Report of
the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component
of the right to an
adequate standard of living, Miloon Kothari
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Q1.
Please provide information on relevant national legislation with regard
to housing and related services.
Please also specify whether the right to adequate housing (RAH) is
recognized in the Constitution or guaranteed in specific
legislation.
In
addition, please specify whether women’s equality is recognized in the
Constitution or guaranteed in specific legislation.
Q2.
Does the Constitution provide that the International Covenant on
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on All Forms of
Discrimination against Women or other international human rights treaties which
guarantee the right to housing form a part of national law and have domestic
applicability? Is there an
effective judicial review process to ensure consistency of legislation with
relevant provisions of the international human rights treaties, particularly
those which specifically protect women’s right to adequate
housing?
Q3.
How do laws, policies and practices, through existing institutions (both
formal and customary and traditional norms and practices), budgets and
programmes, ensure substantive gender equality in the various entitlements of
the right to adequate housing, including land, access to finance, civic services
and information and freedom from violence against women
(VAW)?
Q3.b. Do other laws (e.g. personal laws,
family laws, domestic violence legislation, inheritance laws) ensure equal right
to adequate housing for women?
Q4.
What is your assessment of the housing situation of women belonging to
particularly vulnerable groups, such as female-headed households, indigenous and
tribal women, women with HIV/AIDS, women with disability, rural women living on
subsistent farming, women victims of forced evictions, women victims of violence
including domestic violence, refugees, migrants, migrant workers, domestic
workers, internally displaced women and women of different sexual
orientation? Do they have access to
justice and legal remedies? Please
share case studies and testimonies where available.
Q5.
What are the historical, traditional, cultural, religious and other
factors affecting the equal access of women to housing, land and related
services?
Q6.
How have the policies and processes of globalization such as trade,
finance, investment and debt affected women’s right to adequate housing and
access to related services? How do
these make women more vulnerable to VAW?
Q7.
How have women’s rights to adequate housing and access to related
services been addressed in poverty reduction strategies and programmes in your
country?
Q8.
How have women’s rights to adequate housing and access to related
services been addressed in violence against women legislation and programmes in
your country?
Q9.
Please share positive examples or “best practices” whereby Governments
and civil society have endeavoured, separately or jointly, to protect and
promote women’s equal right to adequate housing.
Q10. Please
provide gender-disaggregated statistics on housing (urban/rural, forms of
ownership, female-headed households, homelessness, access to basic services,
etc.).
(a) Legal security of tenure. The legal right to secure tenure, whether freehold, leasehold, or other form of individual and collective rights to housing, involves protection from forced eviction, harassment and other threats. It also effectively guarantees access to, use of and control over land, property and housing resources.
Q11. Do women and men enjoy equal tenure and property rights regardless of their civil or other status? Has lack of secure tenure contributed to situations of VAW? How does the Government guarantee such security of tenure to women? What measures have been adopted to give full protection against forced eviction, based upon effective participation, consultation and negotiation with affected persons or groups?
(b) Access to public goods and services. The right to adequate housing cannot be effectively realized without access to public goods and services, including water, health care, transport, fuel, sanitation, lighting and electricity, sewerage and waste disposal, childcare and communications.
Q12. What policies and measures have been adopted by the Government to provide or regulate such services to meet the needs of the community? Do women and female-headed households enjoy equal access to such services? Are the basic services privatized? If so, are there subsidies and/or different pricing mechanisms designed to ensure affordable access by the poor?
(c) Access to land, water and other natural resources. Every community must have access to natural resources necessary for its survival and livelihood, including, inter alia, fuel, fodder, water and building materials.
Q13. What are the laws, policies and measures adopted to ensure equitable distribution of land with emphasis on gender equality and provision of necessary resources for poor households and other marginalized and vulnerable groups? Have land reforms, both urban and rural, been implemented to ensure its fair distribution as a public good? What steps have been taken to respect the housing rights of land‑based indigenous and tribal peoples in general and women within these groups in particular?
Q14. Do women and female-headed
households have equal access to natural resources sufficient to their needs,
including those necessary for their survival and livelihood, including, inter
alia, land, water, building materials, fuel and fodder? What measures have been adopted by the
State to effectively regulate distribution and ensure the accessibility and
affordability of such resources for women and female-headed households,
including through subsidies?
Q15. What measures have been
adopted to ensure that clean and safe water is reliably accessible and provided
in adequate supply for individual, family and community use? Do women enjoy equal access to safe
drinking water and to water for agricultural or other domestic
use?
(d) Affordability. Individuals and communities should have access to affordable housing and must have the corresponding right to livelihood so as to be able to afford decent housing.
Q16. Do
women enjoy equal access to housing finance? What policies and measures have been
adopted by the State, including through subsidies, tax incentives or market
regulation, to ensure affordability of housing particularly for women and
female-headed households? Is there
a national definition of “affordability” of housing (e.g. a maximum of one third
of any household income should be sufficient to obtain adequate housing)? How does unaffordability of housing
contribute to women’s vulnerability to VAW, e.g. preventing women from leaving
situations of domestic violence?
(e) Habitability. Adequate housing must provide needed space to live in dignity and peace. It must also provide protection from natural elements, structural hazards and disease vectors that are threats to physical well-being. The physical conditions of the home can affect the realization of other rights, including the highest attainable standard of mental and physical health, as well as education, and the absence of adequate conditions is not conducive to learning (especially for children).
Q17. How do laws and policies that regulate the habitability of housing or define the habitability aspect of adequate housing take into consideration special needs of women?
Q18. What laws and policies have
been adopted to regulate environmental degradation and to guarantee the right to
a safe environment?
(f) Physical accessibility. Disadvantaged communities and groups, which often include women and female-headed households, must be allowed full and sustainable access to adequate housing and resources, including land, infrastructure and sources of livelihood, and the State must take account of special housing needs.
Q19. What measures and policies have been adopted to guarantee equality of access to adequate housing for women and female-headed households and other disadvantaged groups within communities (e.g. battered women, women with HIV/AIDS, women with disability, indigenous women, refugees and internally displaced)?
(g) Location. Adequate housing must be in a place that enables access to employment, primary health care, education and other social services and civic amenities. The financial and temporal cost of transport must not place excessive financial and other demands on the household. In addition, both rural and urban housing must be in a location that is safe, particularly from environmental hazards and pollutants.
Q20. Do women face any particular
constraints in accessing services and resources necessary for livelihood because
of where they live? What policies
and measures are adopted to alleviate them?
(h) Cultural adequacy. Housing configuration, spatial design and site/community organization should be determined locally and in harmony with a community’s cultural preferences and attributes.
Q21. Are women from all cultural, ethnic, religious or other backgrounds enabled to express cultural diversity, participate in the planning process (also see questions 23 and 24 below) and have the right to self‑determination in relation to housing? Please share such cases and examples.
(i) Freedom from dispossession, damage and destruction. Each individual and community has a right to a place to live without threat of dispossession from land, all forms of their property, their homes and resources, as well as all individual and collective holdings required to sustain livelihood.
Q22. Does the State effectively safeguard the right not to be subjected to arbitrary interference with home, person and privacy, including dispossession? What are the policies and measures adopted to protect women, including female-headed households, and compensate, resettle or provide for restitution where dispossession takes place?
(j) Access to information. Individuals and communities must have access to appropriate data, documents and intellectual resources that impact upon their right to obtain adequate housing. Having access to appropriate data means being informed about potential industrial and natural hazards, infrastructure, planning design, availability of services and natural resources and other factors that affect the right.
Q23. What laws and policies exist
to facilitate access to information that impacts upon the right to adequate
housing, including information about potential industrial and natural hazards,
infrastructure, planning design, availability of services and natural
resources? Are women regularly
accessing such information and benefiting from it?
(k) Participation. Effective participation in decision-making is essential to the fulfilment of all other rights, as well as the elements of the right to housing. At all levels of the decision‑making process in respect of the provision of and right to adequate housing, individuals and communities must be able to express and share their views; they must be consulted and be able to contribute substantively to such processes that affect housing, including, inter alia, location, spatial dimensions, links to community, social capital and livelihood, housing configuration and other practical features. The State must ensure that building and housing laws and policies do not preclude free expression, including cultural and religious diversity.
Q24. What policies and measures
have been adopted to ensure/encourage popular participation in the
decision-making process with regard to housing policies and planning? Are women sufficiently represented in
the process?
Q25. Do the housing laws and
policies expressly protect, promote and fulfil the right to freedom of
expression to ensure harmonious and effective design, implementation and
maintenance of the community?
(l) Resettlement, restitution, compensation, non-refoulement and return. Resettlement may be essential to survival in the case of natural or human-made disasters, including in conflict and post-conflict situations. Therefore, the congruent right to freedom of movement can be essential to the fulfilment of all other rights. Any resettlement arrangement, whatever the cause, must be consensual, fair and adequate to meet individual and collective needs.
Q26. Are there special measures adopted in resettlement processes that recognize the need of women and female-headed households to sufficient access to the sources of livelihood, productive land, infrastructure, social services and civic amenities, as well as fair and adequate restitution and/or compensation for losses?
(m) Privacy and security. Every woman, man, youth and child has the right to live and conduct her/his private life in a secure place and be protected from threats or acts that compromise her/his mental and/or physical well-being or integrity inside or outside the home.
Q27. What measures have been adopted to ensure physical and mental security and personal privacy of women, including preventing domestic violence?
(n) Access to remedies. Provision of domestic legal and other remedies is an important part of protecting the right to adequate housing. Individuals and groups must be protected from abuse by landlords, property developers, landowners or any other third party capable of abusing their rights. Where such infringements do occur, public authorities should act to preclude further deprivations as well as guaranteeing access to judicial redress including legal and equitable remedies for any infringement caused.
Q28. Are there remedies and legal aid available for women? What measures have been adopted to ensure equal access of women to judicial processes and remedies? What are other innovative mechanisms such as self-help groups and women’s collectives that can facilitate women’s access to housing and livelihood?
(o) Education and empowerment. Individuals and communities should have access to technical assistance and other means to enable them to improve their living standards and fully realize their economic, cultural and social rights and development potential. The State, for its part, should endeavour to promote and provide for catalysts and mechanisms for the same, including efforts to ensure that all citizens are aware of procedural measures available for defending and realizing her/his right to adequate housing. Human rights education is a key part of such an empowerment strategy.
Q29. What has been achieved in terms of building capacities and awareness on the right to adequate housing among women in your country? What is your assessment of remaining needs and challenges?
(p) Freedom from violence against women. The State must prevent all forms of violence against women committed by either State or non-State actors to ensure women’s RAH. The definition of VAW as per the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993) is, “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”. Further, the State is responsible for addressing both individual and structural forms of violence, in the family, the community and by the State, and for ensuring that there is legal redress for any acts or threats of VAW.
Q30. What forms of VAW and what
threats of VAW occur as a result of housing violations, such as rape, domestic
violence, assault, trafficking, family abuse, forced marriage, dowry deaths and
others? How do housing violations
make women more vulnerable to VAW?
Q31. Who are the
perpetrators? What kinds of housing
violations do victims of VAW face, e.g. battered women, rape survivors? Show information where realization of
RAH has led to less VAW.
Q32. What strategies/best
practices have been used to address VAW related to housing rights violations,
e.g. are there adequate shelters for victims of domestic
violence?
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