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HUMAN RIGHTS: More Than 100 Million Homeless Worldwide
By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Mar 30 (IPS) - Homelessness is a growing problem around the globe,
affecting both the industrialised and developing worlds, Special Rapporteur
on Adequate Housing Miloon Kothari told the 61st session of the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights, currently underway.
Over one billion people on the planet lack adequate housing, he said, while
around 100 million have no housing whatsoever.
In an interview with IPS, Kothari noted that in the developed countries,
"governments are withdrawing the subsidies and affirmative action policies
that contributed to poor families being able to afford housing. And this is
resulting in more homelessness, and there is also more racial
discrimination."
In the United States, for example, "you have policies which obviously affect
the lower income groups, such as African-Americans, and they are forced to
live in areas which are poor, so it increases the 'ghettoisation'," he
explained.
As for the developing world, one of the most "acute problems" in terms of
adequate housing is unplanned urban sprawl, which leads to an increase in
slums and forced evictions, he said.
In India, between November 2004 and January 2005, roughly 80,000 homes were
demolished, affecting some 300,000 people. Most of them have not been
resettled, and are actually living on the street, Kothari reported.
What is most disturbing is that these mass evictions continue taking place
in cities alongside the development of "playgrounds for the rich," according
to the U.N. expert.
"There is money coming in, there is a growing middle class, and so you have
a lot of investment in shopping centres and expensive housing, and not much
investment in housing for the poor," he said.
Kothari estimated that the number of homeless people in the world's urban
centres is between 20 and 40 million. At the same time, U.N. statistics
indicate that in the least developed countries (LDCs), 78 percent of the pop
ulation lives in slums.
But inadequate housing is far from being an exclusively urban problem in the
developing countries. Around 75 percent of the poorest people in the
world - some 900 million in all - live in isolated rural areas and depend
on agriculture to make a living, he noted.
"In the developing countries, the lack of rapid land and agrarian reform and
of protection and subsidies for small farmers or for fisherpeople is leading
to a situation of growing homelessness and landlessness in rural areas as
well," he added.
In his presentation to the Commission on Human Rights on Tuesday, Kothari
also reported on his official mission to Brazil last year.
He commented to IPS that while the Brazilian government "is taking very
positive steps, they need to reconcile macroeconomic objectives, which
traditionally only look at growth, with human rights objectives."
One means of achieving this goal would be to lower the budget surplus target
from 4.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 3.25 percent, he
suggested.
This would free up the funds needed to gradually meet the population's
economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to housing, while
still respecting the budget-surplus conditions imposed by the international
lending institutions.
In his presentation to the Commission, Kothari acknowledged the cooperation
he received from the governments of Brazil and Kenya during his missions to
these countries last year.
For his part, the Brazilian representative, Ambassador Carlos Paranhos,
noted that the report presented by the U.N. rapporteur to the Commission
reflected the Brazilian government's commitment to implementing egalitarian
housing policies that incorporate women, indigenous communities and the
Afro-Brazilian population.
In his interview with IPS, Kothari commented on the phenomenon known as the
"real estate bubble", stressing that it is not limited to the United States
and certain European nations.
In India, for example, there is a desire to create so-called "world-class
cities," he said. "So Mumbai has to become a world-class city, and New Delhi
has to become a world-class city, and they are inviting foreign investment."
The problem is that much of the investment made by multinationals in real
estate is essentially for speculative purposes. In the meantime, he added,
national laws that used to protect the local land market are now being
modified to allow greater foreign ownership and real estate investment.
What's more, the real estate market is being opened up with no legislative
and policy protection for the poor, he said.
Kothari, who will conclude his mandate as special rapporteur next year,
argued that the private sector is not interested in human rights, including
the right to adequate housing, "so I think private sector involvement can
only work if there is strong legislation and a strong political will from
the government to protect the poor.
"The ultimate obligation to guarantee the right to housing falls on the
state," he said.
(END/2005)
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