HIC initiatives

Much of the Coalition’s work is on particular themes and is organized by networks – such as the Housing and Land Rights Network, the Women and Shelter Network and the Habitat and Sustainable Environment Network, whose work is described in detail below. Each network carries on different projects, campaigns and advocacy activities.

The Coalition also maintains working groups with less formal structures, which arise from members’ initiatives and bring together HIC members with a common interest in the social production of habitat as well as joint task-specific efforts such as the development of the Charter of the Right to the City. In 2005, members initiated two new groups to exchange experiences of struggles and means of organization: the Working Group on Privatization and Globalization of Habitat, which focused on land, housing, utilities and the impact of free trade agreements in habitat; and the Task Force on Housing and Land Rights in War, Conflict and Foreign Occupation.

As all these groups have evolved at different stages of Habitat International Coalition’s 30 years of activity, each has its own level and type of expertise to serve members. This includes research, joint advocacy, training and capacity-building, as well as the development and dissemination of common methodologies.

a. The Housing and Land Rights Network

The Housing and Land Rights Network is a specialized group of HIC members who cooperate to develop methods and share strategies for using human rights to promote and defend adequate housing and land for deprived persons and groups. The main purpose of its global programme is to promote throughout the HIC and beyond the human right to adequate housing as the right for “everyone, everywhere to gain and sustain a secure home and community in which to live in peace and dignity.”

This network has carried out several fact-finding missions and monitoring exercises to further develop the entitlements related to the human right to adequate housing. In 2005, the network launched the Housing and Land Rights Monitoring Toolkit to promote a practical methodology for monitoring and resolving human settlement problems within a framework of legal obligations of the state and its compliance with international standards, in particular the Habitat Agenda,( 1) pertaining to the application of human rights in the field of human settlements. The intent here is to translate these legal achievements into practical gains for people. Since 2003, this network has worked with the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing to enhance the regional consultations on “women’s human rights to adequate housing and land.”

The Housing and Land Rights Network shares with HIC a set of objectives that bind and shape their commitment to communities struggling to secure housing and improve their well-being and living conditions as a human right. The network seeks to: advocate the recognition, defence and full implementation of everyone’s right everywhere to a secure place to live in peace and dignity; promote public awareness about human settlement problems and needs, globally; defend the human rights of the poor, displaced, homeless and inadequately housed; and maintain a progressive platform for formulating common housing rights strategies.

To implement these objectives, coordinating bodies help network members by providing them with services that maximize their chances of defending people’s rights. These services seek to build capacity and practical skills while linking network partners through reciprocal solidarity actions, as well as building broader, external alliances to advocate for the human right to adequate housing at all possible levels. To reach these goals, and to respond to members’ demands and initiatives, the network has developed a range of tools and practical activities offering:

• technical and material assistance for members to conduct effective local, national, regional and international housing rights campaigns;
• human resource development, human rights education, and training in programming, monitoring and self-representation skills;
• exchanges and dissemination of member experiences, “best practices” and problem-solving strategies;
• action-oriented research, production and distribution of knowledge in the form of practical guidance and country assessments for use in promoting and defending the human right to housing;
• opportunities to participate in international forums and UN human rights bodies in order to develop, monitor and report in solidarity on standards relating to the human right to adequate housing, and to clarify state obligations to respect, protect, promote and fulfil that right;
• development of the legal framework for protecting the human right to adequate housing and land, and for building housing solutions, including social production of habitat, for communities across the network;
• a system of urgent action appeals to members and others to act in practical solidarity in defending against forced eviction and other violations; and
• access to regional and international human rights mechanisms, including preparation and presentation of parallel reports to UN treaty-monitoring bodies, and cooperation with Special Rapporteurs.

The Housing and Land Rights Network maintains practical links at three levels. The network is primarily dedicated to maintaining the cooperation of HIC members interested in the human rights approach to human development. However, it also plays a wider coalition-building role, mainstreaming the concept of the human right to adequate housing universally throughout HIC. As a strategic principle, this network also maintains productive relationships with other networks and coalitions globally, joining forces and pooling resources in the pursuit of common human rights values and goals.

In additional to its global programme, the network operates regional programmes in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) and South Asia, as well as emerging regional initiatives in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.

b. The Women and Shelter Network

The Women and Shelter Network is a group of organizations that recognize the particular struggle of women in accessing land and housing and in participating in all aspects of human settlements development. Member organizations support and work with low-income communities, and link to provide mutual capacity-building and solidarity both regionally and globally. This network has developed initiatives highlighting and strengthening women’s participation in the struggle for land and urban services, and has had a formal consulting relationship with UN–Habitat since 1989.

The mission of the Women and Shelter Network is “to unite, promote and support women and their organizations in the development of human settlements that improve women’s and a community’s quality of life.” The main achievements have been: the production of knowledge and proposals for public policies, including issues of housing, territorial and urban development including the gender approach; the development of toolkits for mainstreaming the gender perspective; and strengthening local processes for reinforcing women’s leadership and participation in the political arena. This network has carried its message successfully to multilateral conferences of the United Nations such as CEDAW and the World Urban Forums, and has participated actively in international forums such as the World Social Forums.

When the HIC board was restructured in 1987, to ensure that it adequately represented civil society groups in Africa, Asia and Latin America, one of its first actions was to create the Women and Shelter Group, in order to formulate a plan of action for HIC in the area of women and shelter. In its first meeting in New Delhi, India in 1988, the group worked to identify priority concerns, formulate a plan of action and define a structure that would allow and encourage women in community-based organizations to identify shelter priorities, exchange experiences, acquire information and skills and influence shelter policy and planning. This plan of action was presented to the HIC board, where agreement was reached on forming the Women and Shelter Network and on the representation by three members of the Women and Shelter Group on the HIC board. Its work programme was developed at subsequent meetings.

The Women and Shelter Network works at local, national, regional and international levels: to promote and strengthen horizontal exchanges among members;  to support lobbying for land and housing rights for women;  to link global processes with local action;  to provide greater access to information and training on human settlements;  to create public awareness about the priorities of women and habitat;  to voice the concerns of women in low-income communities;  to ensure women’s concerns are policy priorities for agents working in human settlement development;  to develop and deliver campaigns that ensure that policies support women’s priorities; and to promote the development of disaggregated data and clear indicators that measure women’s access to land and shelter.

The network is composed of initiative centres that actively promote the objectives and activities of the network through concrete work in their countries. These name a regional or sub-regional reference centre that, together, form the Women and Shelter Group, the directing body of the network. The group formulates policies and designates the International Secretariat to facilitate and support the network’s activities. From 1990 to 1995, the network was coordinated by a secretariat in the Mazingira Institute in Kenya; in 1996, the secretariat moved to Fedevivienda, Colombia, for an interim period and, in 1997, it was transferred for a three-year term to the Women’s Advancement Trust, Tanzania. Membership is open to all organizations and individuals addressing issues of human settlements who have or want to develop a focus on women.

Read the Political Platform of the Women and Shelter Network (Latin America)

c. Habitat and Sustainable Environment Network

During its first stage, this network focused on the integration of issues concerning habitat and environment, and lobbying activities at the international level starting at the UN Earth Summit in 1992 and at the UN City Summit in 1996. It also had a lead role within civil society regarding questions relating to water and human right at the UN Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. The network has implemented a global research action project on pro-poor governance in water, sanitation and waste management. The main objectives of the Habitat and Sustainable Environment Network( 2) (formerly called the Habitat and Environment Committee) are:

• To establish linkage between issues of habitat and environmentally sustainable development in order to improve the quality of peoples’ living conditions in communities; and to create a meeting place for supporting action – particularly that aimed at poor residents of marginalized human settlements – by acquiring experiences, resources, technologies and skills that enable all active and organized promoters of human settlements development to fight poverty.
• To help gather information in order to draw up detailed guidelines of how people and organizations can be better empowered and integrated into the decision-making apparatus.
• To devise tools for facilitating interaction between the network members so that they can better serve communities, by assisting them in technical matters and helping them get access to knowledge and communication skills, in order to promote new modalities of participation in projects for developing human settlements.

Networking is rooted in regional reference centres: CINARA for Latin America, Barefoot College for Asia, the Mazingira Institute for Anglophone Africa, and the European Social Forum/Global Water Contract for high-income nations.  After the Johannesburg Summit, its work has focused on such themes as: human rights implementation and globalization, including water campaigns and the impact of water privatization (e.g. in Cochabamba, Bolivia), and people under occupation; social habitat watch activities to monitor implementation at regional, national and local levels, including the roles of civil society and private enterprises. It also includes monitoring the Cities Feeding People initiatives and urban agriculture, which includes new global trends of inclusiveness of urban development; and sustainable development and people under occupation.

In order to deepen findings regarding pro-poor governance for water delivery and waste management, as well as bringing specific inputs to the global agenda, the network will focus more on water, sanitation, waste management and consumption issues in urban development.

d. Social production and management of habitat

HIC’S work on social production and management of habitat seeks to derive practical lessons from the compilation and analysis of “people’s processes” in initiating, designing, building and maintaining local environments. These experiences, which build upon local social resources and demonstrate local social reliance and ingenuity, generate and promote methods and strategies that then can be shared and replicated across regions. More than 200 people-centred experiences in the production, improvement and management of habitat have been documented by HIC since the early 1980s in publications such as Building Community (1988), Building the City with the People (1997), Anatomies of a Social Movement (2004) and From Marginality to Citizenship (2005).