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Title | Date added | Template | Original document | Paragraph text | Body | Document type | Thematics | Topic(s) | Person(s) affected | Year |
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Post conflict and post disaster reconstruction and the right to adequate housing 2011, para. 41 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | With the correct approach and support from the national government and outside agencies, the people directly affected by disasters and conflicts ought to remain directly involved despite the enormity of the challenges they face. This is particularly important in the areas of resettlement and reconstruction. The individuals, families and communities affected possess vital local knowledge and experience, and when working together can be an invaluable partner in designing and implementing creative solutions. Community-based reconstruction, linked to planning and reconstruction processes developed at the municipal and national levels, should be promoted wherever possible. The IASC guidelines accordingly advise agencies "In the planning and rehabilitation of housing and human settlements, [to] devise community-based strategies to maximize the participation of all sectors of affected communities (e.g. community housing teams). Local communities should be involved in decision-making regarding the location, design and infrastructure of housing and settlements to ensure that they are safe, habitable, accessible and culturally appropriate." | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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Post conflict and post disaster reconstruction and the right to adequate housing 2011, para. 32 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | While people from all economic groups suffered from the effects of the hurricane, the damage disproportionately affected the most marginalized sectors of the population - poor women, peasants, indigenous groups. Significantly, many of these had been living under insecure tenure conditions in irregular settlements and inadequate housing, located in vulnerable areas exposed to strong winds, flooding and landslides. Although evacuation orders were issued, many refused to leave their homes for fear of losing their belongings, with disastrous and often fatal consequences. Vulnerability and in particular tenure insecurity was both the cause and effect of the disaster for such families. In the absence of officially recognized tenure rights, people ended up living on the fringes in dangerous areas, which due to their location were often worst affected by the hurricane. Any post-disaster response measures intended to form the basis for longer-term recovery would therefore have needed to address pre-existing insecurity, in order to provide a basis for the full realization of the right to adequate housing. | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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Post conflict and post disaster reconstruction and the right to adequate housing 2011, para. 40 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Ways need to be found around such obstacles, for at the heart of the matter lie the issues of ownership and accountability. In his 2006 report on lessons learned from the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004, the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery found that "It is a false trade-off to sacrifice local ownership for speed if that means short-circuiting the rights of affected populations to be informed in a timely manner about their choices, the assistance available to them, and any delays that are being experienced. The other side of this coin, of course, is accountability to the families and communities our recovery efforts are serving. Typically, demands for accountability come loudest from donors - private and institutional - and implementing agencies are more likely to focus on this kind of upward accountability. Too often, the less organized voices of the survivors are not heard, and this equally vital downward accountability is given second-priority at best. This is unfortunate, as a disaster's survivors are best placed to design the recovery strategy that best meets their needs. And they should be the ultimate judges of a recovery effort's success or failure". | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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Post conflict and post disaster reconstruction and the right to adequate housing 2011, para. 15 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The right to adequate housing can be severely compromised by disasters and conflicts, through damage and destruction, loss of records and the displacement of individuals, families and communities. While the numbers of people affected are often staggering, the impact of conflicts and disasters on this right should not be measured simply in terms of numbers of physical assets destroyed and people displaced. It should also and perhaps primarily be understood in terms of the extent of disruption of social relationships, networks and assets; destruction of home-centred livelihoods built up over many years; and the undermining of complex, multi-layered land tenure rights. Destruction of housing as a physical asset can be addressed through repair, rehabilitation and reconstruction. This is an urgent and difficult enough task in the aftermath of disasters and conflicts. Destruction of housing as a social asset, on the other hand, requires more multi-faceted and longer-term responses based on a deeper understanding of the tenure systems and histories of the affected settlements and, in particular, of their poorer and marginalized residents. It also requires vigilance in the course of the restoration and reconstruction to ensure that previously held tenure rights are not undermined or diminished in any way but are, instead, protected and where possible strengthened. | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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The right to adequate housing in disaster relief efforts 2011, para. 42 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Concerns have also been expressed over what has been called "the business of reconstruction", whereby the planning, financing and implementation of reconstruction are outsourced to private companies. In some cases, outsourcing reconstruction without putting adequate safeguards in place has been associated with negative impacts on the adequacy and affordability of reconstruction as well as on people's ability to participate in and benefit from reconstruction efforts. In Chile, following the earthquake and subsequent tsunami of February 2010, the private sector reportedly played a central role in the reconstruction of urban centres and coastal areas. Following one of the main principles of the national reconstruction plan, families have the choice to decide whether to rebuild their homes on the same sites of the collapsed buildings or to acquire a previously existing or a newly built house. However, as housing reconstruction was supported mainly by subsidies attached to individual property, private constructors preferred to rebuild housing in new areas on the outskirts of towns, rather than the central areas from which many people had been displaced, where land and housing prices were much higher. Real estate companies were also said to pressure families to sell land and housing at very low prices in a moment where they were very vulnerable, in order to make way for private redevelopment. This shows that if left only to the market, new housing for the poorest will likely be in the peripheries. | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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Post conflict and post disaster reconstruction and the right to adequate housing 2011, para. 19 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Failure to take timely appropriate measures can have serious consequences for the people affected. In post-conflict contexts the situation can be even more complex, as obstacles in the way of return and recovery can also include threats of violence against a returning family or group/s, secondary occupation of land and houses, among others. | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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Homelessness as a global human rights crisis that demands an urgent global response 2016, para. 43 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Homelessness among children and young people has reached critical proportions. Factors that push children into leaving home include parents' unemployment and poverty; family disintegration and parental abuse; parental drug and alcohol addictions; and being orphaned owing to HIV/AIDS, Ebola, armed conflict or natural disaster. Some families, unable to support children because of extreme poverty, abandon or send them to urban areas to work. Children raised in residential institutions often find themselves homeless when they reach the age at which institutional care ceases. Identified "pull" factors include "spatial freedom, financial independence, adventure, city glamour and street-based friendships or gangs". | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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Homelessness as a global human rights crisis that demands an urgent global response 2016, para. 40 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The ongoing legacy of discriminatory customary and statutory laws on divorce, inheritance and matrimonial property - as well as social practices that attribute housing to male heads of households and the resultant poverty - deprive women of security of tenure and render them particularly vulnerable to homelessness. When women are widowed, separated or divorced, need to leave violent households or flee situations of armed conflict or natural disasters, or are evicted from their homes, they face significant risks of becoming homeless. Divorced and widowed women in Bangladesh and Lebanon, for example, are reported to be living in dilapidated shacks in dangerous informal settlements and women fleeing violence in Kyrgyzstan and Papua New Guinea are left with few housing options. | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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The right to adequate housing in disaster relief efforts 2011, para. 53 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | As mentioned above, the earthquake in Haiti highlighted the largely inadequate housing conditions and the precariousness and insecure tenure of informal settlements. The international community, by focusing on people displaced in camps, and by offering conditions superior to those enjoyed by many Haitians, inadvertently made camps attractive places. While systematic reconstruction accompanied by the provision of services in neighbourhoods of return is not forthcoming, there is thus little reason for poor families to leave the camps where housing and services are provided free of charge. Although understandable from an emergency perspective, a narrow focus on the plight of internally displaced persons and temporary solutions becomes, amidst a difficult socio-economic and tenure context, an obstacle to long-term recovery, and in some cases may result in further development problems. Such situations are bound to become more frequent, with increased urbanization, much of which occurs in an unplanned manner (see A/64/255, paras. 13-21). | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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The right to adequate housing in disaster relief efforts 2011, para. 13 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | The principles of equality and non-discrimination are firmly rooted in international human rights law. Attention to non-discrimination and equality requires Governments and aid organizations to pay particular attention to vulnerabilities and inequalities in pre-disaster contexts, and, in the aftermath of disasters, to address inequalities and protect the most vulnerable. United Nations treaty bodies have noted that even in times of severe resource constraints - as is typically the case in the wake of a disaster - States have a particular obligation to protect vulnerable members of society. States should also take special measures to secure for disadvantaged groups the full and equal enjoyment of their human rights. In post-disaster situations, such measures might translate into special assistance to support return of the most vulnerable groups or find land/housing for landless or homeless families. | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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The right to adequate housing in disaster relief efforts 2011, para. 22 | Aug 19, 2019 | Paragraph | Often, multiple factors of vulnerability and discrimination have a compounding effect. Post-Katrina responses by the federal and state governments in the United States generally were found lacking when it came to supporting lower-income renters - predominantly African American - and addressing the range of obstacles that prevented them from accessing affordable housing. Despite a federal programme of housing vouchers, in practice, families with rent vouchers had difficulties finding rental units. Reasons included public and rental housing shortages (due to storm damage but also to subsequent decisions to massively cut down public housing), rent increases, discrimination by landowners, the slow pace of rental housing construction and the decision by states in the Gulf coast to direct the bulk of federal funds towards repairing homeowner units rather than rental ones. With a very limited option to rent, an important number of families were de facto denied return to their city and former homes; which resulted in a rise in homelessness. | Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living | Special Procedures' report |
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