COHRE Activity Report 2006-2008

CE NTR E O N H O USI N G RIG HT S A N D E VI C TI O N S

AC TIVIT Y R E P O RT 2006-2008

Table of Contents Chairperson’s Message

2

Executive Director’s Message

3

COHRE’s offices around the world

5

Forced evictions

6

Women and housing rights

8

Litigating housing rights

10

Right to water and sanitation

12

Advocacy

14

Africa

16

Americas

18

Asia-Pacific

20

Europe

22

COHRE’s Housing Rights Awards

24

COHRE publications

25

Media and communications

26

Board, Advisory Board and staff

27

2006-2008 Donors and supporters

29

Financial statements

31 1

Chairperson’s Message

There is no doubt that the mission and work of COHRE is of increasing importance around the world. As we approach our fifteenth year, the normative framework for housing rights is now fairly well established and increasingly recognised as such. This is important fruit of our ingenuity and labour. However, like other human rights, success in the normative development of human rights has given rise to increasing expectations and demands for their effective implementation. This must now be the principal concern of human rights advocates, and so COHRE is increasingly focussing on the basic challenge of realising housing rights in practice.

To pursue our mission with widening reach and effect, it is important for COHRE to develop our organisational arrangements and internal management capacities. The last three years have thus been a period of particular evolution for COHRE with processes of change directed towards organisational development including institutionalisation of working structures, policies and practices and, significantly, a change of leadership. Notably, COHRE’s founder and long-time Executive Director, Scott Leckie, decided in 2007 to move on to new horizons and challenges with more time for his young family. And as a result of a major search around the world, we welcomed in 2008 a new Executive Director in the person of Salih Booker – an internationally respected human rights advocate with a long service in the international promotion of human rights and particular experience across Africa.

In the course of this period of change, COHRE is moving from a simple and compelling idea articulated and led by one energetic person, transforming from a small group of friends and associates to a professional organisation capable of achieving the global reach and change we have declared to be our goal.

This development is crucial for organisational sustainability and the management of a larger entity with usual challenges

of human resources, finance and strategic decisions. We have navigated these changes while keeping the unusual flexibility and creativity which has characterised COHRE since its founding.

Amid internal changes, COHRE has continued to deliver as a leading actor and innovator in the promotion and protection of economic, social and cultural rights. The pioneering and respected work manifested in COHRE’s reports, promotional materials, trainings, advocacy and related activities continued to contribute to the better respect for housing rights throughout the world – as this report attests. Sadly, the problem of inadequate access to or enjoyment of housing rights remains immense. COHRE is keenly aware that we need to do better, notably expanding our associations and building a truly global movement. This can be achieved by linking arms with related movements and demonstrating the utility of the human rights approach in relation, among other things, to challenges of the environment, peace and security, conflict prevention and resolution, and economic and social development.

In my capacity as Chairperson of the COHRE Board of Directors, I would like to thank all the governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental institutions, private foundations and philanthropists who have so generously supported COHRE – many of them now for several years. This is tremendously encouraging for us. Of course, our work would simply not be possible without your support, and we are aware of the responsibility we carry to use effectively the resources you invest in us and our mission for our declared beneficiaries. We hope that our work and achievements have demonstrated good value and that we merit your continuing confidence and support. Indeed, we believe our work is still just beginning!

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to thank those Board Members who have stepped down during the past few years (Sandy Liebenberg from South Africa and Antoine Buyse from The Netherlands) and to warmly welcome our new Board Member and Secretary, Robert Zoells of Switzerland.

I look forward to working with the other Board Members and COHRE’s new Executive Director and diverse and talented staff to pursue ever more keenly and efficiently the promise of the human right to adequate housing for everyone everywhere

John Packer COHRE Chairperson

Executive Director’s Message

2008 ended with the world confronting a severe and deepening global economic crisis that has its roots in the predatory lending practices of some of the world’s wealthiest banks seeking to capitalise on the desire of ordinary (and extraordinary) people to realise their human right to adequate housing. If ever there was a need for the mission of COHRE to be realised, that time is now!

In December, we also celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – the landmark document that established the international legal framework for the universality and indivisibility of human rights that has been the bedrock of the international human rights movement that has evolved in our lifetimes to lead the struggle for human dignity around the world.

The significant gains made by this movement over the past several decades are now seriously threatened. The gains made specifically in the realm of housing rights since COHRE was created in 1994 face their greatest challenges ever. Yet an opportunity is inherent in this crisis that we must seize to inform the world that no sustainable recovery is possible without a human rights based approach to economic reforms with a specific focus on economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights, of which the right to adequate housing is perhaps the most important.

During the past 14 years, COHRE has played key role in asserting and demonstrating the indivisibility and interdependence of the full spectrum of human rights. COHRE has proved the justiciability of ESC Rights through victories in landmark cases involving the right to adequate housing and also the right to water and sanitation as a key component of housing rights. COHRE has also documented how women are disproportionately and negatively affected worldwide by the lack of access to the right to housing, and especially with regard to forced evictions.

Forced evictions continue at an accelerating rate across the globe.

COHRE documented the massive evictions in China that occurred simultaneously with that country’s preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. And the world paid attention... for a moment. China also hosted the UN-HABITAT World Urban Forum 4 in Nanjing in 2008, and COHRE was there to advocate for alternatives to forced evictions!

It is my honour to have been chosen to lead COHRE during this next phase of its institutional development. I hope that you will appreciate the importance of the accomplishments set out in this report and that you will agree with us when we say: human rights start at home, if you have one!

Salih Booker COHRE Executive Director

During the three years covered in this report, in every region of the world, COHRE has advocated in solidarity with the homeless and the internally displaced, the poor and the marginalised, for the basic human right to housing and against forced evictions.

3

COHRE’s offices around the world OfficeS

International PROGRAMMES

Regional PROGRAMMES

1 2 3 4 5 6

Forced evictions Women and housing rights Litigating housing rights Right to water and sanitation Advocacy

Africa Americas Asia Pacific Europe

International Secretariat (Geneva, Switzerland) Duluth, USA Porto Alegre, Brazil Accra, Ghana Colombo, Sri Lanka Phnom Penh, Cambodia

1

2

4

5

6

3

5

Evictions and the Olympic Games COHRE has established itself as a leading organisation with the necessary experience and expertise in monitoring, documenting and undertaking advocacy in the context of forced evictions resulting from mega-events such as the Olympics. In 2007 COHRE released Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights, which systematically documented housing rights violations in the context of hosting the Olympic Games in past and future host cities. The report found that while mega-events, such as the Olympic Games, are often used for catalysing large-scale redevelopment, the benefits of host-city redevelopment are rarely shared equally by city residents.

In Beijing, in particular, Fair Play for Housing Rights revealed that preparations for the Olympic games led to the displacement of over 1.25 million people, with a total of up to 1.5 million people expected to be displaced by August 2008. In May 2008 COHRE undertook a follow-up mission to Beijing to provide an updated report on Olympics-related evictions. Findings from the mission not only confirmed COHRE’s earlier estimates but also established that the Beijing Municipality had failed to provide adequate alternative housing to those affected. People living in the city centre were pushed to the margins and had no option but to suffer loss of easy access to schools and healthcare centres and rising commuting costs.

COHRE will use the findings from this report for advocacy with the Chinese Government and the International Olympic Committee, with a view to working towards remedying past forced evictions and ensuring future Olympic Games are evictions-free.

Forced evictions The forced eviction of individuals and communities from their homes and lands is a global phenomenon.

COHRE aims to prevent and remedy forced evictions by documenting experiences of forced evictions, and sharing information, strategies and skills thus strengthening emerging alliances and partnerships against forced evictions throughout the world.

Key Successes Global Survey No. 10 COHRE’s work on forced evictions is grounded in detailed research and documentation. In early 2007 COHRE released Forced Evictions: Violations of Human Rights – Global Survey No. 10, the most extensive compilation on forced evictions published to date. It covers forced evictions documented by COHRE from 2003 to 2006, as well as cases of threatened or pending forced evictions from 71 countries. The Global Survey is produced biennially and serves as an invaluable resource on evictions worldwide, highlighting the spread of forced evictions in both the global north and south and assisting human and housing rights groups – including COHRE’s partners – in their advocacy efforts.

Forced Evictions in Abuja, Nigeria COHRE has closely monitored forced evictions in Nigeria, particularly in the capital city of Abuja. While there were numerous cases of eviction in various parts of the country since 2000, Abuja has witnessed some of the largest and most egregious forced evictions. In November 2006 COHRE undertook a joint fact‑finding mission with the Nigerian‑based Social and Economic Rights Action Center (SERAC) to investigate the Abuja evictions and pursue advocacy and legal strategies.

According to COHRE-SERAC research, approximately 800,000 people were affected as the Federal Capital Development Agency in Abuja demolished homes in informal settlements, as well as schools, clinics, businesses, mosques and churches under the pretext of implementing the 1979 Master Plan for Abuja. A final report of the fact-finding mission entitled The Myth of the Abuja Master Plan was published and released in early 2008.

Successes and Strategies Report While COHRE continues to research and highlight cases of forced evictions worldwide, it also recognises the need to document cases of successful strategies to avert forced evictions. COHRE aims to use this information in finding sustainable solutions and providing constructive alternatives to forced evictions.

In 2007 and 2008 COHRE documented successful strategies used by both communities and governments globally in finding alternatives to forced evictions. The report includes nine case studies from eight countries. The documentation of these case studies will provide communities and groups resisting evictions with examples of successful strategies that can be adapted locally, to halt, prevent and remedy forced evictions. The report was released in October 2008.

Key Challenges Although international human rights law regards forced evictions as a human rights violation, the practice of evicting people without adequate notice, consultation and compensation is widespread. Forced evictions continue to be viewed as a necessary price that must be paid for “development” while the short and long-term impacts of forced evictions on the well-established indicators of human development go largely unnoticed. The poor and the marginalised thus continue to pay a heavy price for development that is often targeted to address the requirements of the national and international elite. Further, despite the fact that forced evictions are a global phenomenon there is much work needed in the area of alliance building and skill sharing across regions in an effort to develop a sustained resistance to the practice of forced evictions and promote viable alternatives.

Key Strategies COHRE follows a multi-pronged strategy in its work on forced evictions. COHRE seeks to build resources through extensive research and documentation and fill the information gap that is key to building an effective campaign against the practice of forced evictions. By closely monitoring forced evictions cases that appear in a variety of print and web-based media and highlighting the impact on marginalised groups including women, COHRE provides a key resource in the fight against forced evictions.

COHRE’s key strategies include drawing international attention to cases of forced evictions and supporting the work of local partners through in-depth research in the form of fact-finding missions.

COHRE’s rapid response initiatives in the form of protest letters to relevant government authorities based on information on threatened or implemented forced evictions, joint statements and media releases have also contributed significantly in lending strength to ongoing campaigns and raising international awareness. COHRE uses the findings from such missions as well as protest letters to initiate dialogue with relevant government authorities and other actors with a view to halting and remedying forced evictions.

Capacity building and skill sharing is one of COHRE’s key strategies in addressing forced evictions. COHRE conducts workshops with civil society activists and communities to build an effective global network against forced evictions and provide a platform for sharing strategies as well as best practices in the fight against forced evictions. The capacity building workshops also include modules on the effective use of international human rights instruments and UN mechanisms.

Through extensive research and media work, COHRE successfully highlighted a case of gross human rights violations that had hitherto been largely ignored by the international media. COHRE’s research on Nigeria received widespread media coverage, thus increasing pressure on the Abuja authorities and supporting COHRE’s local partners in their fight against forced evictions.

7

Women, slums and urbanisation The year 2007 saw the number of slum dwellers in the world reach one billion. Developing countries in particular are rapidly urbanising, and for the first time in human history, the majority of people today are no longer living in rural areas, but rather in cities.

This phenomenon is not gender neutral - in this era of increasing urbanisation, women must be able to take their rightful place in the city, as equal citizens able to live in dignity, peace, and security.

In 2008, COHRE’s groundbreaking report, ‘Women, Slums and Urbanisation: Examining the Causes and Consequences,’ examined the worldwide experience of urbanisation from the point of view of women’s housing rights. Working closely with local partners, COHRE highlighted the situation of women living in the sprawling slums of cities as diverse as Accra, Buenos Aires, Colombo, Mumbai, Nairobi and São Paulo. The research underscored how women’s migration to cities is often related to patterns of genderbased discrimination and violence, which serve to push women deeper into poverty. Once in the slums, violence, inadequate provision of services, housing insecurity, a lack of privacy, employment discrimination, and unequal remuneration emerged as common experiences with profoundly gendered dimensions.

Living in difficult conditions, women interviewed by COHRE expressed hope that their lives could get better and could change for the good. Indeed, women themselves have pointed the way as they call for better services, safer streets, control over housing, security of tenure, economic empowerment, and an end to violence. As a result of this report, COHRE issued ten key policy recommendations to governments around the world that are grappling with issues of urbanisation and the growth of urban slums.

In years to come, COHRE will continue to fight for the housing rights of women struggling to survive in the world’s slums.

Women and housing rights In all parts of the world, it is invariably women who represent the poorest of the housing poor, and who find themselves confronted by the most desperate situations of housing insecurity. To better achieve our mission, and to ensure that housing rights benefit women and advance the goal of gender equality, COHRE works to integrate a gender-sensitive approach throughout its work and also to integrate specific activities focussing on the advancement of women’s housing rights.

Key successes Increasing Our Internal Capacities to Advance Women’s Housing Rights COHRE’s work to advance women’s housing rights worldwide has grown to an unprecedented extent with the addition of four regional Women and Housing Rights Officers. COHRE also embarked on its own internal path towards increased gender mainstreaming, holding a series of global trainings for COHRE staff and developing a Gender Mainstreaming Manual to serve as an internal resource at COHRE. Placing Women’s Housing Rights Issues on the International Agenda COHRE has been actively advancing women’s housing rights issues within the UN system and within key regional systems, building alliances, hosting high level events and presenting firsthand information on women’s housing rights. For example, at the 2008 Commission on the Status of Women, COHRE hosted a high level panel, entitled ‘Shelter from the Storm: Securing Women’s Housing, Land and Property Rights in the Struggle Against HIV and AIDS,’ featuring presentations by the UN Special Envoy for AIDS in Africa and the acting Executive Director of UNIFEM. The event was co-hosted by an impressive group of international organisations. Events such as these have allowed COHRE to place women’s housing rights issues firmly on the international human rights agenda.

Producing Innovative Publications and Materials From 2006-2008, COHRE carried out unique research projects focusing on women’s housing rights and released several innovative reports, including In Search of Equality: A Survey of Law and Practice Related to Women’s Inheritance Rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region (2007); Women, Slums and Urbanisation: Examining the Causes and Consequences (2008);and Sources 5: Women and Housing Rights (Second Edition, 2008).

COHRE also produced a range of handbooks and a new factsheet series on various issues related to women and housing rights, all with the aim of making our publication increasingly accessible to a wider range of partners and stakeholders.

Focusing on Change from the Bottom Up: Regional and County-Level Work COHRE adopted specific strategies to advance women’s housing rights in its key focus countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Ghana, Kenya, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, particularly through local capacity building, advocacy and fact-finding. For example, in Sri Lanka COHRE worked intensively to challenge the gender-insensitive use of the ‘head of the household’ concept in the post-tsunami context. In Ghana, COHRE worked to influence national legislation around the equal inheritance rights of women.

In the Philippines, COHRE worked with local partners to ensure that women victimised by the North Rail – South Rail eviction are able to exercise and enjoy their right to adequate housing.

COHRE also launched into Phase Two of its Women’s Land Link Africa (WLLA) Project in collaboration with the Huairou Commission.

The WLLA Project builds linkages and strengthens existing linkages between and across a variety of stakeholders towards the improvement of women’s access to, control over and ownership of housing, land and property in Africa, and will continue until 2010.

Key challenges Once seen as being issues merely peripheral to human rights concerns, it has become ever clearer that in order for women to realise the full range of their human rights, housing security is indeed essential. Still much work remains to be done. Perhaps the largest single challenge is that women throughout the world are largely unaware of their housing rights. Women’s housing rights are also vulnerable to being sidelined at all levels in favour of ‘more pressing’ issues. As COHRE has emphasised, in order to secure women’s housing rights on an equal basis with men, it is critical to employ a methodology and an approach which recognises that ‘gender neutral’ forms of advocacy are simply not enough to make a real change.

Indeed, in order to address the housing rights violations which women and girls experience, it must also be understood that those violations are not only rooted in unjust systems of poverty and social neglect, they are also deeply rooted in systems of gender-based oppression which must themselves be challenged and put right.

Key strategies While we strive to implement gender mainstreaming throughout COHRE’s programmatic work, we also know that this does not and should not replace specific work focusing exclusively on the advancement of women’s housing rights. As such, COHRE has identified key areas where further work is needed to advance these rights to their next phase, often illuminating the intersection of women’s housing rights and violence against women. COHRE’s strategies to advance women’s housing rights are themselves cross-cutting; from high-level policy work and grassroots-level capacity building, to coalition-building and innovative research and fact-finding. Strategically targeted advocacy at each of these levels reinforces our overall goal of achieving gender equality in the area of housing rights.

9

South Africa: Mazibuko et al v. City of Johannesburg While South Africa has been a leader in legislative implementation of the right to water, its pricing and disconnection policies have denied the right to water for significant numbers of disadvantaged households in the townships. In 2007, COHRE intervened as amicus curiae before the High Court in the case of Mazibuko et al v. City of Johannesburg and Johannesburg Water (Pty Ltd) et al.

The case involved a legal challenge to prepaid water meters in the township of Soweto, arguing that they violated the right to sufficient water guaranteed by the Constitution as informed by international human rights laws, standards and norms on the right to water.

In a groundbreaking decision relying heavily on COHRE’s arguments, the Court ruled in 2008 that the City of Johannesburg’s practice of forced installation of prepayment water meters in Phiri, Soweto is unconstitutional and unlawful. The Court also ordered the City Authority to provide residents of Phiri with 50 litres of free basic water per person per day, setting aside the City’s decision to limit basic water to 25 litres per person per day. The City Authority was also directed to permit residents of Phiri a water supply that does not require prepayment.

This ruling marks a key turning point in the struggle of South Africa’s historically marginalised groups for their right to water. For the first time, a court has affirmed their right to sufficient water for their basic daily requirements. The judgment incorporates both a heightened awareness of the social and economic context of poor communities in South Africa, and the best of South African jurisprudence, international law and comparative jurisprudence. It creates a useful precedent for litigation globally.

For more information see: www.cohre.org/watersa

Litigating housing rights From 2006 to 2008, COHRE undertook legal advocacy in or against Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Ireland, Israel, Kenya, the Philippines, Slovakia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan and the United States.

Additionally, COHRE conducted trainings, workshops and seminars on the justiciability of ESC rights in Cambodia, Indonesia, Israel, Kenya, the occupied Palestinian territory, Sri Lanka, Suriname and the United States.

Key Successes COHRE v. Sudan (Darfur): Complaint to the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights COHRE continued with its case against Sudan for the atrocities in Darfur, including a fact-finding mission to Darfur in 2006 and appearing twice before the African Commission to argue its case against Sudan.

South Africa: Berea Eviction Cases, Johannesburg In 2006 COHRE intervened in the Berea Evictions Cases in South Africa on behalf of impoverished inner-city communities. This work culminated in a 2008 ruling by the Constitutional Court in favour of these communities. The ruling is a landmark victory for the more than 67,000 low-income residents of Johannesburg facing eviction threats due to the City’s Inner City Regeneration Strategy.

Forced Evictions in Ghana: World Bank Inspection Panel COHRE intervened on behalf of the Agyemankata Community, over 200 families, to prevent their forced eviction by filing a case before the World Bank Inspection Panel. The Panel met with COHRE and the community to hear the community’s grievance first-hand. The Panel issued its preliminary finding that issues raised by COHRE were indeed problematic and recommended a full investigation.

The World Bank’s response acknowledged that key issues raised

by COHRE still need to be addressed, including those relating to resettlement and compensation. Consequently, the Bank has required the Government to take a series of steps to address issues raised by COHRE, including meaningful consultation with the community and a proper Resettlement Action Plan accompanied by a commitment not to evict any affected people prior to approval of the Plan.

an attempt to prevent the imminent forced eviction of three Roma communities. The petitions have helped prevent these forced evictions.

Through these petitions, COHRE seeks security of tenure for the residents as well as to advance the argument that the remedy for enforcing property rights should not and indeed cannot lawfully be implemented by carrying out a gross violation of human rights.

United States: Shadow Reporting COHRE submitted Shadow Reports to the Human Rights Committee and CERD scrutinising the US Government’s lack of compliance with its obligations under human rights law. The Shadow Reports provided information on housing issues in the US, including homelessness and racial discrimination. COHRE also advised partners attending the relevant Committee sessions. The Committees ultimately issued several Concluding Observations condemning housing rights violations in the United States.

Publications COHRE continued to publish the Housing and ESC Rights Law Quarterly. The Quarterly is considered an essential housing and ESC rights advocacy tool by providing up-to-date jurisprudence, model legislation and discussion aimed at empowering advocates everywhere and at informing national, regional and international debates on ESC rights litigation and justiciability.

In early 2007, the 300-page Litigating Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Legal Practitioners Dossier was released. The Dossier details how to legally enforce ESC rights at the domestic and international levels. A unique resource for human rights practitioners, the Dossier provides information not only on substantive and procedure human rights, but jurisprudence and strategies that allow for more effective enforcement.

Key Challenges The very nature of the legal enforcement of ESC rights is challenging. Indeed, a core reason for COHRE’s legal advocacy is to overcome these challenges. For instance, many States have yet to provide for the justiciability of ESC rights. Inroads have been made in this respect, however, and COHRE continues to use strategic litigation to overcome this particular challenge.

The judiciary and legal profession around the world still lack a detailed understanding of ESC rights as legally enforceable human rights, and this lack of understanding creates another challenge.

However the movement for the justiciability of ESC rights continues to grow and COHRE has been instrumental in facilitating peer-topeer exchanges of information as well as bringing comparative examples of judicial enforcement to bear in several circumstances.

Key Strategies COHRE’s legal advocacy focuses on the judicial enforcement of all ESC rights. COHRE seeks to use human rights and human rightsbased approaches to help individuals and communities protect themselves not only from direct human rights violations, but also those human rights violations resulting from globalisation, including those caused by transnational corporations and inter-governmental financial institutions. COHRE’s legal work encompasses four general strategies. These four strategies, designed to complement each other, are ESC rights litigation and other legal advocacy at the international level; ESC rights litigation and other legal advocacy assistance at the domestic level; capacity building and training; and writing, publishing and disseminating information on ESC rights.

Bulgaria: Prevention of Imminent Forced Eviction COHRE and its local partner continued to work on several domestic court cases challenging housing rights violations in Bulgaria. Several of these cases have resulted in at least temporary injunction from eviction and others seek remedies for past evictions. In 2008 COHRE filed two “1503” Petitions before the UN Human Rights Council in

11

COHRE and the right to water in Kenya In 2007, COHRE assisted the German technical cooperation agency (GTZ) to prepare a study on how Kenya’s water sector reforms could be better integrate human rights standards. The Kenyan Ministry of Water and Irrigation (MWI) incorporated some of the recommendations made in draft national tariff guidelines (addressing, for example, water pricing at kiosks) and in its ‘Propoor implementation plan’. The MWI also prepared a brochure on the water sector reform in Kenya and the human right to water which emphasised the benefits of the human rights approach.

In 2008, COHRE and UN-HABITAT organised a multi-stakeholder meeting for government, water sector institutions and NGOs to discuss further improvements to the content and implementation of national policy. COHRE provided training and information to an informal network of NGOs from around the country on the right to water and sanitation.

Between 2006-08, COHRE and its NGO partners carried out trainings on the right to water and sanitation for representatives of Kibera, Nairobi’s largest informal settlement. These representatives subsequently met with the Nairobi Water Company to advocate their rights. COHRE and its partners also called on international donors to increase their assistance to the informal settlements.

One outcome was a project by the Nairobi Water Company to fund the construction of 20 community-managed water and sanitation blocks in Nairobi’s informal settlements.

COHRE and its partners, working with community representatives, also prepared reports on the water and sanitation situation in Kibera (December 2007) and on the impact of the postelection violence on access to water and sanitation in Nairobi’s informal settlements (March 2008). These reports were shared with community representatives, government officials and are available on-line at www.cohre.org/kenyawater.

Right to water and sanitation

Key successes COHRE and its partners have placed the right to water and sanitation on national policy-making agendas in Kenya, Argentina, Laos and Brazil through training for governments and civil society and through advocacy. As a result, new national policies in Kenya and the law on water and sanitation provision in Buenos Aires recognise the right to water and sanitation and make better provision for affordable access to water and sanitation.

Through training and ongoing advice, COHRE increased the capacity of civil society organisations working on water and sanitation in Kenya, Argentina, Brazil, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories to utilise human rights concepts and tools.

In Ecuador, COHRE gave legal advice to civil society organisations that successfully advocated for the inclusion of the right to water into the 2008 Constitution. COHRE and its local partners assisted low-income communities in Buenos Aires, Nairobi and the Negev in Israel to understand and advocate for their rights. The Buenos Aires community assisted by COHRE secured access to piped water from the government.

In South Africa, COHRE provided a third party submission to the High Court of South Africa on a case on the forcible imposition of pre-paid water meters in a Johannesburg township. (See South Africa: Mazibuko et al v. City of Johannesburg on page 11).

COHRE and its partners prepared and widely disseminated the Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation - the first publication to provide a detailed guide for policy makers and advocates on how to implement the right to water and sanitation, for example in pricing policies and regulation of service providers.

COHRE’s advocacy and legal advice convinced and assisted the UN Sub‑Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights to adopt Guidelines on the Realisation of the Right to Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation in 2006 and the Human Rights Council to create the position of an Independent Expert on water and sanitation in 2008. COHRE and its partners successfully encouraged the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to recognise the right to water.

Key challenges In most of COHRE’s focus countries, and globally, national water and sanitation laws and policies do not sufficiently take into account human rights standards. Many policy makers and members of civil society are increasingly interested in the right to water and sanitation, but are unaware of its content and how it can be practically implemented.

In many situations, the denial of the right is caused by factors such as ethnic discrimination, as seen in Israel and Palestine, over-reliance on cost recovery, as seen in Johannesburg, and insufficient national and international financing for extension of access to water and sanitation.

Many governments do not yet treat water and sanitation as a legally binding right, even though almost all States have endorsed international declarations stating that the right to an adequate standard of living includes water and sanitation. However, since the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights confirmed in 2002 that international law recognises the right to water, the number of countries recognising the right to water in national law or policies has increased from approximately six to 23, and from two to seven in the case of the right to sanitation. Further work is needed to convince remaining governments to formalise the right to water and sanitation. Action is also needed at the UN Human Rights Council, which has not yet confirmed that the right to water and sanitation is part of international law due to opposition from a few governments, in particular Canada, Russia and the United States.

Key strategies Over the course of 2006-08, COHRE extended its national work on the right to water and sanitation from three to ten countries. This work included: 4 Reviews of national water and sanitation laws and policies and

preparation of recommendations for reforms. Where possible, reviews were also carried out at the local government level 4 Training to national NGOs on the right to water and sanitation, development of civil society networks and joint civil society advocacy for implementation of this right 4 Engagement with government to advocate for the full implementation of the right 4 Support to selected marginalised communities to understand and advocate for their rights 4 Where dialogue with the government has not succeeded, litigation in domestic courts and complaints to the international human rights system

COHRE prepared publications for the global community of water and sanitation practitioners (government officials, service providers, development agencies and civil society groups) on how to implement the right to water and sanitation with lessons from practice. These publications were made available online and widely disseminated through mailing lists. COHRE staff gave presentations at key international conferences such as the World Water Forum.

COHRE advocated for stronger international standards that clearly recognise the right to water and sanitation and corresponding government obligations as part of international law. It carried out advocacy to selected governments and UN human right bodies and established an international network of civil society organisations to carry out coordinated advocacy.

13

Universal Periodic Review UN General Assembly resolutions leading to system-wide human rights institutional reform have brought about major opportunities for the implementation of human rights in all Member States. One of the most important of these developments is the new institution of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which became operative in 2008. General Assembly Resolution 60/251 mandates that constructive engagement with States will be the dominant mode of the UPR. The UPR is one of the most important developments in the Charter-based system of human rights review in the UN’s history.

COHRE has taken full advantage of the opportunities provided by the UPR, working closely with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant civil society partners to ensure the UPR is widely known, that adequate consultation takes place at national level, and that the new mechanism has the highest degree of credibility attainable. In addition, during 2008, COHRE presented housing rights materials in the first two UPR rounds on Argentina, Brazil, Czech Republic, Ghana, Guatemala, the Philippines, Romania, South Africa and Sri Lanka. In subsequent rounds, COHRE provided documentation on housing rights issues in Colombia, Israel and China.

During the first interactive dialogues under the UPR, taking place in April and May 2008, COHRE lobbied Council governments to take up housing rights issues during the review. Extensive efforts were expended on the Sri Lanka review, resulting in housing rights issues being reflected throughout the UPR outcome documents.

During the 8th Human Rights Council in June devoted to UPR matters, COHRE made eight interventions on particular countries and joined a general Geneva NGO statement assessing the first rounds of the UPR as a whole. COHRE will continue to work on UPR-related matters, to ensure this new instrument delivers on its promise to improve human rights situations worldwide.

Advocacy

Key Successes The period 2006-2008 saw COHRE retain its reputation as a global leader in economic, social and cultural rights. It also saw major advances, both in improving the UN human rights structures and in concrete improvements for peoples and communities.

For at least the past two decades, governments, civil society, experts and UN human rights bodies have been working to remedy the longterm gap in human rights protection under the international system arising from the fact that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) lacks a petition mechanism to assist individuals and communities in challenging human rights abuses.

For a number of years, COHRE has been among a group of NGOs working to see an Optional Protocol to the Covenant created to remedy this lacuna. On 18 June 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council took the momentous step of approving by consensus the text of an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The victory was a testament to the work of many over a long period of time, including a number of generations of COHRE experts and advocates.

COHRE’s Geneva advocacy also assisted in seeing established for the first time an Independent Expert on the right to water and sanitation, as well as in shepherding through renewal of existing mandates on the right to adequate housing and on Cambodia.

COHRE’s Geneva advocacy also contributed to the amelioration of countless situations in countries and communities. For example, swift COHRE action during the eighth Human Rights Council persuaded authorities in the Philippines to block a slated eviction of a Muslim community and its mosque in Manila. Similarly, COHRE action under the Human Rights Council Complaint Procedure triggered nationwide debate about the problem of Roma evictions in Bulgaria.

Finally, COHRE continued during the period to work to challenge the systemic aspects of housing rights abuse. In June 2007, for example, COHRE published Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-

Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights, a comprehensive report analysing the impact of so-called “mega-events”, such as the Olympic Games, on housing rights worldwide.

Key Challenges Although larger than at any time previous, the United Nations human rights machinery is currently embattled, raising significant challenges for COHRE’s work. For example, during the period, and above the protests of many including COHRE, the Human Rights Council dismantled key special procedures such as the mandate on the Democratic Republic of Congo. More broadly, surviving mandates and other resolutions have seen a resurgence in government efforts to reassert sovereignty, and to limit human rights scrutiny. Many successful efforts have been slow, laborious and only partial.

This is true at a time when the scale, scope and intensity of the housing rights crisis worldwide has never been greater. In the period at issue, slums have grown and new slums emerged, as governments have slashed legal protections and eviscerated budgets slated for housing improvements. In some countries, no oversight mechanisms exist. In others, housing rights defenders are harried and persecuted for their work to improve the situation of the poor.

Key Strategies

mobilising all available democratic and legal forces to stop and reverse forced evictions and other housing rights abuses.

In addition, COHRE has worked continuously during the period to explore new ways of challenging housing rights abuse. To name only a few innovations, during the period, COHRE took its first action before the European Court of Human Rights; filed its first collective complaint under the European Social Charter mechanism; for the first time engaged the Asian Development Bank to ensure laws in conformity with housing rights; and submitted its first communication under the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 169 on the rights of indigenous peoples.

COHRE innovations during the period have not been confined to legal advocacy, but have also involved mobilising communities. To name only one example, COHRE provided an umbrella for 148 Filipino NGOs to provide input into the November 2008 UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights review of the Philippines.

Finally, COHRE has worked continuously to identify and promote positive housing rights models, such as tenure regularisation in Bulgaria, slum upgrade in the Philippines and legal innovations in Scotland, Brazil and Ecuador.

COHRE’s holistic approach to housing rights advocacy has time and again served as a model for others as they engage to ameliorate the situation of the poor, and to secure economic, social and cultural rights for everyone, everywhere.

In the face of these challenges, COHRE has relied on the strategies it has developed over the course of close to two decades of work to challenge housing rights abuses, and it has endeavoured to develop new ones.

COHRE continues to facilitate the direct input of community activists in the work of the UN, to ensure outcomes which are compliant with the international law right to adequate housing. COHRE also continues to work closely with UN and other agencies to build systemic protections against all forms of housing rights abuse.

COHRE also responds to housing rights emergencies, by

15

South Africa: victory in the Constitutional Court Four years of work by COHRE and its partners on evictions in the inner city of Johannesburg finally paid off following a hearing in the South African Constitutional Court (CC). In February 2008, a landmark judgment by the Court overturned the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) ruling in Various Occupiers v City of Johannesburg and others, noting that the SCA “should not have granted the order of ejectment… in the absence of meaningful engagement.” As part of an Inner City Regeneration Strategy, the City of Johannesburg has attempted to evict residents of so-called “bad buildings” in terms of the National Building Regulations and Standards Act (NBRA).

The City used this apartheid-era legislation to evict residents on the grounds of health and safety concerns without consulting residents and without considering all relevant circumstances – such as the probability that residents would be made homeless.

The Court held that section 12(6) of the National Building Regulations and Standards Act is unconstitutional and ordered the City of Johannesburg to pay the costs of the applicants in the High Court, the SCA and the CC. The Court further held that the City is obliged to consider the availability of suitable alternative accommodation or land in deciding whether to proceed with an eviction in terms of National Building Regulations and Standards Act. The ruling is a landmark victory for the more than 67,000 low-income residents of Johannesburg facing eviction threats due to the City’s Inner City Regeneration Strategy.

Africa

Key successes In 2006-08 COHRE addressed the growing problem of evictions in Africa. COHRE increased its collaboration with local groups, intervening in specific cases through rapid-response actions, providing direct advocacy and making submissions to UN human rights mechanisms.

COHRE continued to monitor forced evictions and prepared for the establishment of an African coalition against evictions.

During the period COHRE had the following successes: 4 Providing legal advice, jointly with local partners, resulting in

a landmark judgment by South Africa’s Constitutional Court for 67,000 low-income residents facing eviction in Johannesburg 4 Capacity building through developing strategies with local groups to prevent forced evictions 4 Production of several key publications that have been successfully used as advocacy tools in eviction cases brought before the courts in South Africa and Kenya 4 Issuing protest letters to a large number of African governments 4 Awareness-raising through major media campaigns, in coordination with local organisations 4 Assisting partners in the region to access UN mechanisms 4 Collaboration with governments on policy development to ensure the concerns of poor and marginalised land users are taken into account in land and other laws affecting the poor

Key challenges Despite the practice of forced eviction being increasingly recognised as an abuse of human rights, African governments continue to violate these rights as a tool of development or social control, often forcibly evicting citizens on a massive scale. In Kenya, political unrest posed a serious challenge to COHRE’s work in Kibera and other areas.

With the expectation that a political settlement will be maintained, COHRE will continue its Kenya-based work.

In Sudan, while COHRE has intervened before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights with respect to the forced evictions and other human rights violations in Darfur, those violations continue and the African Commission is still considering the case.

Key focus countries Ghana Ghana is currently undergoing an overhaul of its land administration process which is one of the main causes of land disputes and tenure insecurity in the country. COHRE and 15 other organisations have set up a coalition to ensure the land administration system addresses the concerns of the poor. Monitoring threatened evictions is a priority of COHRE’s work in Ghana. From its office based in Accra, COHRE has provided assistance for several years to the Agbogbloshie community, a settlement threatened with forced eviction.

Kenya COHRE’s work in Kenya focused on advocacy against forced evictions in forest areas and capacity building for the Kibera informal settlement. COHRE, Amnesty International and local partners produced a report which found that the eviction of 50,000 persons in the Mau Forest had violated human rights. The Government responded to the report by announcing it would compensate over 10,500 evictees. COHRE also intervened as amicus curiae before the African Commission seeking restitution of indigenous lands. COHRE provided training programmes for more than 1,000 community leaders and residents in Kenya and is currently a member of a task force campaigning for the adoption of national guidelines on evictions.

Nigeria Nigeria is one of the worst violators of housing rights in Africa.

COHRE works with local partners continually monitoring the housing rights situation in the country. Between 2003 and 2007, more than 800,000 residents were forcibly evicted from informal settlements in the federal capital, Abuja. Officials created a myth about the

Abuja Master Plan’ to convince people that the Plan was justified.

This justification was used for systematic violations of the housing rights of residents. COHRE carried out a fact-finding mission with its local partner, SERAC, resulting in the production of a report.

South Africa Millions of South Africans live in conditions of insecure tenure, and many thousands of people have been forcibly evicted without legal recourse over the past 10 years. COHRE’s work in South Africa has focused on providing advocacy support in the Johannesburg Inner City court case and on behalf of the Joe Slovo informal settlement.

COHRE is also collaborating with partners on challenging regressive legislation. COHRE’s report “Business as usual?: housing rights and ‘slum eradication’ in Durban, South Africa” has been used to expose the development of inadequate shack settlements for resettlement.

Sudan COHRE continued its case, filed in 2005, against the Republic of Sudan before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The case seeks to have an African human rights mechanism, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, hold Sudan accountable for forced eviction, displacement and other human rights violations in Darfur. COHRE appeared before the Commission in 2006 and 2007 to further the case, which was found admissible in 2006, the same year COHRE undertook a factfinding mission to Darfur to augment the case with updated facts.

Zimbabwe COHRE commissioned independent legal scholars to conduct a study of the Zimbabwe Government’s massive eviction campaign, Operation Murambatsvina. The study concluded the operation was a crime against humanity and could be referred to the International Criminal Court by the UN Security Council. COHRE has since campaigned to have the Security Council refer this matter to the ICC.

17

The Right to the City in the new Constitution of Ecuador The Americas is the most highly urbanised region of the world, with 75% of its population living in cities. Cities are territories with potentially vast economic, environmental, political and cultural wealth and diversity. However, the urban development models implemented in the majority of poor countries in the region are characterised by concentrated income and power and land poverty. Public policies and legislation implemented in Latin America have served to deepen territorial segregation and social exclusion as they fail to address the democratisation of access to land, housing, public services and urban management.

In order to change current urban development trends, social movements have struggled to build a sustainable model of society and urban life based on principles of solidarity, freedom, equity, dignity and social justice. Since the first World Social Forum in Brazil, these social movements have worked to implement the right to the city, which aims to counter a growing tendency to deliberately exclude access to cities by poor people.

In this context, COHRE has been actively campaigning for the recognition, adoption and implementation of the right to the city through legislation and public policies in Latin American countries.

In Ecuador, COHRE and its partners lobbied for the recognition of the right to the city and participated in the preparation of proposals for new Constitutional articles on this right. The new text, agreed to by Ecuador’s Constitutional Assembly, was submitted to a national referendum in September 2008 and ratified. As a result Ecuador now has the first Constitution in the world to recognise rights to the city, to adequate and dignified housing, to a secure and healthy habitat and to water and sanitation.

Ecuador is a pioneer in terms of constitutional recognition of these rights, which relate to the democratic management of urban areas, to the full exercise of citizenship and to the social and environmental functions of both property and the city itself (article 31).

Americas

Key Successes COHRE has been working in the Americas since 2000 and in that time has worked in over 10 countries throughout the region.

COHRE currently has offices in Porto Alegre and Duluth, with additional consultants located in Buenos Aires, Brasilia and Bogotá.

Some of COHRE’s key successes in the period 2006-2008 include: 4 Working with grassroots communities in slums in

Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Colombia

4 Major constitutional reform success in Ecuador, with the

inclusion of three articles (the right to the city, housing rights, and the right to water and sanitation) 4 Assisting partners in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Honduras and Guatemala to access the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and UN mechanisms to highlight housing rights issues and advocate for law and public policy reform 4 Building a strategic partnership for advocacy in Latin America with key national networks and universities, urban social movements, and indigenous, afrodescendent and displaced peoples’ organisations 4 Conducting 45 training sessions in seven countries for two thousand activists, lawyers, government officials, public defenders and judges on housing rights, evictions and housing restitution for displaced people 4 Publishing six reports, three booklets, radio programmes and videos on a range of housing rights issues in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and dissemination of copies in Spanish and Portuguese

Key challenges In Latin America the lack of adequate housing cannot be separated from the systemic and endemic lack of access to land of urban poor dwellers, indigenous, peasant and afro-descendent peoples and women. Although the majority of countries recognise constitutional housing rights, this is not reflected in general legislation and public policies. Trends such as property speculation, the exclusion of poor people from cities, tourism and infrastructure development projects and armed conflicts cause widespread violation of housing and land rights in the region. Vulnerable groups cannot demand

accountability and access efficient judicial and administrative procedures to defend housing and collective land rights.

Regional Approach COHRE has been actively involved throughout the Americas struggling for the realisation of housing rights of minority groups, marginalised communities in urban and rural informal settlements, afro-descendents and indigenous peoples. It has worked, with joint partners, to develop the following activities: 4 monitor and draft protest letters against forced evictions

of more than 5000 families in 8 countries

4 promote the World Charter on the Right to the City 4 impel civil society participation in regional governmental meetings 4 organise Latin American trainings on ESCR 4 publish a bimonthly thematic Bulletin

Key Focus Country Activities Argentina Some of the common problems in the main cities of Argentina are forced evictions caused by property speculation, insecurity of tenure and urban segregation. Equitable investment in the poorest suburbs did not follow the growth of the cities. Discrimination and an inequitable development model threaten the urban poor, peasants and indigenous people with eviction. COHRE and local partners created a national network to advocate changes in law and public policies, monitor urbanisation programmes, improve slum regularisation legislation and promote access to justice to defend housing rights and forced eviction prevention. Through capacity building for slum and indigenous leaders, publications, public debates and advocacy, COHRE assisted communities to resist forced evictions and defend housing and land rights.

Brazil Thousands of Quilombos communities (afro-descendents) are affected by the implementation of agro-business and development

projects. COHRE has developed a range of advocacy actions focused on monitoring the effective implementation of the titling process by government and provided legal assistance to quilombos communities to access UN mechanism and the Inter-American system of human rights.

Additionally, Brazil has serious problems regarding access to land in urban and rural areas, caused by land conflicts. The paradigmatic Law ‘Statute of the City’ and international housing rights standards were not properly applied. COHRE and local partners prevented forced evictions, promoted legislative changes and organised public debates. Also, COHRE provided legal assistance for three slums to achieve urban and titling regularisation in Porto Alegre city.

Colombia Three million Colombians have become displaced as result of armed conflict. COHRE with local partners carried out training, publications, advocacy and litigation to promote housing and property restitution rights for internally displaced people. Furthermore, COHRE has organised a national campaign to disseminate the Pinheiro Principles on Property Land and Housing Restitution Rights, including video and radio spots about women, indigenous communities and afrocommunities victims of displacements. Colombian courts are increasingly applying the Pinheiro Principles.

Guatemala, México and Honduras The development of projects on tourism, infrastructure and energy affects housing and land of indigenous communities and causes or threatens mass displacement of indigenous peoples in these countries. COHRE has carried out research and published a report on the impacts of development projects on housing and land rights.

Also, it has organised a public debate calling upon the national governments to immediately repair all damages and violations of human rights by these projects. COHRE supported local indigenous communities to defend land rights through capacity building. It also denounced the forced eviction of indigenous communities before the UN and Inter-American human rights system.

19

Joint titling of state land grants in Sri Lanka In Sri Lanka, COHRE has been working since 2005 to promote policies and durable solutions for displaced people – whether displaced by the 2004 tsunami or the ongoing civil war – that comply with international standards on housing, land and property restitution.

In 2007, COHRE realised that grants of land made by the state of alternative housing for persons displaced by the tsunami were made in only one name for each household – inevitably, that of the husband.

COHRE conducted field research in tsunami-affected areas, and found that over 100 women interviewed who had previously owned land in their name had lost their rights through this government policy.

COHRE conducted an awareness-raising campaign to draw attention to this problem. Simultaneously, COHRE directly lobbied government officials, including the Commissioner of Lands and the AttorneyGeneral’s office. After meetings with COHRE staff, the AttorneyGeneral agreed that there was no legal impediment to granting joint titles to men and women when providing grants of state land – and provided a formal legal opinion to that effect. The State Commissioner for Lands has now agreed in principle to joint titling.

COHRE will continue to push for the concrete implementation of this new policy and the end to other discriminatory practices in the granting of state land. This concrete, law reform victory has the potential to change the lives of thousands of vulnerable women – displaced by disaster or conflict – throughout the country.

Asia-Pacific

Key successes COHRE has been working in the Asia-Pacific region since 2000, and in that time has worked in more than 20 countries throughout the region. COHRE currently has offices in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and Colombo, Sri Lanka.

the democratic space open to civil society groups. Finally, the lack of a regional human rights mechanism poses another challenge, although with the drafting of an ASEAN human rights mechanism there are signs that this will change for South-East Asia.

Some of COHRE’s key successes in the period 2006-2008 include:

Key focus countries

4 Working with local partners to halt the eviction of urban

From 2006-2008, COHRE conducted activities in nine focus countries in the Asia-Pacific region – Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, East Timor, Bhutan, China and Vanuatu.

poor communities in the Philippines and Cambodia 4 Major law reform success in Sri Lanka, allowing for joint titling of women and men in the allocation of state land 4 Assisting partners in Sri Lanka, Cambodia and the Philippines to access UN mechanisms to highlight housing rights issues and advocate for law reform 4 Building and supporting new housing rights coalitions with local groups in Cambodia, the Philippines, Burma, East Timor and Indonesia 4 Conducting more than 70 training sessions in seven countries for more than one thousand lawyers, activists, community representatives and government officials 4 Publishing more than 20 reports, leaflets and booklets on a range of housing rights issues in Sri Lanka, Burma, Cambodia, Bhutan and China. These publications range from detailed documentation of housing rights situations to translations of key international standards and simple booklets explaining housing rights in local languages.

Key challenges The sheer size of the Asia-Pacific region, the high level of endemic poverty and the unjust models of ‘development’ prevalent throughout much of region present major challenges to COHRE’s work. In many of COHRE’s focus countries, key institutions such as the courts are weak, the rule of law is not well-established and corruption remains a major problem. Although progress on human rights is being made in some areas, in countries such as Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Burma in recent times there has been a further reduction in

Sri Lanka COHRE opened an office in Sri Lanka in 2005, in response to the Asian Tsunami of Boxing Day 2004. Since then, COHRE has become the major international NGO working on housing, land and property rights issues of displaced persons – those who remain displaced as a result of the tsunami, and some of the more than 300,000 people displaced by the ongoing civil war. COHRE’s major achievements in Sri Lanka include: working with NGOs and government to ensure that international standards relating to return and restitution are implemented through relief work and the resettlements policies of government; and producing and distributing dozens of simple publications in English, Sinhala and Tamil, explaining what housing rights are, and how they can be enforced in Sri Lanka.

Cambodia Forced evictions and land grabbing are some of Cambodia’s most persistent and widespread problems – caused by the combination of spiralling land prices, unequal development models, corruption and the almost total absence of the rule of law. Following large scale forced evictions in Phnom Penh in 2006, COHRE and local partners set up the Housing Rights Taskforce Secretariat – a focal point for local and international efforts to assist threatened communities in Phnom Penh to halt forced eviction and defend their housing rights. Through capacity building for local activists, joint advocacy and law reform efforts, COHRE and partners have assisted communities to resist eviction, and to achieve better resettlement

and compensation outcomes. Since November 2007, COHRE’s main Asia-Pacific office has been located in Phnom Penh.

Philippines The Northrail-Southrail linkage project in Manila will eventually lead to the eviction of more than 140,000 families. COHRE has been supporting a coalition of groups working with affected communities.

COHRE and partners successfully lobbied for the abolition of the socalled incremental development approach to relocation sites – where services and infrastructure are not provided for months or years after relocation – in favour of provision of better housing at the time of relocation. COHRE and partners continue to work with communities to find in-city relocation sites that communities are happy with.

Burma COHRE has worked with Chiang Mai and border-based Burmese groups to form the Burma Housing Land and Property Rights Initiative – a focal point for Burmese efforts to document, advocate on and raise awareness of housing rights issues. COHRE is now working to monitor the housing rights impacts of the reconstruction efforts after the devastation of Cyclone Nargis.

Bhutan COHRE is advocating for the restitution rights of the 100,000 displaced ethnic Nepali Bhutanese living in Nepal and India. COHRE conducted two missions to Nepal and Bhutan and produced three publications highlighting the housing rights of these communities.

East Timor Internal displacement, absence of security of tenure and problems with resolving land disputes continue to harm East Timor’s progress. COHRE has supported the emergence of a housing rights network in East Timor, who are taking up these vital issues with communities and government.

21

Italy Crisis Action Long-term housing rights concerns in Italy became a public emergency in mid-2007, as xenophobic and racist sentiment culminated in highlevel government action to expel Roma from their housing and indeed from the country. This crisis was heightened in early 2008 following the formation of a new right-wing government with extremist elements.

COHRE has been at the forefront of efforts to challenge the Italian Government’s abusive actions. Among a number of endeavors, COHRE worked with partners to bring Italian housing rights concerns to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), first in the context of the regular review of Italy in February 2008 and then in the form of urgent action in July 2008.

COHRE’s actions prompted emergency work on the Italy crisis by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner. COHRE provided those agencies with materials to assist their work. COHRE also prepared a legal brief setting out aspects of the EU’s legal provisions implicated in the actions of the Italian Government and testified at the European Parliament on the issue.

COHRE has played a supporting role to local communities and NGO activists in Italy and repeatedly undertaken field work in affected areas, strengthening our ties with Romani communities.

COHRE also brought Roma rights activists to Geneva for the CERD review and provided them with training in international advocacy.

In 2008, COHRE’s work began to bear fruit locally, as the Bolzano municipality was compelled to move Romani migrants living in dangerous, segregated housing into mainstream housing.

Europe

Key Successes

Key Challenges

The period 2006-2008 put COHRE’s European activities on the map for the first time. COHRE for the first time secured funding to undertake targeted housing rights work in Europe, in the form of a project supported by the Open Society Institute (OSI) for strategic litigation work in Bulgaria and Slovakia. Although not yet completed, this project has seen legal security of tenure secured for a number of urban and rural Romani communities in Bulgaria. It has also challenged and successfully blocked forced evictions of Roma on a number of occasions in both countries. In the framework of the project, COHRE’s expertise has been transferred to local partners, who have demonstrated increasing capacity to challenge abuses of the fundamental right to adequate housing as they arise.

Europe’s housing rights challenges are daunting. It remains the case that it is more difficult to raise and address human rights issues in Europe, due to the erroneous but widespread view that such issues are not systemic in the developed world. This is particularly evident in the funding priorities of major donor agencies. As a result, systemwide housing rights issues may remain unaddressed. In the postCommunist world, recent years have seen the wholesale dismantling of social housing systems, where previously existing infrastructure is in a state of progressive decay. As some have noted, post-Communism may be the single biggest regression in the field of economic, social and cultural rights of all time. Housing rights issues also plague Western Europe. In France, for example, despite extensive efforts, an actionable right to adequate housing remains to date unimplemented.

In addition, COHRE demonstrated its capacity to respond swiftly to need in the Europe region. COHRE repeatedly assisted local Greek partners in challenging housing rights abuses.

This work brought COHRE for the first time to the European Court of Human Rights, in a September 2008 challenge to the eviction of a local Romani community, following the exhaustion of domestic remedies. It also saw COHRE at the forefront of a pan-European challenge to housing rights abuses in Italy.

COHRE also participated in government housing rights policy drafting. In Kosovo, COHRE was a key expert in efforts to secure a national government slum upgrade policy. In Slovakia, COHRE and partners secured a key parliamentary resolution on the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.

Finally, during the period, COHRE moved to the centre of expert groups developing European law in the field of housing rights. COHRE participated in a September 2007 expert meeting on housing rights convened by the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner and subsequently drafted a follow-up report on the meeting. In addition, COHRE testified as expert witness in European Social Charter complaints against France on right to housing issues.

In addition, newly mobilised forces are in certain countries determined to exclude Roma, with forced evictions frequently following. The many millions of Romani Europeans remain excluded in areas including access to the goods and services necessary to realise the fundamental right to adequate housing. Other minority groups, such as ethnic Serbs in Croatia, face similarly strong exclusion.

Elsewhere, COHRE has used the media to bring pressure to bear on abusive governments. COHRE gave one its 2006 Housing Rights Violator Awards to Greece and a 2007 Violator Award to Slovakia, for the actions of those countries in systemic forced evictions of Roma, as well as their failure to remedy widespread substandard housing conditions among Roma, despite available resources.

COHRE’s empowerment work in Europe has been focused on building the capacities of grassroots NGOs and local lawyers to raise housing rights law matters at local tribunals, and on providing a key bridge between local NGOs and the United Nations’ human rights machinery.

COHRE has also focused extensive energies in raising European housing rights issues before United Nations treaty review mechanisms, utilising a range of UN special procedures and the Human Rights Council, particularly – but not only – in the context of the new Universal Periodic Review mechanism. COHRE has also repeatedly tested new international advocacy strategies, for example using new powers available to the Human Rights Council and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to act on urgent matters or the threat of gross violations of human rights.

Key Strategies COHRE has responded to these challenges by working with a network of grassroots, national, regional and international governmental and non-governmental partners to try to roll back forces excluding persons and communities from decent housing.

In August 2008, COHRE for the first time used its standing under the European Social Charter mechanism to bring a collective action on behalf of ethnic Serbs in Croatia, denied housing restitution following their ethnic cleansing from Croatia in the mid-1990s. The COHRE petition seeks a finding of violations of relevant Charter provisions, as part of a broader European strategy to see these systemic abuses redressed.

23

COHRE’s Housing Rights Awards The Awards are made in three distinct categories: Each year since 2002, COHRE has presented its Housing Rights Awards, seeking both to “name and shame” to some of the world’s worst violators of the human right to adequate housing and to honour governments and individuals demonstrating an exceptional commitment to respecting, protecting and fulfilling housing rights for everyone, everywhere.

Housing Rights Violator Awards are presented to governments or other public institutions that have committed persistent and egregious housing rights violations in the recent past, in clear contravention of international human rights law and standards.

Housing Rights Protector Awards are presented to governments or other public institutions demonstrating an exceptional commitment to the protection of housing rights.

The Award seeks to illustrate the fact that housing rights can be achieved in practice if there is sufficient political will.

Housing Rights Defender Awards are presented to individuals or civil society groups demonstrating outstanding achievements in the defence of housing rights. Nominees for the Award must be committed to non-violence and be independent of any political party or government affiliation.

Nominations for the Housing Rights Awards in all three categories may be made by any member of the public, institution or civil society group, anywhere in the world, using the nomination forms available in multiple languages on COHRE’s website. Award winners are announced in early December each year.

Award winners in the period 2006-2008 were:

2006 Housing Rights Awards

2007 Housing Rights Awards

2008 Housing Rights Awards

Housing Rights Violators

Housing Rights Violators

Housing Rights Violators

4 Greece

4 Beijing Municipality / Beijing Organising Committee for

4 International Olympic Committee (IOC)

4 Nigeria 4 The Philippines

the Olympic Games (BOCOG) 4 Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) 4 Slovakia

4 Israel 4 Italy

Housing Rights Protector

Housing Rights Protector

Housing Rights Protector

4 Not awarded

4 Naga City, The Philippines

Housing Rights Defenders

Housing Rights Defender

4 Coalition to Protect Public Housing

4 Collectively awarded to seven Chinese housing rights

4 Mr Baseer Naveed

4 Mr Ken Fernandes

activists: Fu Xiancai, Ma Yalian, Liu Zhengyou, Huang Weizhong, Chen Xiaoming, Xu Zhengqing, Zheng Enchong

4 Constitutional Assembly of Ecuador

Housing Rights Defenders

4 Ms Pia Ndayiragije

COHRE publications 1

2

3

4

COHRE has maintained a busy schedule of research and publication, producing a wide range of reports, booklets, manuals, fact sheets and bulletins on housing rights and many related topics.

A selection of some of the key publications produced by COHRE in the period 2006-2008 are presented below. For further information on the full range of COHRE’s published materials, almost all of which can be downloaded free of charge, please visit our website Library at www.cohre.org/library.

2006 5

6

7

8

1. Defending the Housing Rights of Children (June 2006) 2. In Search of Equality: A survey of law and practice related to women’s inheritance rights in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region (October 2006) 3. Forced Evictions: Violations of Human Rights (Global Survey No. 10, December 2006) 4. Litigating Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Legal Practitioners’ Dossier (December 2006)

2007 9

10

11

12

5. Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights (June 2007) 6. El Derecho a la Vivienda y a la Tierra frente a los Proyectos de Desarrollo - los casos de Mexico, Honduras y Guatemala (July 2007) 7. Displacement and Dispossession: Forced Migration and Land Rights, Burma (December 2007) 8. Manual on the Right to Water and Sanitation (December 2007)

2008

13

14

9. Hoping to Return Home: Housing, Land and Property Restitution Rights for Bhutanese Refugees and Displaced Persons (March 2008) 10. Sources 5: Women and Housing Rights (2nd edition, April 2008) 11. Sources 8: Legal Resources for the Right to Water and Sanitation (2nd edition, April 2008) 12. Women, Slums and Urbanisation: Examining the Causes and Consequences (May 2008) 13. Hostage to Politics: The impact of sanctions and the blockade on the human right to water and sanitation in Gaza (June 2008) 14. One World, Whose Dream? Housing Rights Violations and the Beijing Olympic Games (July 2008)

25

Media and communications Website

Media liaison

Documentary films

COHRE’s website at www.cohre.org is the principle medium through which COHRE engages with human rights organisations, institutions of learning and research, governments, donors, partner agencies, communities and community-based organisations and individual activists worldwide, and provides an extensive array of information and resources on housing rights, forced evictions and related subjects. Our website is under constant development and is regularly updated with new reports, media releases, housing rights news and other material.

COHRE works with an extensive network of journalists and media outlets around the world, seeking to transmit our messages on housing rights, forced evictions and the right to water and sanitation as broadly as possible into the public domain. COHRE regularly issues media releases and other background information to assist journalists and other media professionals covering housing rights and related issues.

COHRE produces documentary films on issues relevant to housing rights and forced evictions. Two half hour documentaries were completed in the period 2006-2008 (see below), while a third based in Israel / Palestine will be released in early 2009. All of COHRE’s completed documentary films can be viewed on our website at: www.cohre.org/documentary.

Lyari - Highway of Tears (2006, 28 mins) Imagine your home and community, bulldozed before your very eyes…

Forced evictions are one of the most widespread and severe forms of human rights violation in the world today – yet they are poorly understood and receive little attention.

In Karachi, Pakistan, construction of the Lyari Expressway is touted as a solution to the city’s traffic problems, but over 200,000 people must pay a terrible price – the destruction of their homes and communities.

Launched at the 2006 World Urban Forum in Vancouver.

Wars and Waves (2007, 28 mins) In Sri Lanka, a natural disaster and ongoing conflict have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Those who lost everything to the December 2004 tsunami still wait for permanent housing. Families evicted from the North of Sri Lanka in 1990 continue to live in temporary shelters.

And now the recommencement of the war is forcing people to flee their homes once more, towards refugee camps and uncertain futures…

Board, Advisory Board and staff COHRE Board

(at December 2008)

COHRE Staff (at December 2008)

Asia-Pacific (Cambodia) Dan Nicholson - Coordinator Natalie Bugalski - Legal Officer Zoe Gray - Project Officer

Prabhjot Kaur - Women and Housing Rights Officer – Asia-Pacific Sylvia Noagbesenu - WLLA Project Manager / Ghana Office Manager Victoria Ricciardi - Women and Housing Rights Officer – Americas

Professor John Packer - (Chairperson) Director, Essex University Human Rights Centre United Kingdom

International Secretariat

Hannah Neumeyer - Researcher

Salih Booker - Executive Director

Depika Sherchan - Project Officer

Aissatou-Boussoura Garga - Administrative Assistant

Kees Wouters - Legal Officer

Right to Water and Sanitation

Mr Robert Zoells - (Secretary) De Weck, Perren & Zoells, Switzerland

Hong-Ha Langmeier - Accountant

Sothea Yi - Administrator

Ashfaq Khalfan - Coordinator

Professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro - (Treasurer) University of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Fionn Skiotis - Communications Officer / Documentary Filmmaker

Asia-Pacific (Sri Lanka)

Lara El-Jazairi - Legal Officer (Colombo)

Todd Wassel - South Asia Projects Coordinator

Carolina Fairstein - Legal Officer (Buenos Aires)

Dinah Towle - Fundraising Coordinator / Project Manager

Harriet Crowley - Programme and Development Officer

Thorsten Kiefer - Legal Officer (Berlin)

Lara El-Jazairi - Right to Water Officer

Fernanda Levenzon - Legal Officer (Porto Alegre)

Advocacy

Shyamala Gomez - Women’s Housing Rights Officer

Mercedes Lopez Flamengo - Consultant (Buenos Aires)

Claude Cahn - Head of Advocacy

Shyani Manatunga - Office Administrator

Kerubo Okioga - Legal Officer (Nairobi)

Rasika Mendis - Research and Policy Officer

Virginia Roaf - Research Officer (Berlin)

Africa

Nilanka Nanayakkara - Legal Desk Officer

Monica Zwaig - Consultant (Buenos Aires)

Salih Booker - Acting Coordinator

Kushangika Nawaratne - Research Assistant

Mr Scott Leckie (Honorary Board Member) Director, Displacement Solutions, Australia

COHRE Advisory Board (at December 2008) Prof Philip Alston - New York, USA Adv Geoff Budlender - Cape Town, South Africa Prof Virginia Dandan - Manila, Philippines Prof Cees Flinterman - Utrecht, Netherlands Prof Savitri Goonesekere - Colombo, Sri Lanka Dr Aart Hendriks - Leiden, Netherlands Prof Virginia Leary - Geneva, Switzerland Fr Joseph Maier - Bangkok, Thailand Mr Felix Morka - Lagos, Nigeria Mr Enrique Ortiz - Mexico City, Mexico

Sonkita Conteh - Legal Officer (Accra)

Ann Lloyd - Bookkeeper

Nishandeny Ratnam - Research Assistant

Forced Evictions

Americas

Nuwan Rupesinghe - Legal Officer

Malavika Vartak - Coordinator

Sebastian Tedeschi - Coordinator

Tilagadivani Ponnudurai - Finance Officer

Claudia Acosta - Research Officer (Americas)

Claudia Acosta - Legal Officer

Pubudini Wickramaratne - Legal Officer

Deanna Fowler - Senior Research Officer Hannah Neumeyer - Research Officer (Asia-Pacific)

Gilsely Barreto - Research Officer

Kate Tissington - Research Officer (Africa)

Soledad Dominguez - Communications Officer

Women and Housing Rights

Lucas Laitano - Coordinator’s Assistant

Mayra Gomez - Coordinator

Daniel Manrique - Legal Researcher

Marian Acquah-Harrison - Ghana Office Administrator and Accountant

Litigation

Shyamala Gomez - Women and Housing Rights Officer – Sri Lanka

Aoife Nolan - Senior Legal Officer

Agnes Kabajuni - Women and Housing Rights Officer – Africa

Kees Wouters - Coordinating Editor, H&ESCRL Quarterly

Karla Moroso - Architect Cristiano Muller - Legal Officer Soledad Pujo - Research Officer Robinson Sanchez - Research Officer

Bret Thiele - Coordinator Leticia Osorio - Senior Legal Officer

27

2006-2008 Donors and supporters

COHRE would like to thank the following generous supporters who made our activities possible during this period:

Anonymous Both Ends Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) Catalonian Agency for Development Cooperation Cordaid Dignity International ESCR-Net European Commission European Parliament Ford Foundation German Federal Foreign Office GTZ ICCO Institute of International Education International Organization for Migration (IOM) Katholische Zentralstelle fur Entwicklungshilfe e.V. (KZE) Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs McKnight Foundation Mertz Gilmore Foundation Ministry of Foreign Affairs Finland Ministry of the Cities, Brazil Misereor Netherlands Embassy, Brazil Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Norway Ministry of Foreign Affairs Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) Norwegian Centre for Human Rights Norwegian Refugee Council Observatori DESC, Spain Open Society Institute Otto Bremmer Foundation Oxfam Reseau universitaire international de Geneve (RUIG) Royal Norwegian Embassy, Sri Lanka Sao Leopoldo Municipality, Brazil SELAVIP Spain Ministry of Foreign Affairs Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs UK Department for International Development (DFID) UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) UN-HABITAT UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) WaterAid

29

Financial statements

2008

2007 2008

2008

$ (USD)

%

2007

2007 2006

2006

$ (USD)

%

2006

$ (USD)

%

International Secretariat

$

622,673

19%

International Secretariat

$

513,917

16%

International Secretariat

$

299,450

13%

Media & Communications

$

122,316

4%

Media & Communications

$

129,819

4%

Media & Communications

$

127,184

5%

Advocacy Unit

$

151,001

5%

Advocacy Unit

$

184,747

6%

Advocacy Unit

$

112,186

5%

Asia-Pacific

$

488,057

15%

Asia-Pacific

$

512,894

16%

Asia-Pacific

$

242,972

10%

Africa

$

137,412

4%

Africa

$

105,447

3%

Africa

$

76,900

3%

Americas

$

472,279

15%

Americas

$

355,932

11%

Americas

$

360,827

15%

Global Forced Evictions

$

206,871

6%

Global Forced Evictions

$

219,523

7%

Global Forced Evictions

$

143,827

6%

Housing & Property Restitution

$

17,483

1%

Housing & Property Restitution

$

187,653

6%

Housing & Property Restitution

$

175,902

7%

Litigation

$

128,470

4%

Litigation

$

118,112

4%

Litigation

$

227,497

10%

Right to Water

$

307,281

10%

Right to Water

$

226,370

7%

Right to Water

$

69,641

3%

Women & Housing Rights

$

310,997

10%

Women & Housing Rights

$

395,816

12%

Women & Housing Rights

$

279,924

12%

Overhead costs

$

263,474

8%

Overhead costs

$

238,412

7%

Overhead costs

$

254,836

11%

as per unaudited accounts

$

3,228,314

$

3,188,642

$

2,371,146

31

Acknowledgements COHRE would like to thank the following service providers and others for their contributions during 2006-2008: Legal services Mr Robert Zoells of de Weck, Perren et Zoells, Geneva Auditors 2006 and 2007 – ExperAudit SA, Geneva 2008 – Moore Stephens Refidar SA, Geneva Design and publication RaynerBrown. Design Advertising & Interactive. www.raynerbrown.com Suggestie & Illusie www.illusie.nl

All participants in COHRE’s Internship Programme and numerous other volunteers.

COHRE works in close collaboration with an extensive network of activists, researchers, local, national and regional NGOs, community-based organisations and communities around the world.

We wish to thank all those who have worked with and assisted us in our efforts to prevent forced evictions and to protect and promote the human right to adequate housing during 2006-2008.

International Secretariat 83 rue de Montbrillant 1202 Geneva Switzerland

Porto Alegre Rua Jeronimo Coelho 102, Sala 31 Porto Alegre, CEP 90010-240 Brazil

Colombo 106 1/1 Horton Place Colombo 7 Sri Lanka

Duluth 8 N. 2nd Avenue East, Suite 208 Duluth, MN 55802 USA

Accra PMB CT 402 Cantonments Accra Ghana

Phnom Penh PO Box 2061 Phnom Penh 3 Cambodia

COHRE is registered as a Non-Profit Foundation in The Netherlands and Switzerland and is also registered in Brazil, Ghana, Sri Lanka and the USA. COHRE is an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC). COHRE has Participatory Status with the Council of Europe, Consultative Status with the Organisation of American States and Observer Status with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights.

www.cohre.org