COHRE - Centre On Housing Rights and Evictions

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Housing Rights Awards 2003

Housing Rights Awards 2002

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Guatemala

Demolished homes in Jembatan, Indonesia

Housing Rights Awards 2003

Recipients

Housing Rights Violator Award 2003

Guatemala
Despite having ratified a range of International Human Rights Standards enshrining the right to adequate housing, Guatemala continuously fails to take any significant steps to meet its international housing rights obligations. Approximately 50 per cent of the population in Guatemala lives in inadequate housing, most of them indigenous persons who suffer disproportionately from housing poverty. Mistreatment of land rights, harmful development policies such as the Chixoy Dam and regular forced evictions create a problematic housing situation that will be impossible to tackle without the pronounced political will of the government. A repeat winner, Guatemala received the COHRE Housing Rights Violator Award in 2002.

Indonesia
Indonesia continues to violate the right to adequate housing in Aceh and West Papua. Following the breakdown of talks with separatist rebels from Aceh regarding the fragile peace deal in May 2003, the Indonesian military has forcibly evicted and internally displaced up to 200,000 people during the previous year. From January 2000 to July 2002, the number of IDPs in Indonesia has more than doubled from 600,000 to an estimated 1.3 million. The conditions in many of the IDP camps throughout Indonesia are deplorable, characterized by overcrowding, inadequate shelter and lack of sanitation and services.

Serbia and Montenegro
The local and national governments of Serbia and Montenegro have failed to ensure access to adequate housing and essential services for Roma and were also behind a string of forced evictions in 2003. If the government continues its discriminatory policy, the situation of the Roma will deteriorate dramatically. From March 2002 to May 2003, 252 Roma families, comprised of approximately 1,500 persons have been forcibly evicted from their homes, which they were forced to build on informal sites. They were never offered provision of alternative accommodation and often end up living on landfills and other unsanitary and appalling sites.

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Housing Rights Protector Award 2003

Scottish Executive
Scotland proved housing rights can be made a reality by exemplifying what can be done when the political will of a government is genuinely applied towards legally protecting human rights and safeguarding human dignity. The Homelessness (Scotland) Act 2003 fundamentally changes homelessness law, which was first introduced in 1977. Over a period of ten years (until 2012) it will gradually give everyone who is homeless the right to a home, giving Scotland the most progressive homelessness law in Europe.

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Rachel Corrie

Housing Rights Defender Award 2003

Rachel Corrie
At the age of 23, Rachel Corrie was killed by a bulldozer on 16 March 2003 in Rafah, Gaza, while defending a Palestinian dwelling against demolition and its inhabitants against forced evictions. With her unwavering courage, she set an example for the defence of human rights and the struggle to implement those rights without compromise. Her memory serves to inspire housing rights activists through the world.