Prioritising Forced Evictions on the Agenda: Getting Serious about Prevention and Remedy

Leilani Farha, Director of The Shift, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing — 📄 Presentation available here

Leilani Farha presented a concise 8-minute video on the legal framework around forced evictions, structured around three key definitions and seven criteria.

Three terms — three different things:

• Displacement: the broadest concept. Voluntary or involuntary. Not inherently illegal, but it absolutely can be.
• Eviction: a legal act of removal. Can be lawful or unlawful. Unlawful if it results in homelessness.
• Forced eviction: always illegal. A gross human rights violation. Strictly prohibited under ICESCR General Comment No. 7.

“The permanent or temporary removal against their will of individuals, families and/or communities from the homes and/or land which they occupy, without the provision of, and access to, appropriate forms of legal or other protection.” — CESCR General Comment No. 7 (1997)

The seven criteria for a lawful eviction:

• Genuine consultation: Not notification, but dialogue. The affected community must have a real opportunity to influence the outcome before any decision is made, not after. In Baku: residents received a flat government price and were told to take it or leave.
• Adequate notice: Enough time to challenge, not just to pack.
• All alternatives first: Eviction is the last resort, not the first tool. In Baku and Newark: these questions were never asked. Under international law, they were required to be.
• Access to justice: Throughout the process, not only when eviction is imminent. A court hearing the day before the bulldozers is not access to justice.
• Officials identifiable: State officials must be present and identifiable at all evictions.
• If relocation — it must be real: Similar size, similar cost, close to home and livelihood. In Baku: compensation was ½ of market value.
• The absolute floor: No one should ever be made homeless because they were evicted. Not a political aspiration. A legal obligation.

“The question is never only: ‘Was there a law?’ The question is: ‘Was the law enough?'”

Senior Researcher, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) — 📄 Presentation available here

Camila Cocina outlined three structural failures driving forced evictions:

• A failure of protection mechanisms against market forces: Research on informal settlement displacements between 2003 and 2022 in 60 sample cities found that 41% of land was subsequently repurposed for private property development and 35% remained unused (van Oostrum, 2025). Evictions are frequently driven not by genuine development need, but by land speculation.
• A failure of climate responses and risk prevention: Climate-induced disasters are increasingly used as a justification for evictions, without adequate protection, alternatives or remedy for affected communities.
• A failure of society in moving beyond exclusion and discrimination: Forced evictions disproportionately affect communities already facing systemic exclusion along lines of race, gender, ethnicity, class and legal tenure status.

Slum Dwellers International and Know Your City TV — 📄 Presentation available here

Samuel Okechukwu presented the case of Makoko, one of the most well-known informal settlements in Africa, located along the Lagos waterfront — “vibrant spaces of culture, resilience, livelihood, and human connection.”

The evictions:

Two days before last Christmas, Lagos State began its first phase of evictions. By 9 January 2026, demolitions had passed 100 meters beyond the originally stated 30-meter limit. “Forced evictions are not only about buildings. They affect livelihoods, education, mental health, women and children’s safety, and community support systems.”

Resistance:

A flotilla protest mobilised youth on boats across the waterfront to demand housing rights and recognition, using social media to amplify their voices. “The protest transformed the water itself into a space of resistance and collective voice.”

Community storytelling as advocacy:

“Community photography and filming help document injustices, humanize affected residents, preserve community history, influence policy conversations and connect local struggles to global audiences.”

“As cities continue to grow, the question remains: Who has the right to belong in the future city?”

Lajana Manandhar reflected on the current mass evictions taking place in Kathmandu, presenting the experiences of communities facing displacement and the role of grassroots organisations in building resistance and finding alternatives.

Cesare Ottolini, International Alliance of Inhabitants (IAI) — 🎥 Video available here

“People treated like dead leaves, to be swept away, when, in reality, evictions are deep, structural violations of UN human rights standards, ratified by states themselves, driven by unlimited urban development, war and imperialist policies, the financialisation of housing and neoliberal non-responses to the climate crisis.”

The Zero Evictions Campaign — origins and history:

Born in January 2004 at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, over two decades the campaign has achieved:

• The first anti-eviction law in Bolivarian Venezuela, still in force
• The Viva Nairobi campaign — halted eviction of over 300,000 people and cancelled 50 million euros of debt with Italy
• Eviction moratoriums worldwide during COVID-19
• Dozens of eviction suspension orders across France
• 11 sessions of the International Tribunal on Evictions across every continent
• The International Zero Eviction Marathon — now in its third edition

Three demands to UN-Habitat:

• Reinstate the eviction indicator removed from SDG 11 monitoring
• Create an eviction observatory open to resident networks
• Establish a multi-stakeholder independent task force to prevent evictions

Next milestone: World Zero Eviction Days at the International Zero Eviction Marathon, October 2026.

Rodrigo Iacovini outlined the local Zero Evictions Campaign in Brazil, highlighting the relationship between data, courts and strategic communication as tools for preventing and remedying forced evictions.

Coordinator, Housing and Land Rights Network, HIC — 📄 Presentation available here

The Legal Definition

“The permanent or temporary removal against their will of individuals, families and/or communities from the homes and/or land which they occupy, without the provision of, and access to, appropriate forms of legal or other protection.” — CESCR General Comment No. 7 (1997)

The Scale of the Problem — HLRN’s Global Violation Database

Joseph Schechla presented HLRN’s Housing and Land Rights Violation Database (VDB). Since 2006, the VDB records 288,589,047 cumulative victims across 155 countries. A sample search for Greece (January 2000 – April 2026) reveals 9 documented cases affecting 16,266 people, showing a pattern of targeting refugees and Roma communities.

A Timeline of International Legal Protections

• 1945–46 — International Military Tribunals (prosecuting population transfer)
• 1948 — Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25
• 1966 — ICESCR, Article 11
• 1991 — CESCR, General Comment No. 4
• 1993 — E/CN.4/1993/77 (forced eviction classified as “gross violation”)
• 1997 — CESCR, General Comment No. 7
• 2004 — ICJ Wall Advisory Opinion
• 2006 — UN General Assembly Resolution 60/147
• 2024 — ICJ Occupation Advisory Opinion

The Remedy and Reparations Framework

• Restitution — Return, resettlement and rehabilitation
• Compensation — For all losses and damages impossible to restore
• Non-repetition — Structural guarantees that violations will not recur
• Satisfaction — Which the victims determine as justice done

HLRN’s Violation Impact-assessment Tools

• The Eviction Impact-assessment Tool — Applied in cases across the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. The Global Dashboard currently shows 31 total assessed cases.
• The Climate Change Impact-assessment and Justice Tool (CCIAJT) — Focuses on costs, loss and damage from climate change-induced displacement.

The Continuum of Land Rights

Joseph Schechla also presented an emerging norm through the Global Land Tool Network, depicting the range of legitimate housing and land tenure arrangements states should protect under law, allowing for Commons/Public purpose and Social Function principles.