Country or Position: Mozambique Committee: Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Name: Erwina Anandya University: Padjadjaran University Topic

B : Establishment Of Adequate Housing

In todays world, some 100 million persons are homeless and more than a billion are inadequately housed. According to the estimates of the United Nations, 3 billion persons will be living in slums in 2050. The right to adequate housing is a universal right, recognized at the international level and in more than one hundred national constitutions throughout the world. It is a right recognized as valid for every individual person. The right to housing should not be interpreted in a narrow or restricted sense which equates it with, for example, the shelter provided by merely having a roof over ones head or views shelter exclusively as a commodity. Rather it should be seen as the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity. Especially for Developing Nations Within Africa and Southeast Asia. These countries suffer from the most intense slum/homeless problems and will look to secure as much aid and direction as possible. While solutions such as consulting and government-designed housing, this may be difficult. I think For the right to housing should not be interpreted in a narrow or restricted sense . Rather it should be seen as the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity. The point is, housing corresponds to international law if certain minimal elements are guaranteed at all times:

Legal security of tenure, including protection against forced eviction; Availability of services, materials, facilities and infrastructure, including access to safe drinking water and sanitation; Affordability, including for the poorest, through housing subsidies, protection against unreasonable rent levels or rent increases; Habitability, including protection from cold, damp, heat, rain, wind and disease vectors; Accessibility for disadvantaged groups, including to the elderly, children, the physically disabled, the terminally ill and victims of natural disasters; Location, far from polluted sites or pollution sources but near to health-care services, schools, child-care centers and other social facilities.

In all cases of privatization of public services, the government must continue to guarantee the protection of the right to adequate housing, including/especially for the poorest. Demanding the right to adequate housing implies fighting for the inclusion of the most vulnerable people in society and forcing governments to respect their legal obligation to guarantee a life of dignity. including This implies also fighting forced evictions, illegal in international law but of which hundreds of thousands of persons are victims every year. Some key contextual features of the entire southern african region include : Poverty : the region includes some of the poorest countries in the world. Low levels of economic activity, leading to weak government revenue flows, hamper efforts to address land reform, and increase dependence on international donors. HIV-AIDS : the global epidemic has hit southern africa the hardest of any region . While considerable research has been done in some countries on the epidemic's im pact on rural land holding patterns there has been very little equivalen research done in urban areas. Gender diivision : although it is unwise to oversimplify this point, access to land rights often being secondary right, in that they are derived from land rights held by their husbands or other male relatives.
Colonial history : all the countries in the region suffered under various forms of

colonisation from the mid-17th century through to the second haflf of the 20th century. This has had a marked impact on land rights, although this impact varies from country to country. Each country has also responded to the colonial legacy of skewed and unequal land allocations in different ways, inevitably involving some form of redistribution of land. The obligation to protect the right to adequate housing requires that governments prohibit third parties from preventing the enjoyment of the right to housing in any way. This applies to individuals, business enterprises and other entities. Governments must, for example, enact laws that protect the population from land and property speculation. They must create competent bodies to investigate violations and must assure the means of effective redress for victims, most notably through access to the courts. Governments must also intervene when powerful individuals or business enterprises evict persons from their land or their housing, by bringing to law those responsible and by guaranteeing restitution and/or compensation for the victims.