Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS VIOLATOR AWARD WINNER:
The International Olympic Committee The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is an international organisation, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, with responsibility for promoting the ideals of the Olympic movement, overseeing implementation of the Olympic Games and, in particular, selecting host cities for the summer and winter Games from among the bidding cities. The severe impact of so-called “mega-events” such as the Olympic Games on the housing rights of predominantly poor city dwellers has been well documented. COHRE’s 2007 report, ‘Fair Play for Housing Rights: Mega-Events, Olympic Games and Housing Rights’ noted housing rights violations in several host cities, including Seoul (720,000 evictions), Atlanta (approx. 30,000 displaced), Athens (hundreds of Roma residents evicted) and Barcelona. But it is without doubt in Beijing in 2008 that Olympics-related housing rights violations reached a terrible peak – COHRE’s research shows that approximately 1.5 million evictions were carried out as a direct result of Beijing’s Olympics bid, including in the period 2000-2001 during which China was bidding to host the 2008 Games. As a prominent international organisation, the IOC has a clear responsibility both to respect human rights in its own activities and to promote respect for human rights by others, particularly host cities and states and Organising Committees of the Olympic Games. For example, it is well within the IOC’s powers and means to take concrete steps to ensure that cities bidding to host the Olympic Games do not engage in housing rights violations, both during the bidding process and – for the successful bidding cities – during preparations for staging of the Games. Indeed, given the IOC’s key role in selecting host cities in a hotly contested and very public competition, it would appear to have a unique opportunity to promote respect for all human rights, including housing rights. Sadly, the IOC has in practice failed to live up to its human rights obligations. Though engaging with COHRE and other civil society organisations on these issues, the IOC has consistently demonstrated it is unwilling to examine and change its practices and culture, which have “turned a blind eye” to rights violations and allowed violating host cities to continue their practices with seeming impunity. In a recent response to COHRE’s letter raising concerns of housing rights violations in the Beijing Games, for example, the IOC maintained that most of the cases of rights violations brought before it were not Games related, a view echoing a similar declaration by the Beijing Organising Committee. The IOC has therefore been chosen by COHRE as a recipient of a 2008 Housing Rights Violator Award for its ongoing failure to take steps to ensure that cities bidding to host the Games do not engage in housing rights violations, both during the bidding process and during preparations for the Games. It is to be hoped that the IOC will, in response to this
Award, engage in good faith with civil society and human rights organisations and work with them to ensure that, as a prominent and respected international body, it does in future fulfill its human rights obligations in all areas of its activities.
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS VIOLATOR AWARD WINNER:
The Government of Israel The State of Israel systematically discriminates against its non-Jewish Palestinian minority in law, policy and practice. In Israel 93% of land is held for the exclusive use and benefit of Jewish people by the State (including the Israeli Land Administration) and para-state agencies (such as the Jewish National Fund). Palestinian citizens of Israel (approx. 20% of the population) are thus effectively denied their right to use this land. No similar laws or agencies work to protect Arab land or property ownership in Israel. Palestinian citizens of Israel own less than 3% of land. Around 84,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel live in “unrecognised” villages in the Negev/Naqab, southern Israel. Despite the fact that many of these villages existed prior to the creation of the State of Israel, the absence of official planning for these areas has rendered these communities “illegal”, preventing residents from legally building or upgrading their homes or from being connected to basic services such as electricity, water and sanitation. Conditions in these villages are often appalling, with residents living in tin shacks that provide inadequate protection from the elements. These communities are subject to widespread forced evictions and demolitions of their homes. In 2007, 227 homes were demolished in the unrecognised villages. According to information gathered from the Israeli Government by Human Rights Watch, there are currently around 3,000 pending legal procedures against buildings and 700 valid demolition orders. The Government of Israel uses such policies as a means to drive the indigenous Bedouin population off their ancestral lands and concentrate them in urban, government-built enclaves or “townships”. Conditions in such townships are well below the standards of Jewish towns. Demolitions in Bedouin villages are frequent, and are often carried out with little prior notice, rendering families destitute as no alternative housing or compensation is provided. For example on 2 April 2008, the entire Bedouin village of Twail Abu Jawal was demolished for the fifteenth time in three years. Due to the denial of basic services, many families are forced to travel long distances to water points and spend up to 40% of their household income on clean drinking water. Ill health due to unsanitary living conditions is prevalent among the Bedouin. The Israeli Government has sought to expand Jewish settlement in the Negev/Naqab and plans to build a number of affluent Jewish-only communities there. The planning documents for some of these new towns show they are to be established on sites where Bedouin communities currently reside. Israel should implement an immediate moratorium on house demolitions in the Negev/Naqab, officially recognise the Bedouin villages and provide them with basic services such as water and sanitation. Palestinian citizens of Israel are under-represented on planning committees and municipal authorities in the country, reflected in the lack of investment in planning for Arab localities. Substandard living conditions exist in many Arab areas of Israel’s mixed Jewish-Arab cities; these include open streams of sewage and a lack of water services as well as other infrastructure and municipal services. Physical barriers such as walls often separate Arab and Jewish residents. In Jaffa, over the past year and a half, Amidar Israel National Housing Company has issued 497 eviction orders to Palestinian families in the Ajami and Jabaliya neighbourhoods. Amidar accuses
the residents of “squatting” in the properties and of “building additions” without obtaining the required permit from the authorities. Under Israeli law, evictions are permitted in such circumstances. However the residents maintain that current plans to develop Jaffa by the Tel Aviv municipality are in fact a plan to Judaise the area and force Palestinian citizens from their homes and businesses. If these evictions are carried out it is estimated that around 3,000 people (18% of the Palestinian population of Jaffa) will be made homeless. In Palestinian neighbourhoods of Lod there are at present around 500 demolition orders pending, and in the Palestinian neighbourhoods of Ramleh a further 150 orders are pending. Israel must ensure that evictions are only carried out in strict accordance with international standards, including that they occur only in exceptional circumstances, after genuine consultation and with adequate and reasonable notice to all those affected. Further, legal remedies and – where necessary – legal aid, must be made available to those affected by the evictions. Under no circumstances should evictions render people homeless. Considered together with an extensive record of serious housing rights violations by the Government of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, and in illegally annexed East Jerusalem, the above housing violations occurring within the State of Israel itself have prompted COHRE to censure the Israeli Government with a 2008 Housing Rights Violator Award (its second such award, having won a Violator Award in 2002). COHRE calls on the Government of Israel to take urgent steps to fulfill its international human rights obligations and to respect the human rights of all its citizens, whether Jewish or Arab, and repeats its standing offer to engage in constructive dialogue with the Israeli Government on implementing such steps.
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS VIOLATOR AWARD WINNER:
The Government of Italy Currently an estimated 160,000 Roma and Sinte live in Italy, of whom approximately 70,000 (predominantly Sinte) are Italian citizens. Migrant Roma in Italy come overwhelmingly from SouthEastern Europe, in particular the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Romania. Many immigrant Roma have been in Italy for several generations, but lack citizenship or even residence permits. As a matter of policy, Italian authorities have in the past racially segregated Roma in the area of housing. Underpinning the Italian Government’s approach to the housing of Roma is the conviction that Roma are “nomads”, despite a lack of such culture among the majority. Many Roma and Sinte in Italy live in substandard conditions, without basic infrastructure. Some live in squalid “camps” or ghettos that are “authorised”, meaning state-approved and provided. Others are forced to squat in abandoned buildings or set up camps along roads or in open spaces. These individuals can be evicted at any time, and often are. Their settlements are deemed “illegal” or “unauthorised”. Where Italian authorities have expended resources on Roma, this has in general not been aimed at integrating Roma into society. Instead, authorities establish “temporary housing containers”, in many cases surrounded by high walls, isolating the Roma from non-Romani Italians. Commencing in late 2006 and intensifying in the second half of 2007, Italian officials have adopted a series of laws, decrees and policies which clearly target or have a disparate impact on Roma living in Italy, and appear aimed at pressuring a segment of the immigrant Romani community to leave Italy. These threats have been heightened following elections in April 2008 and the formation in May of a new right-wing national government including extremist xenophobic and racist elements, as well as success in local elections by the extreme right in several municipalities including Rome. The new government has acted on its anti-Romani commitments by enacting explicitly racist laws, ordinances and decrees. On 21 May 2008, the Council of Ministers of the Italian Government, meeting in Naples, passed a new emergency decree defining the mere presence of Roma in the areas of Campania, Lazio, and Lombardy as a state of emergency. In addition, on 28 June, the Interior Minister revealed a plan for fingerprinting all Roma residents in camps, including children, insisting the plan was a solution to inadequate housing problems and rising crime rates. Perhaps of greatest concern has been the new government’s studious tolerance – amounting to tacit encouragement – of a wave of violent racist vigilante acts carried out against Roma and Sinte in Italy. On 13 May 2008, assailants burned a Romani camp in Naples to the ground, causing the approximately 800 residents to flee while Italians stood by and cheered. Only two weeks later, on 28 May, the same camp was set on fire for the second time by unknown perpetrators. Despite this recent history Italian authorities did little to secure the Roma and their homes from a mob attack. Finally, a number of high profile instances of mass eviction/destruction of Romani camps have taken place around Italy. For example, on 6 June 2008, Italian authorities destroyed the Testaccio
Romani camp in Rome, which housed some 120 Romani individuals, including 40 children. According to reports, many of the inhabitants of the camp had reportedly been transferred from a previously destroyed camp in Rome’s Saxa Rubra area. The persons concerned are reportedly Italian citizens. No adequate alternative housing was provided. COHRE is therefore presenting a 2008 Housing Rights Violator Award to the Italian Government, as a result of a range of acts and omissions, including a pattern and practice of racially discriminatory forced evictions of Roma from housing and expulsions from country; systemic racially segregated housing maintained as a matter of government policy of “camps for nomads”; extremely substandard housing conditions for Romani migrants and others regarded as “Gypsies”; failure to move persons to safe housing despite manifest and demonstrated threats to health and life, and despite evident availability of resources; systematic destruction of informal housing of Romani migrants, together with unremedied destruction of property; failure to rehouse evicted persons, together with other measures to enforce homelessness, undertaken with explicit racial animus; failure to tackle widespread racial discrimination in the mainstream rental housing market; demonstrable retrogression in the implementation of international legal obligations in the area of the right to housing; and a clear failure by the Government to speak out against extremist abuses.
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS PROTECTOR AWARD WINNER:
The Constitutional Assembly of Ecuador For more than 20 years, social and political activists in Ecuador have been demanding the convocation of a Constitutional Assembly to institute constitutional reforms capable of making significant changes in the political and economic life of the country. In recent years three presidents elected by due process have been deposed and a persistent economic crisis has reduced the majority of Ecuadorian citizens to the level of poverty. The electoral victory of President Rafael Correa in November 2006 raised the possibility of just such a convocation. On 15 April 2007 an overwhelming majority of voters approved the establishment of a Constitutional Assembly with full powers. Popular elections were then held on 30 September 2007 to select the 130 members of the Assembly. The Constitutional Assembly met for discussions and hearings over an eight month period, before passing the text of a new Constitution on 24 July 2008 by 94 votes out of a possible 126. The work of the Assembly was divided into ten separate areas and was open to individual and collective participation; some 160,000 persons attended meetings and over 2,000 submissions were made for inclusion in the final text of the Constitution. Social organisations such as the Foro Urbano and Movimiento Mujeres por la Vida attended the Assembly’s meetings to present proposals related to the Right to the City, to Habitat, to Living Space and so on. Interestingly, rights related to housing and habitat are inscribed under a heading that the new Constitution calls “rights to good living”, a direct translation of the Quechua-language term “sumak kawsay”. The new Constitution is equally original in its recognition of the nature of Pacha Mama as a subject of rights (articles 71-74); Pacha Mama is a goddess venerated by the indigenous peoples of the Andes region and broadly equates with the term “Mother Earth”. The final text approved by the Assembly was put to the people of Ecuador in a referendum held on 28 September 2008. On that date the new Constitution was approved with 64% support, making Ecuador the first country in the world to explicitly recognise in its Constitution the right to the city and rights to adequate and dignified housing, a secure and healthy habitat, and water and sanitation. COHRE recognises the important advance that Ecuador’s new Constitution represents in the struggle for full implementation of housing and other human rights in Latin America. COHRE also acknowledge the important contributions made by social organisations – many of which work in partnership with COHRE in the Americas – in developing several of the Constitution’s key components. COHRE’s 2008 Housing Rights Protector Award will be presented to Sr Fernando Cordero (President of the Constitutional Assembly) and Sra
Betty Tola (President of the Assembly’s Sub-Commission on Social Participation) on behalf of the Assembly.
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS DEFENDER AWARD WINNER:
Ms Pia Ndayiragije Ms Pia Ndayiragije, 58, a committed defender of women’s housing and land rights in Burundi, has won a 2008 Housing Rights Defender Award for her tireless promotion of housing rights as an essential factor in building and sustaining women’s economic wellbeing throughout life. Ms Ndayiragije was Burundi’s Minister for Families and Women’s Affairs from 1987 to 1991. In that role she promoted women’s economic empowerment and demonstrated strong leadership on women’s housing, land and property rights. She developed key initiatives for very poor women, particularly widows, including housing programmes in Kinama and Butere. Similar programmes were also developed in Nyanza Lac (Makamba Province), Giheta (Gitega Province), Ndava (Mwaro Province) and Mishiha (Cankuzo Province). Many of these initiatives subsequently collapsed due to the war in Burundi, but Ms Ndayiragije refused to be discouraged. Her approach has been that wherever the war caused damage, she returns to help women to reconstruct, always working to ensure the sustainability of projects and initiatives. She acknowledges the real needs of women in times of recovery and has a track record of convincing donors to provide the substantive means needed for reconstruction that go beyond the recovery aid provided by humanitarian assistance. Ms Ndayiragije is currently the Director of the not-for-profit agency ARD (Autoassistance a la Reconstruction et au Developpement or Self-help in Reconstruction and Development), based in Burundi. Through her work for ARD she continues to promote and work towards the achievement of women’s housing, land and property rights. Ms Ndayiragije was educated at the University of Strasbourg (Diplome de Docteur, 1982). She has worked in Burundi, Rwanda and Kenya and speaks Kirundi and French fluently. In addition to her current role with ARD and as a Government Minister from 1987 to 1991, Ms Ndayiragije was also the National Director of Fonds Africain pour l’Habitat (FAH) Burundi (1994-1999), Manager of Marketing and Public Relations with the Popular Bank of Burundi (1992-1994) and Professor in the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at the University of Burundi (1982-1987). On being informed of her Housing Rights Defender Award, Ms Ndayiragije said: “I am very moved at the announcement. Together with our field-based teams, social leaders, the beneficiaries themselves and local governments in areas covered by the reconstruction projects, we sincerely thank COHRE. I am particularly pleased that the advocacy we
conducted for the poor and vulnerable families to obtain housing will now go beyond Burundi’s borders and reach the entire world�.
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS DEFENDER AWARD WINNER:
Mr Ken Fernandes Mr Kenneth Fernandes, 51, an influential housing rights activist in the Asia-Pacific region for over two decades, has won a 2008 Housing Rights Defender Award for his outstanding contribution to grassroots activism in the housing rights sector. Mr Fernandes is a social activist and community development practitioner. As a mentor and inspirational teacher for many in the housing rights movement, he is well known for his focus on involving and organising urban poor communities and on developing institutions that support a peopleled approach. In the Asia-Pacific region, Mr Fernandes’ campaigns against forced evictions have often been combined with finding housing solutions for low-income people. Mr Fernandes has worked closely with communities in Australia, Cambodia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, East Timor and Fiji. He has worked with key regional institutions including the Urban Resource Centre (Karachi, Pakistan), the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (Bangkok, Thailand) and COHRE, where he established the Asia-Pacific Programme in 1999 in Melbourne, Australia. Mr Fernandes was born in Karachi, Pakistan and educated there. He became involved in social action from the age of 13, later being elected president of the Students’ Christian Movement. He subsequently developed the Social Awareness and Leadership Training programme for Caritas Pakistan and traveled throughout Pakistan conducting training programmes for urban and rural poor communities. From 1992 to 1995 he was the Director of the Urban Resource Centre in Karachi, and from 1996 to 1998 the Regional Coordinator of the Eviction Watch and Housing Rights Program of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, based in Bangkok and Phnom Penh. In 1999 Mr Fernandes moved to Melbourne, Australia and established the Asia-Pacific Programme of COHRE, serving as its Coordinator until 2005. In this role Mr Fernandes conducted fact-finding missions on housing rights violations in East Timor, Bangladesh and Fiji, conducted training for community representatives, activists and others in many countries throughout the region, and developed a range of programmes in partnership with local groups to promote housing rights. Mr Fernandes is the author of several books including How People Organise Themselves: Stories from the Field and Partnership for Local Action: A Sourcebook on Participatory Approaches to Shelter and Human Settlements Improvements for Local Government officials, and also edited Forced Evictions and Housing Rights Abuses in Asia. He is the author of a large number of reports and papers.
Mr Fernandes currently coordinates the Eviction Watch and Housing Rights Programme of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights and teaches community development at Victoria University in Melbourne. He is also a Director of Borderlands Cooperative in Melbourne.
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS DEFENDER AWARD WINNER:
The Coalition to Protect Public Housing The Coalition to Protect Public Housing (CPPH), a Chicago grassroots organisation, has won a 2008 Housing Rights Defender Award for its dedicated use of human rights in its housing advocacy work and its outstanding commitment to preventing forced evictions. Co-founded in Chicago by public housing tenants Ms Carol Steele and Mr Wardell Yotaghan, CPPH was established in 1996 in response to a US Federal Government mandate to demolish more than 100,000 units of public housing nationwide. 18,000 of those units were in Chicago, with eviction potentially affecting the lives of 42,000 people. CPPH is an advocacy group of public housing residents, community-based organisations, religious institutions, businesses, and non-profit organisations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, all working to protect the rights of public housing tenants and to ensure the future of public housing. CPPH is one of the leading grassroots organisations in the US using a human rights framework in housing advocacy and preventing forced evictions. They have used human rights language to mobilise those threatened with evictions from public housing as well as in creative media and civil disobedience strategies. CPPH is now sharing their knowledge, expertise and strategies with other grassroots and community-based organisations around the US, including Hurricane Katrina IDPs in New Orleans and housing rights and homelessness advocates in LA, Washington DC, Minneapolis and New York City. CPPH has used international fora including the UN’s Human Rights Committee, the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and UN Special Rapporteurs in their advocacy. To date they have successfully prevented the eviction of thousands of residents from Chicago’s North Side, and are now extending their local success as a model for rights advocacy across the US. CPPH states that it works to end residential apartheid, and identifies four methods by which it seeks to achieve this aim: by working to give the public housing crisis a moral voice by seeking action and involvement from an interfaith network; through education and demonstration, informing communities and individuals in Chicago about the crisis; through prayer, for example by leading prayer vigils at several public housing sites with a growing number of local and regional religious leaders; and through direct negotiations with those that have been involved in demolition plans – for example, meeting with the Chicago Housing Authority and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. CPPH is now reaching out to learn from and partner with international actors, for example by attending the World Social Forum in 2006 and attending human rights meetings in
Geneva in 2007. These peer-to-peer capacity building exchanges are contributing significantly to the emerging national social movement for housing rights in the US.
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS INFORMATION SHEET
About the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions Founded in 1994, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) is an independent, international human rights organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland and dedicated to the protection and fulfillment of the human right to adequate housing for people everywhere. COHRE’s work focuses on preventing forced evictions and creating conditions in which all people can enjoy access to safe, affordable and secure housing. COHRE is registered as a not-for-profit Foundation in the Netherlands and Switzerland, and is also registered in Brazil, Ghana, Sri Lanka and the USA. COHRE is governed by a Board of Directors made up of prominent figures in fields such as international human rights law. The Board of Directors is complemented by a broadly representative Advisory Board with members drawn from each of the world’s regions. COHRE is an NGO in Special Consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC), the principal form of NGO accreditation to the UN. COHRE also 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, all of which enable COHRE to engage officially with the regional human rights mechanisms created by these bodies. Now in its 14th year, COHRE has over 60 staff working from its International Secretariat in Geneva and regional offices in Accra (Ghana), Colombo (Sri Lanka), Duluth (USA), Phnom Penh (Cambodia) and Porto Alegre (Brazil). COHRE’s activities are principally carried out by its thematic and regional programmes. The five thematic programmes focus on the areas of Women and Housing Rights, the Right to Water and Sanitation, Litigating Housing Rights, Forced Evictions and Advocacy. Regional programmes consist of the Africa, Americas and Asia-Pacific Programmes. To date COHRE has played a principal role in addressing eviction issues, and housing, land and property rights in dozens of countries. COHRE works closely with key civil society organisations around the world and has assisted in halting numerous forced evictions. COHRE has been instrumental in reshaping international legal standards on evictions issues and housing rights, through the adoption of over 50 new international standards on these issues. COHRE has also contributed to the establishment of major institutions such as the UN Housing Rights Programme, the Housing and Property Directorate in Kosovo, the Commission on Land, Housing and Property Rights in Sri Lanka and many others. COHRE receives and accepts funding from governments, academic organisations, faithbased groups, UN and other international agencies, philanthropic foundations, other
NGOs and private individuals throughout the world. Between 2006 and 2008 COHRE had over 45 separate donors.
Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) 2008 HOUSING RIGHTS AWARDS INFORMATION SHEET
About COHRE’s Housing Rights Awards Each year since 2002, the Centre on Housing Rights And Evictions (COHRE) has presented its Housing Rights Awards, seeking both to draw attention to some of the world's worst violators of the human right to housing and to honour governments and individuals demonstrating an exceptional commitment to securing housing rights for everyone, everywhere. The Awards are made in three distinct categories:
The 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.
The Housing Rights Protector Award is presented to a government or other public institution that has shown an exceptional commitment to the protection of housing rights. The Award seeks to demonstrate that housing rights can be secured with sufficient political will.
The Housing Rights Defender Awards are presented to individuals or 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.
Past winners of the Awards include: as Housing Rights Violators, Burma, China, Greece, USA and Zimbabwe; as Housing Rights Protectors, Sao Paulo Municipality and the Scottish Executive; and as Housing Rights Defenders, Ms Rachel Corrie and Mr Rajeev George. In 2008, COHRE will present three Violator Awards (to the International Olympic Committee and the Governments of Israel and Italy), three Defender Awards (to Ms Pia Ndayiragije of Burundi, Mr Ken Fernandes of Australia and the Chicago-based Coalition to Protect Public Housing) and one Protector Award (to Ecuador’s Constitutional Assembly). The process of selecting the 2008 Award winners commenced early in the year, with a public call for nominations in all three Award categories by any individual or group, anywhere in the world. Information on how to lodge a nomination was posted on COHRE’s website (www.cohre.org) in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, as were the Selection Criteria for each Award category.
Nominations for the 2008 Housing Rights Awards closed on 8 September 2008, with a total of 29 nominations received. All nominations were then assessed by an Awards Selection Panel made up of COHRE management and senior staff. Final selection of the Award winners was determined by a secret ballot of Selection Panel members.