Demolished: Forced Evictions And The Tenants’ Rights Movement In China
Demolition and eviction has several decades of history in China. In the past, ordinary people longed for demolition and eviction [because they were moved to better homes], but now ordinary people fear demolition and eviction, they hate [it], and even use death and suicide to oppose [it].. This hatred, this opposition to demolition andeviction has really only appeared in the last few years. - Tenants’ rights advocate Xu Yonghai,
Policy-relevant reflections on Social Production of Habitat: Asking the Right Questions
Social change arises from politics, not philosophy. Ideals are a crucial step in emancipatory politics, however, because they dislodge our assumption that was is given is necessary. They offer the standpoints from which to criticize the given, and inspiration for imagining alternatives.
Women’s ownership of land, housing and productive resources as an indicator of poverty reduction in the Millennium Development Goals
Five of the eight MDGs clearly require the implementation of policies that promote women’s land and livelihood rights. The Consult on Women and Land Rights proposes concrete actions to reduce gender inequality and poverty by increasing women’s ownership on land and productive assets.
Fall in refugee numbers, but rise in others of concern as internal displacement and statelessness
The UN refugee agency today announced that while the global number of refugees fell 4 percent in 2004 to 9.2 million, the lowest total in almost a quarter of a century, the numbers of internally displaced and stateless people remain high.
The Global Fundisation Of Housing – First Sketch And Questions
In Germany and other European countries housing conditions are faced to rapid direct globalisation of the real estate markets. The intensity and quantity of this process is a new phenomenon at least in Germany. Habitat Net Germany is seeking contacts in order to discuss the developments, exchange information, build a common knowledge base and seek common strategies. Below find a first sketch on the situation from a German viewpoint and questions to begin a debate.
For the democratic refoundation of Europe
After the No through referendums in France and the Netherlands the fast implementation of the so called EU constitution has failed. EU has fallen into deep crisis. This situation leads to risks and chances at the same time. What are the consequences for our struggles for the right to housing and participative urban development, against privatisation and urban social exclusion? Do HIC members cooperate with attac at their strategy? What would be the place of our issues inside it?
The global housing boom
The worldwide rise in house prices is the biggest bubble in history. Prepare for the economic pain when it pops. Calculations by The Economist show that house prices have hit record levels in relation to rents in America, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Ireland and Belgium. The housing market has played such a big role in propping up America's economy that a sharp slowdown in house prices is likely to have severe consequences. [more]
Two New Board Members
Na Hyo-Woo, LOCOA, Korea/Philippines and Hanan Masri, NISCVR, Libanon elected representatives of social movements to HIC Board
CADTM outraged at the G8’s meanness over the debt
On June 11 the meeting of the G8 Finance ministers resulted in bombastic statements about a "historic" cancellation of the debt burdening poorer countries. CADTM is suspicious of such dramatic gestures which so far have led only to cosmetic cancellations hiding a strengthening of the creditor countries' dominant position, as was the case with the HIPC initiative, concerning some 42 highly indebted poor countries, which was launched at the Lyon G7 meeting in 1996 and reinforced at the Cologne G7 meeting in 1999. As soon as the practical modalities that condition this new move are known they will have to be analysed very carefully before any considered judgement is possible. But we can already make a number of comments.
Changing the way we see the city and city-life
The "city" is a strategic site for change - a place of innovations, power, autonomy, diversity, inter-mixing and an opening on the world. But it is just as much a place of exclusion, poverty, violence and danger as it is of potential. What is more, through a tight network of economic and communicational exchange, a new "world economy" is developing out of the relations between the major metropolises in the South and the North. The struggle for the city is essential, but only on condition that it learns to progress from each individual area to the city as a whole, that it helps to produce new regulatory systems and that it joins the poor in their fight to be part of the city.
200,000 people evicted in two weeks and another million threatened in Zimbabwe
HIC-HLRN repeatedly has received alarming information from local civil society sources of massive evictions in throughout Zimbabwe that already have rendered 200,000 people homeless in two weeks. Some 30,000 street vendors and people working informally have been detained and if the eviction drive continues, “the estimates are that 2 to 3 million people could be affected, which is about a quarter of (Zimbabwe's) population," as M. Kothari, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing warned in a press conference on 3 June.
Conservative-liberal majority in NRW want to weaken housing rights
The Ruhr Tenants Forum started protest mails addressed to the new government and announced heavy protests if the government will keep its plans.