#STOPGENOCIDE

Free Palestine

World Habitat Day and Habitat October 2025

Reinforcing our global call for solidarity with and reparations for the Indigenous Palestinian People

From solidarity to direct action, from recovery to reparation. This World Habitat Day, we reaffirm our stand with the People of Palestine everywhere, denouncing, once again, the ongoing genocide against its peopleand the decades of colonization, dehumanization, dispossession, occupation, exploitation, fragmentation and displacement. As these Israeli crimes only worsen, state leaders and international organizations start to take steps, albeit very timid ones.

Meanwhile, as organized civil society, the HIC Members have determined to step-up their solidarity and actions of support. As a coalition focused on the promotion and protection of human rights related to habitat, in particular housing and land rights, it is our duty to call attention to the manner in which Israel has been systematically violating such rights of the Indigenous Palestinian People. Drawing on the conclusions of a teach-in cycle held in August and September focused on Palestine and habitat rights, we launch this campaign with three main objectives:

Reinforce our solidarity to the Palestinian People and our urgent call to states and their governments to take significant steps to end the ongoing genocide and ensure reprations for the violations of Palestinian People’s rights, particularly their right to housing and land;

Elucidate the habitat component of the Palestinian people’s struggle and of the actions of Israel, providing materials and guidance for mobilization and for denouncing gross violation of their human rights, as well as framing the situation within the wider context of struggles against colonial domination and for self-determination ongoing in other regions of the world;

Providing concrete mechanisms and resources for individuals and organizations to mobilize

HIC Presidency Declaration for World Habitat Day

“And still, we ask: What do we have to do with that distant war—with the genocide in Palestine, with the bombs falling on Gaza.

The truth is, we have everything in common. Because when they destroy the land and the homes of a people, they are also speaking to us. In every corner of the world, poor people, marginalized”

Click Here and share it widely

From recovery to reparation: a call on States to uphold the fulfilment of the Indigenous Palestinian People’s habitat rights

This statement denounces Israel’s ongoing genocide and systematic violations of the habitat-related human rights of the Indigenous Palestinian People, rooted in the Zionist colonial project of invasion, dispossession, and forced displacement. As a global coalition, we call on individuals and movements to mobilize, denounce these crimes, and join the BDS campaign. We urge states to fulfill their international obligations by halting arms trade with Israel, imposing sanctions, ensuring a permanent ceasefire, and guaranteeing humanitarian access under UNRWA. Building on past manifestos and mobilizations, we reaffirm our solidarity and call for accountability, reparations, and recognition of the Palestinian People’s right to their land and self-determination. Members are encouraged to share this statement with authorities at all levels to press for action.

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We assert a force of international mobilization and solidarity where our governments have been complicit in these crimes and otherwise failed. We call on individuals also to exercise their own human rights and solidarity duties to loudly denounce and oppose Israel’s crimes and mobilize for Palestinian freedom also by joining the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. 

As a coalition fighting for the recognition, defense and fulfillment of habitat-related human rights, we are particularly concerned by the gross violations of such rights by Israel. These violations emanate from the very inception of the Zionist colonial project, including invasion, acquisition of territory through force and deception, violent depopulation, dispossession and population transfer that Israeli settlers and Zionist institutions have carried out over decades, arriving at the current situation in which Israel forces target the destruction of the Indigenous People’s homes, shelters and shelter seekers to advance the ongoing genocide. As denounced by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, “domicide” should be recognized as both a war crime and a crime against humanity, as in this clear case.

As such, we take this opportunity to reinforce our ongoing call on states to fulfill their duties to contribute to the end of the genocide, denouncing and holding Israel and its agents responsible for their crimes, serious breaches and human rights violations.This call is issued through the joint deliberation of our Members reunited in person in November 2024 and builds upon previous manifestos and mobilizations by other civil society networks around the world.

We demand that our representatives:

  • Cease any direct or indirect import / export, or facilitate trade in weapons and matériel to Israel;
  • Meet their legal obligation to end the illegal situation by imposing sanctions to Israel in response to the violations of international law, including peremptory norms;
  • Implement a permanent cease-fire in Palestine and their human rights obligations;
  • Respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law, including the distribution of food, water and hygiene products through humanitarian channels, led by UNRWA.

We reinforce and reiterate our demands presented in previous statements and campaigns, strengthening our call for an end of the genocide and recognition of the Indigenous Palestinian People’s right to their territory. Moreover, as we look for a future beyond the current devastation, we envision a scenario that goes beyond rebuilding and is grounded on historic reparations to the Palestinian People. 

We call on our Members to print this statement and circulate them with the relevant authorities in their country, including local and regional governments, which, as organs of the state, are bound to these obligations to uphold international peace and world order.

What we can do?

The teach-in series was an opportunity to learn about historic strategies and initiatives of resistance and denouncing, as well as to reflect on what we can do as individuals, organizations and as a Coalition. Here we present some of these reflections, with useful links and resources to support you in your own individual and joint mobilization.
Inform yourself, denounce violations and spread information
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A first step is to keep yourself informed, learn about the historic struggles of the Palestinian and other Indigenous Peoples and spread and disseminate this information.

It is central to educate ourselves to use the right terminology, contributing to debunking dominant narratives and supporting collective awareness. Organizations can use their platform to bring visibility to the struggle for Palestinian liberation, building linkages with the Human Rights agenda and context in their territories, through denouncing widespread mechanisms of domination, imperialism and colonialism. Organizations and networks as HIC can also organize to provide opportunities for the education of others, holding workshops and learning sessions.

We intend for the resources from the teach-in series to contribute to that. We also recommend several easily accessible references below.

Center and support Palestinian voices and organizations
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Complementary to this effort of awareness -raising and education, individuals and, mostly organizations, have an opportunity to align and orient their actions into supporting and centering palestinian voices and organizations. This can include:

  • Incorporating Palestinian voices and organizations in activities, particularly research;
  • Seeking collaboration and support with Palestinian organizations;
  • Echo and replicate relevant initiatives and campaigns;
  • Support United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and other qualified humanitarian organizations organizations working in Palestine;
  • Providing resources to relief assistance and legal support and supporting palestinian-led business;
Map, join, reinforce and replicate ongoing initiatives
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Individuals and organizations can start mobilizing by mapping and identifying ongoing initiatives in their territories, joining these, supporting and visibilizing them.

This can include:

  • Mapping and joining organizations mobilizing for Palestine liberation, joining conferences, campaigns and protests;
  • Contributing to mead articles and awareness –raising locally;
  • Join groups and movements calling for sanctions and contributing with youra habitat-related perspective;
  • Join local efforts for resource mobilization.
Join and support BDS initiatives
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A couple of months  ago in July, the BDS movement marked 20 years of Palestinian-led, nonviolent, anti-racist grassroots organizing and building of intersectional people power globally. Palestinians launched the movement in 2005 as a continuation of a century-old tradition of Palestinian popular resistance struggle. The launch of the movement came through a call by the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society composed of trade unions, syndicates, federations, coalitions, grassroots organizations that now comprise the Palestinian BDS National Committee. 

The BDS theory of change is that, by building social force, we can create the change we need for racism, settler colonialism, genocide and apartheid to end, the settler colony to be dismantled as a precondition for Palestinians to enjoy rights to self-determination and return. The acronym BDS combined the intertwined strategies:

While BDS is a civil society initiative linking individual citizen actions, boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions against the perpetrators and collaborators of Israeli crimes is a duty of all states in the world, including their equally law-bound organs such as our local authorities and local governments.

B stands for boycott: – actions that individuals and groups can organize and take to cut ties of complicity that exist in their homes, in schools, universities, shops. These can be direct ties to Israel or indirect,  like having ties to corporations or institutions that are complicit in Israel’s crimes.

D stands for divestment, and it is the work to divest from where applicable, of course, as many of the most complicit companies.

S stands for sanctions, and it is the strategic work to pressure states and state organs to uphold their existing obligations under international law to end their complicity in Israel’s genocide, illegal occupation, and apartheid, and to hold Israel accountable for these systematic crimes.

Demand your governments implement their obligations
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Join campaigns and organize to pressure government authorities (national, regional and local) to take effective action against the genocide and in support for Palestinian liberation. These can include:

  • Cease any kind of involvement in trade in weapons to Israel;
  • Denouncing the genocide and Human Rights violations and taking steps to formally recognize the Palestinian State; 
  • Imposing sanctions to Israel in response to the violations of international law, including peremptory norms;
  • Respect and ensure respect for international humanitarian law, including the distribution of food, water and hygiene products through humanitarian channels, led by UNRWA
  • Ceasing economic relations with Israeli companies and service providers, through joining the BDS movement

This can be done by joining ongoing campaigns locally and globally, and also by circulating the call by HIC to local and national authorities (see above).

Understanding Palestine: What’s habitat got to do with it? - The teach-in series

A central part in building practical solidarity globally is exploringing and mounting all of the actions possible to calling attention to the struggle of Palestinian People and ending the violation of their human rights and Israel’s ongoing genocide. As such, we feel it is our duty as a coalition working for the realization of habitat rights to contribute to these ends from a basis of competent understanding and analysis of  the systematic violations of habitat related human rights by Israel.

1st session: Understanding housing and land policies as instruments of domination

Objectives of the session:

  1. Introduction to the series and the consistent habitat  HIC; 
  2. Discuss the link between Palestine and habitat-related human rights (why is a habitat lens so relevant and important?);
  3. Discuss the purpose (high level) of housing and land policies under international law (consensus at Habitat I); 
  4. Discuss how housing & land policies can be used as instruments of domination (draw links between state ideology, racial theory, settler colonialism in different parts of the world);  
  5. Open space for questions and comments.

 

Speakers: 

  • Leilani Farha – Understanding housing & land policies as instruments of domination;
  • Ashraf Abu Hayyeh – Relevance of a habitat lens in Al Haq’s work;
  • Enrique Ortiz – What do HIC & habitat have to do with Palestine?
  • Hiba Al-Wahoush – History of Land Research Center (LRC) and engagement with housing solidarity movement. 
>> Link to Presentation 

Session 2 – Tracing colonization, apartheid and resistance in Palestine over the years (Part A)

Objectives:

  1. Understand the ideological roots: racism, colonialism, anti-semitism and zionism as apartheid to dispossess, fragment and erase Indigenous Palestinian People; 
  2. Understand the imperial systems, institutions and mechanisms of dispossession: Ottoman Empire, British Mandate, Israel’s parastatal institutions seizing land, housing, water, human resources for settler colonialism in Palestine;
  3. Provide a platform for inquiry (questions and comments). 
Speakers:

  • Paul Hendler (INSITE Settlements Network, Cape Town) understanding ideological roots; 
  • Joseph Schechla (HIC-HLRN, Cairo) understanding Zionist institutions and systems of material supremacy over Palestine and Palestinians)  
  • Lubnah Shomali (BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem), focus on the Palestine refugees’ continuing demands and rights) 

 

>> Link to Presentation

 

3rd session: Tracing occupation, apartheid and resistance in Palestine over the years (Part B)

Objectives of the session:

  1. Understand the ideological roots: racism, colonialism, anti-Semitism, Zionism and apartheid to dispossess, fragment and erase entire Peoples; 
  2. Understand the imperial systems, institutions and mechanisms of dispossession in the 1967-occupied Palestinian territory: Ottoman Empire, British Mandate, Israel’s legislation and apartheid-chartered parastatal institutions (World Zionist Organization/Jewish Agency, Jewish National Fund and their affiliates), which also masquerade as tax-exempt “charities” in at least 50 of our home countries, while seizing Palestinian land, housing, water and human resources for their cross-border organized crime of settler colonialism in Palestine;
  3. Provide platform for inquiry (questions and comments)

 

Speakers:

  • Tasneem Janazra –How Israeli apartheid laws affect housing and land in the oPt);
  • Hiba al-Wohoush – How housing & land apartheid is operationalised in the oPt);
  • Asma Samaan – How water apartheid is operationalised in the oPt.

 

>> Link to Presentation 

 

Session 4: Solidarity and action with Palestine and beyond

Objectives of the session:

  1. Understand what the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) is: al-Naksa (1967 War), expulsion/fragmentation, military doctrine of attacking the Indigenous People’s habitat, occupation of Palestinian territory, and what this means legally and practically;
  2. Understand how housing, land and water apartheid is operationalised and resisted in the oPt: through population transfer (push/pull), settler colonies, house demolitions, land confiscations, closure / blockade / fragmentation, permit system, popular resistance and uprising (Intifada), serial wars on Gaza – culminating in current genocide;
  3. Provide a platform for inquiry (questions and comments).

 

Speakers:

  • Saleh Hijazi (BDS National Committee, Ramallah) Stopping the genocide and institutions enabling settler colonialism and apartheid in Palestine, debunking dominant narratives; 
  • Lubnah Shomali (BADIL, Bethlehem) on the human right to remedy (norms in international law), including reparations in relation to Gaza and the Palestinian People as a whole;
  • Adel Bseiso (Bseiso Family Archive), providing a current example of intergeneration reparation claims and the importance of documentation.

 

>> Link to Presentation
References

First session:

Second session:

Third session:

Fourth session:

Plans and initiatives for Urban October

WHAWG Online Dialogue - Urban October 2025 - World Habitat Day Commemoration

 

HIC Women and Habitat Africa Working Group (HIC-WHAWG): Theme: Women’s Rights to Land and Housing in Urban Crises 

Urban October 2025 focuses on addressing multiple crises affecting urban areas, including climate change and conflict, which continue to exacerbate inequality. It also promotes the use of inclusive, people-centered tools and approaches for effective crisis response and resilient urban development. In this context, the Women and Habitat Africa Working Group (WHAWG) a co-learning platform under HIC Sub-Saharan Africa will convene an engagement to reflect on women’s land,  housing rights and livelihoods in times of crisis. The  WHAWG brings together members working to advance gender equality in habitat, consolidating their efforts to promote a collective voice for transformative advocacy.

02nd October 2025

4.30pm – 6.00pm SAST

 

FUCVAM, Uruguay - Mass Rally to support Palestine

FUCVAM’s October activities include:

  • October 6: Participation in the World Homeless Day rally (Día Mundial de los Sin Techo), with the “Casita de FUCVAM” and a delegation at the Mass Rally organized by the Coordinadora por Palestina, including a mention of the genocide in the central speech.

  • October 9: Participation in an event for Palestine (Acto por Palestina).

More info: www.fucvam.org.uy/

SUR Estudios Sociales y Educación, Chile - International Workshop

SUR Estudios Sociales y Educación will organize an International Workshop on Human Rights and Evictions on Thursday, October 2, from 15:00 to 19:00 in Santiago, with the participation of Raquel Rolnik.

The workshop will bring together various Chilean institutions to address the wave of forced evictions that, since 2023, have threatened thousands of vulnerable families living in informal settlements and camps.

Specific objectives include:

    • Opening spaces for political debate on the human rights violations represented by forced evictions.

    • Amplifying the voices of communities affected by evictions or threats of eviction.

    • Discussing legal aspects to push the Chilean State and companies to uphold the right of all families to safe housing, peace, and dignity.

Diwan Alomran (Egypt)

Diwan Alomran (Egypt) will focus its October actions on:

  • Opposing forced evictions in Egypt.

  • Promoting spatial justice.

  • Raising awareness about the right to adequate compensation for losses and damages.

  • Denouncing displacement caused by wars.

Instituto Patria (Argentina)

Instituto Patria (Argentina), through its Comisión de Hábitat y Territorio, works permanently to reflect on, address, regulate, and develop norms regarding habitat and territory issues.

Observatory ODESCA

Co-organizing with HIC the Fairville Housing Event in Roubaix, 4–5 October. More info: https://www.fairville-eu.org/items-1 

Habitat et Participation (Belgium)

Local allies are organizing activities, including:

  • 10 October: Roundtable moderated by Pascale Thys.

  • Screening of the film Monstre de poussières on homelessness.
    At the European Coalition level, activities will take place within the EU CAN project on housing justice, including a meeting at the European Parliament on 16 October (morning).

 

Habitat Norway

Habitat Norway
Activities planned on 6 and 30 October (details pending).

 

Habitat Netz / Witten Tenants (Germany)

Focused on local tenant meetings, legal proceedings, regional/national networking, and political advocacy. A summary may be shared with international partners.

 

Centre culturel du Brabant wallon (Belgium)

Hosting a week of reflection, “Habiter le Brabant wallon, un privilège ?”, 8–11 October 2025.

 

Online Dialogue: Homes for All: Towards Housing Justice in Africa 🌍

The Just City Project of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Africa invites you to an online dialogue on the urgent realities of housing across African cities.

 Date: 1st October
 Time: 3:00 – 4:30 PM EAT

 Speakers:

  • Joseph M. Macarthy (PhD) – Sierra Leone Urban Research Center
  • Arch. Florence Nyole – Just City Working Group, Kenya
  • Grace M. Chikumo-Mtonga – Civic Forum on Housing and Habitat, Zambia
  • Dr. Tatu Mtwangi Limbumba – Ardhi University

From informal settlements to rising land costs, speakers will unpack systemic barriers while spotlighting community-driven solutions for inclusive, accessible, and dignified housing.

Register: https://justcity.fes.de/e/default-06b54ebe3ef7c2229821685211873954.html