Newsletter # 8

March 8 – International Women’s Day

Celebrating the International Women’s Day, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing wants to announce the launching of the project “Connecting People to Promote, Monitor and Implement Women’s Rights to Housing and Land”. Supported by a grant from the German government, the project aims to disseminate conceptual, legal and practical dimensions of women’s rights to housing and land. This will be the thematic focus of the housing mandate in 2011.

The final product of this project will be a thematic report to be presented by the Rapporteur Raquel Rolnik to the Human Rights Council next year, and also a guide and a leaflet on the subject directed to a broader audience.This report will be made through a process involving women, organizations and social movements from all around the world. A social network will be created especially for the project.

It will allow women and other people interested – in different places of the world – to be in contact to exchange information in various formats (text, audio, video, photo etc.). In this web platform people will be able to discuss and share experiences in order to identify and analyze issues related to the project and propose recommendations on the women’s rights, the right to adequate housing and the human rights in general.

The report, therefore, will result mainly from the discussion which will arise in the virtual space and from a follow up of the work already produced by the former Rapporteur on the subject. This social network will be opened to all persons interested in the subject and we will publicize it as soon as it is ready. If you are interested to participate or contribute in any way, please contact us now.

At the end of this project, the Special Rapporteur expects to have somehow contributed to the dissemination and implementation of women’s rights to land and housing and also, and especially, to the end of gender inequality in the world.

This newsletter is a project of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing and it does not contain official information. Rapporteur (from May 2008): Raquel Rolnik
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