Building Our Collective Agenda : HIC Social and Feminist Movements Convergence in person gathering in Durban

An international exchange of social and feminist movements for human rights related to habitat, co-organized by HIC and Abahlali baseMjondolo

23–25 April 2025 | Durban, South Africa

Building a Collective Agenda

Across the globe, the right to land, housing, and the city is under attack: commodified, privatized, and stripped from those who need it most. Human rights defenders face persecution. Space for civil society is shrinking. Decisions that shape our lives are increasingly made by powerful elites, far removed from people on the ground.

In this context, putting the struggles, demands, and ideas of social movements — especially feminist movements — at the center is more important than ever. It’s not only urgent — it’s a shared priority for our coalition.

From 23–25 April 2025, grassroots movements from around the world will gather in Durban, South Africa giving continuity to HIC’s global convergence of social and feminist movements. This international meeting will create space for in-person exchange, learning, and solidarity among social and feminist movements working to defend land, housing, and habitat rights.

The gathering is co-organized by Habitat International Coalition (HIC) and Abahlali baseMjondolo, South Africa’s largest shack dweller movement. This convergence builds on years of solidarity and collective struggle across regions — and will strengthen a shared agenda for action.

Background: A Growing Convergence of Social and feminist Movements

Since 2022, HIC has renewed its commitment to supporting social and feminist movements in shaping collective strategies across different regions of the world. An in-person exchange in Argentina in 2023 brought together movements from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia. Together, they began shaping a common agenda focused on:

• Deepening reflection on the current political and economic context;
• Sharing practices of struggle and transformative strategies;
• Making explicit shared attitudes and guiding principles;
• Promoting grassroots demands and proposals.

Out of this process, three pillars for collective work emerged:

1. Political advocacy objectives;
2. Practices of struggle to promote and support;
3. Guiding principles and attitudes to strengthen convergence across regions.

This ongoing dialogue continued online in 2024, including with Abahlali baseMjondolo, who will now co-host the 2025 exchange in Durban.

Durban 2025: What Will Happen

Over three days, the exchange will combine field visits, collective reflection, strategy building, and mobilization — grounded in feminist and grassroots approaches.

Programme Highlights

23 April 2025: Opening & Field Visits with Abahlali baseMjondolo

Participants will visit settlements organized by Abahlali baseMjondolo — learning directly from communities building alternatives and defending their right to land, housing, and dignity. This will set the stage for collective reflection rooted in lived experience.

24 April 2025: Collective Work Sessions

Movements will share experiences of struggle across regions — reflecting on feminist practices, strategies for the social production of habitat, and ways of building people’s power.

Together, we will work on:

• Defining shared political advocacy priorities;
  
• Identifying practices of struggle to promote and support;
  
• Making explicit our guiding principles and attitudes for collective work.

25 April 2025: Mobilizing for Unfreedom Day

The exchange will culminate in collective participation in Unfreedom Day — Abahlali baseMjondolo’s annual mass mobilisation against systemic inequality, state violence, and ongoing dispossession.

This will be a powerful moment of solidarity and visibility — connecting local struggles to global resistance.

Click here to see the full programme in English / French / Españool / Portuguese

Looking Ahead: What’s Coming Next

This exchange is not an isolated event — it’s part of a longer trajectory of collective action.

The shared declaration developed in Durban will feed into advocacy processes at national, regional, and global levels, including:

• The C20 civil society engagement in South Africa (November 2025);
• The World Social Forum in Benin (2026);
• The 10-year review of the New Urban Agenda (2026).

Together, these spaces offer opportunities to center habitat-related human rights and feminist approaches in policies and agendas that shape our cities, our territories, and our futures.

Our Collective Objectives

The gathering in Durban aims to further strengthen interconnection, cross-regional solidarity, and common priorities for joint action among diverse social movements. The main goals are:

• Learn from each other’s experiences, struggles, and principles;
• Create space for women’s and gender-diverse leadership and feminist approaches;
• Reflect on struggles for habitat rights and the social production of habitat;
• Draft a declaration of political advocacy objectives rooted in grassroots processes and lived realities.

Participating movements and organisations 

Stay Connected

This process belongs to social movements, communities, and people organizing for human rights related to habitat. Follow and support this process as we continue this collective process.