NEW – News

German Parliament stops Housing Support for Young Unemployed

Germany.- Federal Parliament reduces welfare incomes for young unemployed adults and decides not to give subsidies for rental housing if they leave parents' housholds without agreement of the local labor welfare offices. By this change of the “Hartz IV” legislation many young unemployed adults will have no legal chance to found their own household.

Social movements’ declaration on water at the WSF Caracas 2006

Building on the work of meetings of previous years, social movements involved in the struggles for the rights to water and against its commoditisation from across the world met at the World Social Forum in Caracas. They succeeded in pooling the work of various workshops and built a common platform which examined regional issues within a global understanding of water.

Mexican Organisations for the Right to Water

The below signing organizations have decided to work on a shared basis in the context imposed by the IV World Water Forum to be held on March 2006, an event that articulates the interests of huge multinational enterprises and multilateral banks. On such occasion, we want to put on the water policy debate a social, cultural and spiritual perspective, in order to take into account the human right to water and its democratic, sustainable and fair management as a vital element, a view that inspires the following statement:

Human Rights groups demand urgent adoption of measures to address homelessness in Delhi

As we find ourselves in the midst of a particularly severe winter – January 8, 2006 witnessed the lowest temperature recorded in Delhi since 1935 – the need for decisive action to ease the suffering of Delhi’s homeless has never been more acute. This sense of urgency, tragically, has remained conspicuously absent from the response of the city’s relevant municipal authorities.

Istanbul: ‘Self-service’ production of built environment: End of the model ?

Orhan Esen deals with recent processes which replace the specific Istanbul model of informal “SELF SERVICE URBANIZATION” by neo-liberal, globalized and formalized investments. For better understanding Orhan gives a brief sketch on main periods and elements of the urbanization processes since 1945.