News

Essex University releases a Guide to Legal Observing of Forced Evictions

Published in Monday August 29th, 2011 In News

The Essex Human Rights Clinic of the Essex University has recently released a Guide to Legal Observing of Forced Evictions.Bellow you can read the Introduction section and you can also download the document.

The Essex Human Rights Clinic, part of the Human Rights Centre and School of Law at the University of Essex, was established in 2009 to offer students the opportunity to gain valuable practical experience in promoting and protecting human rights. The Human Rights Clinic emphasises practice as a way of addressing complex human rights issues while meeting the needs and interests of real people.[…]

Battle for New Orleans, 6 Years After Katrina

Published in Saturday August 27th, 2011 In In the media

As this weekend’s storm has reminded us, hurricanes can be a threat to U.S. cities on the East Coast as well as the Gulf. But the vast changes that have taken place in New Orleans since Katrina have had little to do with weather, and everything to do with political struggles. Six years after the federal levees failed and 80 percent of the city was flooded, New Orleans has lost 80,000 jobs and 110,000 residents. It is a whiter and wealthier city, with tourist areas well-maintained while communities like the Lower 9th Ward remain devastated. Beyond the statistics, it is still a much-contested city.

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Rapporteur’s newsletter celebrates first anniversary

Published in Friday August 19th, 2011 In News

Through the newsletter and other communications tools developed in her term, Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik has been sharing her work agenda and seeking dialogue with organisations, communities and governments of countries visited as well as with people and organisations that may be interested in the topics being worked.

Women and housing rights: what issues are under discussion in the web platform?

Published in Thursday August 18th, 2011 In News

The Special Rapporteur has recently launched a web platform to discuss, among other themes, women’s housing and land rights. With the help of a global coordinator and focal points hired to coordinate the outreach in the seven different regions (North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East and North Africa), the e-consultation aims to identify and make visible the different issues which women are currently facing throughout the world in relation to housing and land, to give us a fresh picture on the current state of these rights globally.

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Evicting rioters’ families from their homes? There’s a horrible logic to it

Published in Tuesday August 16th, 2011 In News

Ponder, for a moment, the second-most unequal country in Europe. Its prime minister, who failed to win an outright majority, heads a government whose cabinet contains several millionaires, and embarks upon an ideologically driven economic policy against almost all international and professional advice. It has just faced its largest strikes for decades. Its lawmakers were recently found fiddling their mortgages en masse. Its press was caught phone tapping hundreds of private citizens and politicians, with little hindrance from the police.

Communications Report will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council in September

Published in Tuesday August 16th, 2011 In News

In September, the 18th session of the UN Human Rights Council will take place in Geneva. At the event, the communications sent by Rapporteurs to country governments from December 2010 to May 2011 will be presented, as will the answers of the respective governments from February to July this year.[…]

PRESS RELEASE – UK urged to find negotiated settlement to eviction stand-off with 86 Irish Traveller families

Published in Friday August 5th, 2011 In News

GENEVA (5 August 2011) – Two UN human rights experts* in the field of housing and minority issues called on the United Kingdom Government to find a peaceful and appropriate solution, and adequate alternative housing for 86 Irish Traveller families faced with forced eviction from Dale Farm, Essex, before the end of August.

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More than 150,000 take to streets across Israel in largest housing protest yet

Published in Thursday August 4th, 2011 In News

More than 100,000 people took to the streets Saturday to protest the spiraling costs of living in Israel. Marches and rallies took place in eleven cities across the country, with the largest ones taking place in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva and Haifa. The protesters chanted “the people demand social justice” and “we want justice, not charity.”

Stop tourism land grabs in Sri Lanka

Published in Thursday August 4th, 2011 In In the media

An international fact finding mission has just returned from the Kalpitya islands in western Sri Lanka with a disturbing report that many local villages are to be forcibly displaced by a multi-million pound new tourism facility. The Sri Lankan government and large tourism developers are forcibly displacing communities inhabiting the 14 islands of Kalpitiya, destroying livelihoods, threatening food security, and wreaking havoc on the environment.

Over a hundred people have registered in the Rapporteur’s platform of debates

Published in Tuesday July 19th, 2011 In News

The discussions on “Women and Housing Rights” are already taking place in the virtual platform launched last month by the Special Rapporteur.