Earlier this week, the UN Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Leilani Farha published the final report of her mandate, which is coming to an end in a few weeks. The report contains Guidelines for the Implementation of the Right to Adequate Housing, focusing on the key requirements of effective rights-based responses to emerging challenges. It provides States with a set of implementation measures in key areas of concern, including homelessness and the unaffordability of housing, migration, evictions, climate change, the upgrading of informal settlements, inequality and the regulation of businesses. All of the implementation measures are informed by the urgent need to reclaim housing as a fundamental human right. Implementation of the Guidelines will substantially alter how States treat housing, creating a new landscape where housing can be secured as a human right for all. The scope of Farha’s work during her mandate includes multiple country visits (including Portugal and France) as well as thematic reports on topics such as financialization, the relationship between the right to housing and the right to life, and homelessness and a global human rights crisis.
The sixteen guidelines in the Rapporteur’s final report place a strong emphasis on the rights-based approach to housing, which is clear already from Guideline No. 1: Guarantee the right to housing as a fundamental human right linked to dignity and the right to life.
Other guidelines particularly welcomed by Housing Rights Watch are the following:
- Guideline No. 2. Take immediate steps to ensure the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing in compliance with the standard of reasonableness.
- Guideline No. 5. Eliminate homelessness in the shortest possible time and stop the criminalization of persons living in homelessness
- Guideline No. 6. Prohibit forced evictions and prevent evictions whenever possible
On the topic of criminalization, which has been a topic of particular interest to Housing Rights Watch, the Rapporteur insisted that “States should provide, within their justice system, alternative procedures for dealing with minor offences of homeless people to help them break the cycle of criminalization, incarceration and homelessness and secure the right to housing. Police should be trained to interact with homeless persons in a manner that respects and promotes their dignity and rights.”
You can read the full report here.
At Housing Rights Watch, we applaud the hard work of Ms. Farha and hope that her successor will be able to pick up where she left off. Her fight for the right to housing has been turned into a documentary called PUSH, directed by Fredrik Gertten. To mark the end of her mandate, Housing Rights Watch will organise a screening of the film in Brussels on February 19 together with UN-RIC, Housing Europe and RBDH. More details will follow.
