The overall goal of the Human
Rights Mainstreaming Project in UN-Habitat (the Project) is to ensure that UN-Habitat country programmes and their
strategic development frameworks, project implementation and otherwise
technical advisory services promote, respect and protect the rights of
residents in urban areas. While recognizing and reaffirming the indivisibility
and interrelatedness of all human rights, UN-Habitat's mandate will most often
retain a primary focus on the key areas of housing, water and sanitation, basic
services and land. This Project furthermore strives to apply and reinforce the
principles of non-discrimination, equality, participation, inclusion,
accountability and the rule of law to all of UN-Habitat's work, including
projects, programmes, strategies and policy making. An essential adjunct to promoting specific rights is that general
rights (empowering vulnerable and marginalized groups; non-discrimination and
equality; consultation and participation; accountability and the rule of law;
universality and inalienability; indivisibility; interdependence and
interrelatedness of all rights) are also frequently ignored when dealing with
specific rights to housing and basic services and the mainstreaming activity
will also address these. Particular
attention in this regard will be paid to the rights of women.
The operational phase of the
human rights mainstreaming process beginning in early 2014 will continue to
assist UN-Habitat programme officers and Regional and Country Offices in the
implementation and realization of human rights in cities. In addition, the
continued engagement with the global human rights machinery will further the
protection and provision of human rights in cities all over the world.
A
significant benefit of a human rights-based approach is that it is embedded in
solemn and binding commitments already made by governments. They therefore have
a moral and legal commitment to meet them. Investment in housing and basic
services moves from being an elective action to being an incumbent
responsibility. Target populations of low income and excluded urban dwellers
benefit because governments are less easily able to ignore the legitimacy
of claims to remedy housing and basic services deficits. More specifically,
forced evictions of low-income urban households could become less common if
governments are held to and meet higher standards of accountability to their
international obligations vis-à-vis security of tenure.
The main changes mainstreaming human
rights seek to introduce to address the identified problem are three fold.
The first is to proactively empower claim-bearers to assert their rights. The
second is to enable duty-bearers to meet their obligations with regard to the
rights of claim holders. The third is to hold duty-bearers to account in
fulfilling their obligations. These considerations will be systematically
incorporated into the design of all UN-Habitat projects.
A
three-pronged approach will be taken to address the problem:
1.
Claim-holders will be empowered through
the alteration of current management, institutional and governance arrangements
so that they become inclusive of the marginalised urban poor.
2. Duty-bearers will be enabled to meet the
needs of claim-holders more satisfactorily through structured schemes of
capacity building designed to make them aware of their responsibilities and
develop their resources, both human and material, to meet them.
3. Duty bearers will be made more accountable
for implementation of human rights to adequate housing and basic services
through increased and more effective utilisation of the international human
rights governance architecture.
This proposed solution is likely to be the
most appropriate in addressing the problem because it does not rely on one
remedy alone. Thus, if one remedy is less effective because of contextual
considerations, others are still capable of achieving progress. Furthermore, as
the approach will be mainstreamed in UN-Habitat, there is less likelihood that
the pursuit of the implementation of it will remain limited to individual
project initiatives and has the possibility of being upscaled.
The most important external partner,
especially on normative matters, is the United Nations Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights. In the field UNDP is a potential partner as are
bilateral agencies that give high priority to human rights. There is scope for
further development of partnerships with the UN Special Rapporteurs for
Adequate Housing and Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation.
Internally, the Project Office will take the overall lead in
developing the overarching framework within which the branches will operate in
terms of guidance manuals. The Housing and Slum Upgrading Branch (HSUB) will
take the lead as the specialist entity within the Programme on the housing
aspects of the right to adequate housing. It is anticipated that other branches
and regional offices, when contemplating or undertaking projects touching on
housing and slum upgrading will contact HSUB as a matter of course. It is also anticipated
that the Urban Basic Services Branch (UBSB), as well as being the lead on
matters addressing basic services, will be a natural collaborator with HSUB
given the close association between the two rights. Urban waste management,
urban mobility and urban energy – all elements of the right to adequate housing
– are three programmatic areas of the UBSB that will benefit from collaboration
with HSUB. A key player in the formation
of internal partnerships will be the Project Office, which has overall responsibility
for mainstreaming in the Programme. It is also anticipated that the Urban
Planning and Design Branch will be at the forefront of requests for
partnerships given urban planning's pivotal importance in delivering the rights
to adequate housing and basic services
As this is a mainstreaming activity,
UN-Habitat will provide both knowledge and high-level policy advisory
services.
