1 million face eviction in Zimbabwe
Distressing report about massive evictions planned in Harare
Stop evicting Borg El Arab farmers
Egypt- Threatening farmers with eviction and imprisonment claiming to build an amusement park on these lands.
Brazil Landless Workers Movement
Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Portuguese, is the largest social movement in Latin America with an estimated 1.5 landless members organized in 23 out 27 states. The MST carries out long-overdue land reform in a country mired by unjust land distribution. In Brazil, less than 3% of the population owns two-thirds of the land on which crops could be grown.
Briefing on homelessness and landlessness
Special Rapporteur on Right to Adequate Housing said that the driving forces behind homelessness were poverty; rapid economic globalization, which had worsened inequality in housing and land ownership; increasing trends towards privatization and land speculation; lack of affordable housing options; unplanned and involuntary urban migration; large-scale development and infrastructure projects, including dams that led to mass displacement; and ongoing conflicts around the world.
Social Production of Habitat: a Sustainable Alternative for the Development of Human Settlements?
The overall UN HABITAT (ROLAC) research on Social Production of Habitat in Latin America intends to analyse current modalities of “Social Production of Habitat” (SPH) as a viable alternative to conventional approaches addressing urban shelter problems in impoverished human settlements. It is the intention, as an outcome of this work, to draw-up conclusions and recommendations based on a case study analysis.
Growing privatization of property among reasons driving homelessness, UN rights expert says
The main concern is the phenomenon of "urban apartheid" taking place across the world, partly due to an urban gentrification process and a colossal gap in the supply of formal-sector housing. There is a lack of legal provisions to enable communities to inhabit or own land as well as a growing tendency to criminalize the homeless and the landless.
UN Report Warns On Land Ownership, Homelessness
A report on the latest trends on homelessness and landlessness in the world released last week warns that inequality in global land ownership is on the increase with a mere 2,5% of landowners believed to be in control of nearly three-quarters of all private land.
Translate Rights into Action
Orientation on the recognition, realization and defense of local dwellers’ human rights within all strategies towards human settlements development is a basic pre-requisite in order to avoid or overcome social exclusion and poverty. Promoting rights mobilizes peo-ple to work on their own solutions, builds capacities for responsible and democratic re-forms and allows duty holders to work on sustainable responses to basic needs. Instead of treating people as a problem human settlement policies must reaffirm people as key to solve the problems.
250.000 tenants household in Germany have a transnational fund as landlord now
Viterra AG is privatising huge parts of their original social housing stock and creates new speculation bubbles -- with a contract missing obligations and securities for tenants.
Social Regularization and Upgrading of Slums
Security of tenure should focus on legal regularizations which keep and strengthen social control of urban land use. Legalization of irregular settlements and security of tenure should not be reduced to private property and titling, but - depending on the local conditions – should use various options to secure social tenure.
Sustainable Urbanisation and Social Economy
Sustainability-orientated management of urbanization-processes in its various forms (all types of human settlements and all types of changes in spatial development) is a basic challenge in the field of human settlements. A fast improvement of coordinated target-driven action at local, regional, national and international levels is needed in order to meet this challenge and to overcome its obstacles.
China: Sixty housing rights activists detained outside UN meeting in Shanghai
Around sixty activists were detained by the police the 1st December in front of the Oriental Pearl building in Shanghai after they attempted to deliver a letter to United Nations officials attending the UN Global Compact Summit taking place nearby. Around 40 are still believed to be detained at Century Plaza police station in Pudong, Shanghai. The twenty others have reportedly been taken back to their home districts by local district officials. Their current legal status is unclear.