Call for the “Housing and Land Rights Days” HIC Campaign 2009




For the World Habitat Day 2009, UN-Habitat defined the slogan "Planning our urban future". This invitation has the advantage of highlighting the role of the state, its indispensable intervention in the regulation of the city and of the market. This reaffirms our conviction that you cannot handover the city to the market. The urban character of this slogan is related to the call to the next World Urban Forum (WUF V, Rio de Janeiro, March 2010) "The Right to the City – bridging the urban divide". For us, it is a new opportunity to strengthen networks and efforts for the construction of the right to the city (R2C).

We must be careful with the concept of “bridging the urban divide” because the ways to fill in the gaps are not necessarily in agreement with the concept of the R2C as understood and developed HIC. We would not accept that the R2C becomes an empty speech. It is an alternative for the construction of social justice and equity; it is a long process of popular conquests, in partnership with different social actors, to build the R2C throughout the world.

Therefore, we ask you to propose a slogan for the “Housing and Land Rights Days” (HLRD 2009) HIC Campaign. We need clear message to promote the R2C as our commitment towards social justice and equity.

During the meetings of HIC General Assembly in Cairo (May 2009), the participants have decided to combine the positive proposal of the R2C with the denunciation of forced evictions, with a sample of these violations of rights to housing and land.

Please join the preparation of the HLRD 2009 Campaign, sending us, to gs@hic-net.org

– proposals for the slogan,

– the documentation of violations’ cases.