From Vancouver to Baku: HIC at WUF13 – 50 Years of Fighting for Habitat-Related Human Rights

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Overview: Before the official opening of WUF13, HIC convened its Members for a full day of internal exchange and strategising for the WUF and beyond.

Key discussions from this encounter:

• World Social Forum 2026: HIC committed to participate in the World Social Forum (WSF) in August 2026, building convergence across urban, rural and rights-based movements around feminist approaches and habitat-related human rights.
• Members underlined what makes HIC distinctive: its ability to bring together development and human rights frameworks, centering the meaningful and self-organised participation of communities and civil society as a non-negotiable principle.

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HIC President Grace Chikumo Mtonga delivered a sharp critique of the global housing crisis, warning that privatization and financialization are rapidly worsening systemic forced displacement. She urged states to fulfill their New Urban Agenda commitments by co-creating permanent, human-rights-based solutions alongside the communities most affected.

Key Takeaways

• Systemic Drivers: The housing crisis is rapidly escalating, pushed by the privatization, financialization, and commodification of land and housing in our cities and territories.
• Profits Over Rights: Urban policies routinely prioritize corporate profitability over human well-being and climate justice.
• Interconnected Crises: Forced evictions, touristification, unregulated short-term rentals, and the marginalization of the social production of habitat and social function of land are deeply intertwined.
• Disproportionate Impact: Those already facing discrimination — due to gender, race, class, disability or age — are disproportionately affected.
• Co-Created Solutions: True progress requires building solutions with communities, which demands protecting civic space and institutionalizing joint decision-making.
• Accountability Now: States already committed to housing rights and ending forced evictions under the New Urban Agenda in 2016; the focus must now, ten years later, shift entirely to immediate implementation involving local communities.

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▶ Read here a more detailed report of this key discussion

Moderator: Grace Chikumo Mtonga

Speakers: Leilani Farha (The Shift), Camila Cocina (IIED), Samuel Okechukwu (SDI/Know Your City TV, Nigeria), Lajana Manandhar (Lumanti/ACHR, Nepal), Cesare Ottolini (IAI, video), Rodrigo Iacovini (Polis Institute, Brazil), Joseph Schechla (HIC-HLRN)

Bringing together the major global and regional civil society alliances and networks, this session challenged the narrative that displacement is an inevitable byproduct of climate change or rapid urban growth, framing forced evictions instead as structural violations of international human rights. Speakers emphasized the need to recall and strictly uphold established legal standards while leveraging community mobilization, civic media, and strategic litigation to prevent harm. Drawing on successful resistance models from Nigeria, Nepal, and Brazil, the discussion highlighted how local struggles can scale into global movements like the Global Zero Evictions Campaign. Crucially, advocates called for a major shift in the human rights framework to prioritize post-eviction remedy and reparation, ensuring that policy recommendations drive accountability at both national and international levels.

Key Takeaways

• A Structural Violation: Forced evictions are not accidental side effects of rapid urbanization or climate crises; they are systemic violations of international human rights law.
• Upholding Legal Standards: International legal definitions and the cumulative human rights standards protecting communities against forced evictions must be actively recalled and strictly enforced.
• Tools for Resistance: Civic media, grassroots community mobilization, and strategic litigation are highly effective mechanisms for prevention and remedy, as proven by successful precedents in Nigeria, Nepal, and Brazil.
• Scaling Local Struggles: The Global Zero Evictions Campaign serves as a prime model for how localized frontline resistance can be scaled into powerful national and global solidarity movements.
• The Right to Reparation: The international human rights framework must expand to include robust mechanisms for remedy and reparation; addressing the aftermath of an eviction is just as critical as preventing it.
• Multi-sphere Policy Action: Advocates must advance concrete, actionable policy recommendations simultaneously at both national and international/global scales to ensure institutional accountability.

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Key Messages

• The WSF 2026 in Benin in August is a key opportunity to unite around habitat-related human rights and feminist approaches as a point of convergence across the rural-urban continuum and diverse social movement struggles.
• HIC’s vision has and continues to be seeking convergence between all strands of the WSF, especially since the New Urban Agenda excluded indigenous peoples and small-scale farmers.

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HIC Representative: Massa Koné, HIC Board Representative for Grassroots Organisations and Social Movements

The global housing crisis has a clear cause: cities are built for profit, not for people. This has led to three interconnected problems — the financialisation of housing, widespread forced evictions, and a persistent lack of institutional recognition for the social production of habitat. To dismantle these structural barriers and guarantee housing justice, Massa Koné on behalf of HIC proposed four concrete solutions to shift housing from a market commodity to a human right.

HIC’s Four Key Solutions presented during the session:

1. Institutionalize the Social Production of Habitat: Governments must provide formal recognition and financial backing for collective, community-led housing initiatives, positioning them as viable, sustainable alternatives to market-driven approaches.
2. Enforce Comprehensive Protection Against Displacement: Robust global and national mechanisms must be established to ensure the prevention, protection, and legal remedy of forced evictions, whether caused by climate change, conflict, occupation, or urban development.
3. Regulate the Financialization of Housing: Immediate policy intervention is required to curb the speculative financialization of housing and land, including strict regulations on short-term rentals, while actively advancing well-located, permanently affordable housing for all.
4. Implement Feminist and Anti-Discriminatory Housing Measures: Housing policies must integrate intersectional, feminist frameworks that dismantle systemic discrimination, explicitly guaranteeing women full equity in the access to, use of, and long-term control over land and housing.

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HIC Speaker: Silvia Emanuelli, HIC-AL Coordinator on behalf of HIC

In Baku, HIC had two important moments with Koldo Casla, the new UN Special Rapporteur for Adequate Housing: a closed exchange and an open public consultation. Both were a real opportunity to build a relationship and bring the voices of our Members.

During the open session, HIC Members and representatives connected housing rights to broader struggles — food security, labour rights and international debt reform. Grassroots members shared concrete community-led solutions like housing cooperatives, while calling for an end to the financial structures that drain national social budgets.

HIC also pushed international bodies to look beyond visible mass evictions and address hidden displacement driven by short-term rentals, touristification and financialisation. These demands need to be part of the post-2030 global agenda.

Key Messages from HIC Members

• Housing, Land, and Food Security: Frontline advocates emphasized the inseparable link between the right to adequate housing, long-term food security, and secure access to agricultural land (Mazingira Institute, Kenya).
• Habitat, Labor, and Social Protection: Members highlighted the critical intersection between secure housing, robust social protection systems, and fair labor conditions for informal and marginalized workers (Working People’s Coalition, India).
• Championing Collective Alternatives: There must be formal, widespread recognition and institutional support for proven, community-led solutions, such as democratic housing cooperatives (Uganda Housing Cooperative Union).
• Dismantling Debt Injustice: Global economic frameworks must address the injustice of international debt and loan repayment structures, which actively drain national budgets away from public housing and the fulfillment of economic, social, and cultural rights (Mazingira Institute, Kenya).

Strategic Key Messages from HIC Leadership

During the session with UN Special Rapporteur Koldo Casla on the priorities of his mandate, HIC put forward the following key strategic messages:

• Codifying “Domicide”: HIC will continue to pioneer and deploy the concept of domicide — the deliberate, systematic destruction of a home — to demand accountability in contexts of violent conflict, occupation, and genocide.
• The Right to the City: Advocacy must explicitly connect the social and ecological functions of land and housing to the broader, transformative framework of the Right to the City.
• Tackling Invisible Evictions: Global monitors must address not only visible mass evictions but also “invisible evictions” — the quiet, market-induced dispossession of communities driven by short-term rentals and rapid touristification.
• Curbing Speculative Financialization: Combatting the financialization of housing remains a top institutional priority, requiring aggressive fiscal policy and tax measures to disincentivize real estate speculation.
• Influencing the Post-2030 Agenda: HIC is committed to strategically embedding these structural housing and habitat demands into the formal international negotiations shaping the upcoming post-2030 global development agenda.

The World Urban Forum also hosted a truly unique celebration marking the 50th anniversary of HIC. It was a deeply moving moment that brought together long-standing Members and allies who have been with HIC since its very inception. Together, they shared cherished memories, expressed their warmest wishes for the future, and reaffirmed the vital importance of keeping HIC active. It was a powerful reminder of our essence: a unique network built by passionate individuals fighting for human rights related to habitat.

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Overview: For the first time, HIC coordinated and co-hosted the third edition of the Habitat Village, a collaborative initiative by civil society organisations, academic institutions and grassroots movements linked to the Co-habitat Network, committed to advancing community-led and co-produced approaches to housing and human settlements. HIC’s coordination of the Village reflects its role as a connector across movements, regions and habitat-related themes.

📄 Click here to see the full programme

📷 Images from the Habitat Village available here

WUF was also the moment where HIC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with UN-Habitat. This is not just a document. It is a renewed commitment to ensuring that the voices of grassroots communities, social movements and civil society are heard where it matters most — in the policies and decisions that shape our cities and territories.

The MoU focuses on four areas: 1) strengthening collaboration between grassroots communities, civil society and UN-Habitat; 2) increasing the leadership and participation of civil society in policymaking; 3) advancing recognition for the social production of habitat and preventing forced evictions with a gender and climate justice lens; and 4) integrating human rights standards across UN-Habitat’s policies and programmes.

This agreement builds on a relationship dating back to Habitat I in Vancouver in 1976, when HIC was born. As we look ahead to Habitat IV and beyond, we step into this next chapter with renewed purpose.

📄 Read here a detailed report of the MoU