HIC [ Habitat International Coalition | Housing and Land Rights Network ]

	Create and disseminate knowledge for a critical and effective application of the HRAH framework (thematic research products and "Tools & Techniques" Series);
	Develop HRAH monitoring indicators that HLRN members (and others) can apply at all levels;
	Build practical skills for members at HRAH/HLR defense via training, development of training materials and methods;
	Conduct exchanges of HRAH knowledge and (preventive/defensive/ remedial) strategies across the network.

The guiding principal behind this goal is to respond to the members' expressed and assessed needs by developing the available tools (including arguments, methods, formulas, analytical approaches, and other needed information) to claim the human right to adequate housing (HRAH) and land rights individually and in association with others.

Create and disseminate knowledge for critically and effectively applying the HRAH framework

HLRN provides information resources in a variety of forms, from the Coordination Office and regional in-house resources libraries, to UN documentation and popular sources that the Coordination Office distributes electronically and posts on the HLRN website (www@hlrn.org) for HIC-HLRN members and the public.

The HLRN website is designed to serve as an essential resource for this information, hosting essential legal materials, reports, the Urgent Actions database, bibliographies of current holdings on housing and land rights, and HLRN member profiles. The HIC-MENA website links to the HLRN Global website, which shares databases holding documentation and member HLRN profiles. The HLRN Global site is also linked to the HIC-GS website, as well as to the four regional HLRN programs.

Action Research and Publication:

HLRN also creates knowledge in a variety of ways. HLRN supported research incorporates a methodology grounded in the HRAH framework and the HLRN "Toolkit," and serves multiple purposes. It creates new knowledge of HRAH conditions in the regions, especially where ESC rights discourse is still marginalized. The accumulation of this knowledge provides the basis for comparative analysis of current practice, human rights and State obligations, patriarchy, and popular problem-solving initiatives and government interventions and government/nongovernment cooperation.

The global "Social Production of Habitat" Project, coordinated from the HIC General Secretariat, seeks to derive practical lessons from the compilation and analysis of "people's processes" in initiating, designing, building and maintaining local environments. These experiences, which build upon local social capital and demonstrate native social reliance and ingenuity, produce methods and strategies that then can be shared and replicated across regions. From the perspective of HLRN, this project presents the opportunity to develop new dimensions and regions to a much studied phenomenon on some communities (particularly in Latin America). The dimension of human rights and state obligations is often missing in the existing literature. However, that dimension is especially vital to the discourse on globalization, which concerns the rapid implementation of privatization policies and the withdrawal of the state from both its authority and obligation to ensure the progressive realization of the human rights. This "withering away" of the state especially affects the human right to adequate housing, including the related public goods and services.

The HLRN Global Program publishes reference works for advancing HRAH/HLR knowledge, such as:

Kurds, Palestinians, Tibetans [four-part Solidarity Network pamphlet series, in English only];

The Charter on the Right to the City [arising from the urban social movements];

Children and the Right to Adequate Housing. A Guide to International Legal Resources (2002, in English, 2004, in Arabic);

"Standing against the Empire," issued in 2003 as a report of the Seminars focused on housing and land rights that HLRN organized at the WSF III for use as a guide for practical solidarity with the Palestinian people.

"Tools and Techniques" Series

In 2003, HLRN Global Program introduced the "Tools & Techniques" Series of practical publications that serve as "how to" guides for housing rights defenders. The first of these are the methodology for the Urgent Action system and the complete HRAH "Toolkit" monitoring methodology. While this series of resources seeks to develop the skills and professionalism of housing rights monitors and defenders, it also reflects the ongoing development of indicators within HLRN through its activities and member experiences. In the present period, the HLRN Global Program proposes to add the following subjects to the "Tools and Techniques" Series:

Urgent Actions: HLRN Guide to Defending the Human Rights to Adequate Housing, No. 1 (2003, Arabic, English, French and Spanish);

HLRN Housing and Land Rights "Toolkit" No. 2 (2005, CD version in Arabic, English and Spanish);

Forthcoming:

Budget Analysis for Housing Rights (2005);

Parallel Reporting on Housing Rights in the UN Treaty System (2005);

Monitoring Millennium Development Goal 7, Target 11 (2005);

Measuring Secure Tenure as an Element of the Human Right to Adequate Housing (2005, in English and Arabic);

Strategies for defending housing and land rights from Africa and Asia [arising from the HLRN strategy exchange program, 2001-2002] (in English).

Develop HRAH monitoring indicators that HLRN members (and others) can apply at all levels

Grounded in HIC-HLRN members' community-based experience, the HLRN Housing Rights "Toolkit" already has provided useful guidance for developing indicators in monitoring and measuring "adequate" housing from a human rights perspective. The Toolkit's presentation of the 12 distinct-yet-interdependent elements of the right provide the standards for field research. The Toolkit elaborates the legal, institutional and policy guarantees required to realize the human right to adequate housing, and clarifies the measurable indicators of "progressive realization." The Toolkit's "Loss Matrix" also enumerates the costs to victims and others in the case of a violation.

The HLRN "Toolkit" already has served as the source of housing rights indicators for fact-finding missions, survey research, national housing rights assessments, human rights-based development in the field, monitoring the Habitat II Agenda and related Millennium Development Goals, and elaborating the program concepts and evaluation criteria for the UN Habitat "Secure Tenure Campaign." Each application of the indicators leads to further specificity and clarity on the aspects of the right to adequate housing to be monitored at the conceptual and comparative level. Equally important is the application of those indicators to be tested locally and nationally, and achieved as a matter of policy.

Build practical skills for HRAH/HLR defense via training, development of training materials and methods

The formal outcomes of HLRN indicators development is just one example of how these methodological tools double as materials for training and professional guidance for housing rights defenders. HLRN already has developed and delivered the following training modules for this purpose:
" HRAH and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child;
" The UN Human Rights System;
" How to prepare and present a parallel report writing to the UN human rights treaty bodies (with focus on CESCR);
" The methodology for monitoring the human right to adequate housing, with submodules on the ESC rights to health and education;

Strategic planning for housing rights defenders;

Network formulation and maintenance;

ESC rights monitoring for media professionals;

Applying human rights in poverty eradication, adapting the OHCHR draft guidelines;

How to mount and manage Urgent Action appeals;

Regional human rights systems (African, Inter-American, European).

All these have been already developed and delivered since 1999. All are available in English and Arabic, while some are originally prepared in other languages or already translated (e.g., Spanish and Khmer). All are available for HLRN coordinators and offices to use as materials in training for local HLRN members and associates. Future plans of HLRN Global Program include developing and disseminating training manuals and materials for members as follows:

for two modules each year (in English);

" special editions of these modules (in English) for training of trainers (ToT) to ensure the multiplier effect of the training investment, and

adaptations as popular versions for communities with limited literacy skills.

The value of the HLRN training modules and materials so far, developed in response to strategic opportunities and member demands, already has been proved many times over. The coming phase involves the refinement and diffusion of these tools to the widest possible audience within the Network and within HIC. This is necessitated by the increasing demand for practical methods to respect, defend, promote, fulfill and monitor the right to housing. While that demand exceeds the HLRN Global Program's capacity to deliver stand-up training to all who need it, future plans call for developing a cadre of members as trainers to diffuse these modules and methods locally to a wider and more-diverse audience.

The development of new training materials will concentrate on specific tools within the "Toolkit," including quantifying the losses/costs of housing and land rights violations by applying the "Loss Matrix," elaborating the empirical guidance for budget analysis and proving how housing rights violations-especially forced evictions-deepen poverty and impede sustainable development. The proposed subjects of new curriculum development in the period are:

Women's rights to housing and land,

Budget analysis from the housing rights perspective

Conduct exchanges of HRAH knowledge and (preventive/defensive/remedial) strategies across the network.

Member demand continues for HIC-HLRN to customize and manage exchanges of expertise in particular program areas or technical skills. The HLRN programs coordinate periodically within countries, the region and the larger HIC membership around their specific campaigns and collaborative activities.

Palestine as a focus

The laws and policies causing deprivation in the housing sector serve as a lesson on the wide range of ESCR violations. These affect Palestinians in the occupied territory, as well as those citizens of Israel.

HIC-HLRN members in historical Palestine have rich experience at monitoring these violations. Their efforts are not always coordinated or known to the wider region. HLRN's MENA Program seeks to link and consolidate housing and land rights defense among regional members, including to foster cooperation in applying common monitoring methods in order to facilitate data sharing and more comprehensive fact finding.