Women and Housing
Rights
Scroll down to download Fact Sheets on women and housing rights | ||||
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Housing and land
are key issues for women. The recent growth in numbers of female poor has
been directly linked to women’s absence of economic opportunities and
autonomy, due to a lack of access to economic resources and failure to
respect of women’s rights, including to land and housing. As a result, millions of women have been relegated to slums, squatter settlements, shantytowns, transit centres, refugee camps or the streets, often for no other reason than the circumstance of their gender and the discrimination which this social status entails. One crucial way to combat women’s poverty and economic marginalization is to make sure that all women realize their human right to adequate housing, without discrimination, and without exception. COHRE's Women's Housing Rights Programme (WHRP) undertakes a wide-range of activities to further develop and understand housing and land rights from women's perspectives and experiences. The WHRP has undertaken a variety of activities since its inception in 1998, including advocacy at the United Nations for new legal standards pertaining to women's housing rights, research and publications on housing rights issues as they affect women, including inheritance, and community based trainings and other awareness raising activities, to highlight the importance of housing, land and related rights for women. COHRE’s WHRP has been working in all regions of the world, more recently focusing on Africa. |
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