mixed income neighbourhood, radically transforming it with luxury housing units costing in the multimillions, and displacing longer term residents. In Vancouver, the opening of new public transport facilities in Burnaby, one of the few remaining areas of affordable rental housing, has quickly led to the development of expensive condominium towers, displacing residents who have not only lived there for decades, but also invested in developing their community. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 64 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Despite the growing attention to the importance of business and human rights and despite the fact that housing represents the largest global business sector, very little attention has been paid to the obligations of business enterprises and financial corporations operating in the real estate and housing sector with respect to the right to adequate housing. The "Practical guide to ESG integration for equity investing", for example, makes no reference to human rights in relation to investments in housing and other real estate. The International Organization of Securities Commissions, whose members regulate more than 95 per cent of the world's capital markets, has not addressed the central role that human rights in general and the right to housing in particular should play in the regulation of capital markets. |
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Financialization of housing and the right to adequate housing 2017, para. 67 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Policy responses to the financialization of housing have tended to prioritize support for financial institutions over responding to the needs of those whose right to adequate housing is at stake. Spending on bailouts of banks and financial institutions after the 2008 financial crisis far outstripped spending to provide assistance to the victims of the crisis. In fact, many national Governments made substantial cuts to their housing programmes. As noted above, the World Bank continues to promote "financial liberalization" rather than active State intervention in housing provision in emerging economies, despite the evidence that financialization generally increases inequality and fails to address the needs of the millions of households living in situations of homelessness or grossly inadequate informal housing. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 22 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Homelessness for persons with disabilities is also linked to the breakdown of family relationships. A study in Montreal, Canada, of homeless persons with intellectual disabilities found that almost all individuals who lived on the street or in shelters had had no contact with their families since becoming homeless. On mission in Chile, the Special Rapporteur visited a homeless shelter run by the Salvation Army in Valparaiso where many of the residents were persons with intellectual or psychosocial disabilities who had been shunned or abandoned by their families. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 24 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Water, sanitation and hygiene facilities are often inaccessible and located some distance from the home. Those with mobility impairments may be dependent on assistance or forced to drag themselves along the ground to reach the facilities. In many situations, persons with disabilities are simply unable to gain access to toilets, must defecate in their homes and are often unable to remove waste. Streets or alleys in informal settlements are often sand, gravel or mud, sometimes built into steep cliffs and hill-sides, and are not accessible to persons in wheelchairs or with reduced mobility. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 75 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | In its recent white paper on the rights of persons with disabilities, the Department of Social Services of South Africa called for a comprehensive strategy to realize the right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities consistent with the transformative nature of the constitutional right to housing, including supported community living plans, subsidized housing support, universal design as a requirement in infrastructure grants and a sustainable community-based system for support for independent living. In the white paper, emphasis was laid on the critical importance of strengthening the enforcement of existing legislation, improving access to courts, complaints mechanisms and institutions and strengthening the capacity of institutions such as the South African Human Rights Commission and of organizations for persons with disabilities to support persons with disabilities in gaining access to justice. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 31 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Conflict and displacement also give rise to increased numbers of persons with disabilities. In Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and the Gaza Strip, for example, conflict has contributed to high numbers of persons with disabilities. At the same time, in each of those places, adequate, accessible housing is extremely scarce, with housing stock having been destroyed and a lack of access or specific policies blocking access to the materials and resources necessary to rebuild homes. In refugee camps, poorly lit and remotely located latrines can lead to difficult access and experiences of sexual violence for women with disabilities, while crowded, narrow walkways can result in persons with visual impairments falling into open sewers. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 79 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Subnational and local governments have also initiated important efforts to address the right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities. Article XIV (1) of the World Charter for the Right to the City provides for universal realization of the right to housing and emphasizes the need for accessible and suitable locations. In article X of the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City, it is recommended that cities adopt regulations to ensure the accessibility of housing for persons with disabilities. Some cities have sought to initiate inclusive zoning policies to prevent restrictions on supportive housing. Others have adopted measures to address affordability, such as housing benefits and/or allowances, grants or loans for required adaptations, lower interest rates on housing loans and reduced housing taxes for families with a family member with a disability. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 36 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | In the Convention, a broad and substantive concept of the right to equality and non-discrimination is affirmed. Prohibited discrimination includes any distinction, exclusion or restriction on the basis of disability that has the purpose or effect of impairing or nullifying the enjoyment of human rights, including the right to adequate housing. As such, the provision extends to any failures to address systemic inequality in access to adequate housing, including those relating to inadequate services, insufficient social protection and a lack of affordable housing. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 37 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | The right to non-discrimination also requires Governments and private actors to take positive measures to reasonably accommodate the needs of persons with disabilities insofar as such accommodation is “necessary and appropriate” and does not impose a “disproportionate or undue burden”. Reasonable accommodation is not restricted to physical modifications to existing housing. It also includes an obligation to adapt the application of laws and policies. As a component of the right to non-discrimination, reasonable accommodation is considered an immediate obligation of States. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 38 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Equality and non-discrimination are crucial for the realization of the right to housing of persons with disabilities under article 28. States must take positive measures to the maximum of available resources to address systemic homelessness and deprivation of housing, which disproportionately affects persons with disabilities, and to strive towards the full realization of the right to adequate housing for all persons with disabilities. In the Convention, it is made abundantly clear that the right to non-discrimination of persons with disabilities is not simply a negative right, requiring Governments and private actors to refrain from actions that exclude persons with disabilities, but also a positive right, requiring them to take measures to ensure the enjoyment of the right to housing. As Andrea Broderick notes, “the intersection of equality and socioeconomic rights in the [Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities] may provide a key to unlocking the structural inequalities which disabled people, and by extension other marginalised groups, have encountered for too long now”. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 5 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | In 1994, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights made an important advance with the adoption of general comment No. 5 (1994) on persons with disabilities. The Committee noted that an estimated 70 per cent of persons with disabilities worldwide lacked access to the services that they required and that “there is no country in which a major policy and programme effort is not required”. It emphasized that States were required “to take positive action to reduce structural disadvantage … in order to achieve the objectives of full participation and equality within society for all persons with disabilities” and that that included the right to support services for living in the community and to housing that was accessible, with additional resources made available. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 66 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | In a decision adopted in 2008, the Supreme Court of Nepal ordered the release of all persons who were imprisoned because of psychosocial disabilities, in keeping with the right to equality, health and a dignified life. The Court directed the Government to enact a law to protect the rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities and to arrange health services and other necessary measures. Local and international organizations have continued to exert pressure on the Government to implement the Court’s order in line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. In a decision adopted in 2012, the Court ordered the Government to provide a monthly stipend, build shelters and appoint a social welfare worker in each district. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 82b (i) | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | [In that regard, the Special Rapporteur offers the following recommendations:] [Courts, tribunals and national human rights institutions should:] Interpret and apply domestic law in accordance with the right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities and in particular recognize that the rights to life, liberty, substantive equality and non-discrimination require Governments to address homelessness, provide support for living in the community and respond to the diverse housing needs of persons with disabilities; |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 20 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | Homelessness disproportionately affects persons with disabilities. In a vicious circle, disability often leads to homelessness and homelessness, in turn, creates or exacerbates impairments and additional barriers linked to stigma and isolation. Of the homeless adults in shelters in the United States of America, 43 per cent have a disability. Persons with psychosocial and intellectual disabilities are particularly vulnerable to homelessness and its effects. |
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The right to adequate housing of persons with disabilities 2017, para. 34 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Non-negotiated soft law | Special Procedures' report | “Respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices, and independence of persons” is a guiding principle set forth in article 3 (a) of the Convention that is particularly critical in the interpretation of the right to adequate housing. The deprivation of choice of where and with whom to live is often the most critical assault on dignity and autonomy for persons with disabilities. |
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