Juliana Ricón Parra
September 6th, 2011
In the run up to Brazil’s World Cup 2014 and Olympics 2016, thousands
of people are being forcefully evicted from their homes to make room for
office buildings, stadiums and roads. Video activists are making a stand,
producing documentaries to raise awareness, inform and empower communities
at risk of eviction.
Maria Antonova, SOCHI, Russia (AFP)
(Sochi, RUS) – Sochi native Vladimir Tkachenko needed a decade to build a house on his modest salary. He then had 11 hours to move all belongings out of the way for the bulldozers clearing the way for a new road.
There are 100.000 empty properties in the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires – it is to say that no inhabitants are living in there. Since 2005 different organizations – local and international ones – have been presenting this problem wherever it corresponds, it is to say not only to the “Senado de la Nación” (National Senate Parliament) but also to the local and national authorities as well.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Members of ESCR-Net (the International Network for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) working through the Adjudication Working Group have been given leave to intervene in a High Court case involving forced evictions in Medina Location, Municipal Council of Garissa, Kenya.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, has made an urgent plea to put an immediate stop to all forced evictions of earthquake survivors in the Caribbean Nation.
During a visit to Haiti 8-11 June during which she toured camps now home to survivors of the earthquake, Ms. Rolnick, condemned what she called every eviction of persons without the provision of an adequate housing alternative as “a grave human rights violation”.
New available only in French. La crise du logement dans le pays ne date pas d’hier. Mais, avec le tremblement de terre, la dimension du problème s’est amplifiée. Dans le cadre de la reconstruction, le défi n’est pas seulement de reloger les personnes déplacées mais également d’offrir un « logement décent » aux personnes vivant […]