- UN-Habitat supports the efforts of national and local governments, civil society groups, and national human rights institutions (NHRI) in realising the Human Right to Adequate Housing.
- More than 1.8 billion people worldwide lack adequate housing. Every year 2 million people are forcibly evicted, many more are threatened with evictions and some 150 million people worldwide are homeless.
- Adequate housing is a human right enshrined in international human rights law. Failing to recognise, protect, and fulfil the Right to Adequate Housing results in the violation of a plethora of fundamental rights including the Right to Work, Education, Health, and Security.
"Losing Your Home" is an important and long overdue book, which I warmly welcome and recommend to the worldwide readership that it addresses and fully deserves. This book offers us a fresh and compelling look at one of the global and still unheralded enough crisis of our times: the increasing eviction and displacement of large numbers of people – no less than tens of millions every year – who are uprooted from their houses mostly without receiving the support they need for rebuilding their lives from society as a whole. House displacement, which much too often results in homelessness or slum dwelling, is a paradoxical result of many legitimate development projects that need a footprint but nonetheless do not care enough to resettle and re-house the people they displace; it is also a result of the bigger tragedies inflicted by destructive conflicts.
Michael M. Cernea,Brookings Institution NR Senior Fellow, Washington DC and Research Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, GWU
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UN-Habitat and OHCHR jointly launched the United Nations Housing Rights Program (UNHRP) in 2002. The overall goal of this initiative, launched and championed by the Executive Director of UN-Habitat and the High Commissioner on Human Rights, is to support governments, the civil society and National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) in their work on the advancement of the right to adequate housing. Under this programme, UN-Habitat supports the UN human rights mechanisms such as the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). Other joint activities include normative tools development and technical assistance for the States and other stakeholders in building and improving technical capacities for implementation and monitoring of housing rights. On the same topic UN-Habitat also works collaborate with UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, particularly on the work of forced evictions prevention and housing rights advocacy.