Goal 3: Advocacy at all levels

The housing rights framework arguments, monitoring tools, methodologies and materials are applied and further developed in forums where HIC-HLRN members meet with governments and other forces impeding or violating HRAH. The training, information, strategy exchanges and monitoring tools are intended to assist the members to ensure more-effective self-representation and problem solving. Thus, the first two goals are designed to provide services that lead to successful advocacy at every level.

The multilateral level

HLRN MENA Program's advocacy efforts address the multilateral-level forums and institutions concerned with HRAH, in particular, and ESCR, in general. HLRN representatives serve as representatives of HIC at UN ECOSOC bodies where appropriate. The HLRN coordinator serves as the principal HIC representative registered at the UN Geneva, who bears the responsibility (in cooperation with HIC General Secretariat) for ensuring HIC member credentials to participate in the UN Human Rights System as necessary. This allows for direct HLRN officer and member access to the UN forums, as well as the occasion to report international-level activities back to the HIC general membership and HIC Board.

HLRN and its members intervene in the legal bodies of the UN treaty-monitoring system, as well as the political bodies such as the Commission on Human Rights and ECOSOC, in order to develop soft-law standards that advance the specificity of the human right to adequate housing in general, as well as for vulnerable groups, in particular. Within its long-term objectives, HLRN pursues eventual international recognition of the human right to land, not least by demonstrating its vital importance through the elucidating violation examples. HLRN also seeks to develop norms elaborating states' obligation uphold progressive realization of ESCR in "international cooperation," as a matter of bilateral or multilateral relations; and promotes the obligation, authority and capacity building of local authorities to uphold housing rights within their state context. Also HLRN and HIC members, as well as others in the larger human rights community, will be able to use the consequent soft-law instruments locally in a variety of actions, ranging from public education to litigation.

III.A United Nations: Political Bodies
Promote and support political will to uphold the human rights legal regime;
Develop legal specificity of HRAH standards, including the right to land;
Influence multilateral decisions and commitment accordingly.

HIC-HLRN in the MENA region also addresses the policy and standard-setting mechanisms of a more-specific nature. These include contributions to "days of discussion" with the treaty bodies to deliberate and draft General Comments, and develop standards pertaining to the right to development, corporate accountability, structural adjustment programs and ESCR, as well as forums concerned with developing new mechanisms, such as the Open-ended Working Group on the ICESCR Option Protocol. HLRN seeks to engage MENA members in these processes.

III.B United Nations: Legal Bodies
Uphold and further develop international minimum standards on HRAH,
Develop soft law and jurisprudence to advance and specify HRAH,
Improve performance of State duty holders to respect, protect, promote, fulfill and monitor HRAH.

HLRN puts great stock in advocacy efforts before the legal bodies of the multilateral system, particularly for their more-neutral nature and, therefore, greater predictability of the outcomes uncompromised by the political interests of State delegations. Legal outcomes can be authoritatively applied in their local context, often in support of civil society positions and proposed solutions. The results of HIC-HLRN representation to the legal bodies contributes to the development of soft law (lex feranda) that can be influential toward rationalizing the political will so necessary for human rights implementation.

As elaborated under Goal II, HLRN supports its members to represent themselves through parallel reports to the UN treaty-monitoring bodies will allow members raise cases-from claims, to violations, to possible solutions-applying the asset of State obligations under international human rights agreements. HLRN personnel will provide guidance and technical direction, as well as material support for members presenting effective parallel reports. (See sample parallel reports on www.hlrn.org and www.hic-mena.org under "Documents.")

The Global Program support HLRN members to participate in the review of their countries before the UN treaty bodies, focusing on HRAH implementation problems and solutions. The selection criteria for representation under the HLRN Global Program will be (1) the scheduled review of the country before the relevant treaty body, (2) the members' production of a parallel report applying the HRAH framework and (3) need for support that is not provided through another HLRN Regional Program. Opportunities for representations by HLRN MENA members to the treaty-monitoring bodies, pending availability of resources and member initiatives, in 2004-06 are presented in the Annex to this program description.

III.C United Nations: Factual Mechanisms
Cooperate with urgent actions/complaint mechanisms,
Contribute to country-specific assessments of HRAH,
Cooperation with thematic ESC rights and country-specific Special Rapporteurs, especially the SR on adequate housing,
Monitor multilateral agreements on specific groups (e.g., indigenous peoples, refugees).

The principle UN factual mechanism with which HLRN's Global Program cooperates is the UN Commission on Human Rights Special Rapporteur (SR) on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living. In addition, HLRN Global Program also has cooperated with various other SRs as appropriate, especially on matters related to housing and land rights, eviction and population transfer, compensation and restitution, the right to food (and water), the option al protocol to ICESR, and freedom of religion and belief, as well as country-specific rapporteurs as their mandates also cover housing and land rights issues. In the MENA region, this cooperation may involve direct consultation, delivering testimony on country missions, providing written information, distributing SR reports, or mounting Arabic-language versions of SR reports and related resolutions on the HIC-MENA website.

III.D United Nations: Implementation Bodies
Promote integration of the human rights framework in development projects in the field,
Monitor programs and projects with HRAH methodology and criteria,
Cooperate in activities and campaigns conditionally within HRAH principles.

In its relations with the multilateral system, HLRN's central and overarching objective is to ensure that the United Nations be a forum for people consistent with the opening sentence of the UN Charter. Therefore, HLRN and its member consult and engage as appropriate with the UN implementing bodies, such as UNDP, the Economic and Social Council of Western Asia (ESCWA), UN Habitat, etc.). The subject of that engagement and consultation typically focuses on the integration of the housing and land rights (HLR) framework in institutional methods and practical operations, including monitoring of the Millennium Development Goals and the UN Habitat's two ongoing regional campaigns on "Secure Tenure" and "Urban Governance".

III.E Multilateral Financial Institutions
Establish the primacy of HR regime;
Monitor policies/agreements regarding HRAH (land, water, energy, sanitation, resettlement, population transfer, migration, etc.);
Support preventive and remedial struggles.

In all monitoring of, and relations with the international finance, trade and investment institutions, HLRN and its members advance the legal and normative position that states' international public law obligations, including human rights, supersede private law commitments. Therefore, development and commercial considerations must be subject to the primacy of human rights. Thus multilateral institutions, though the States that constitute and direct them, are subject to these prior obligations, in particular, ensuring the "progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights." Thus, agents of economic globalization, these institutions are the growing subject of HLRN advocacy, as much as they are arising as frequent subjects in the conduct of HLRN training, monitoring, fact-finding and research.

In international and local forums, HLRN MENA representatives and members already have contributed this approach notably to the discourse on globalization, particularly with a view to the consequences for housing and land that arise from the state's withdrawal from regulation duties in favor of private actors. To the extent possible, HLRN seeks to engage community voices to ensure that the case-based and comparative perspectives of the affected population inform the discourse on globalization, particularly on matters arising from World Bank Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, the legacy of structural adjustment, "trade-related intellectual property" deregulation of markets affecting land and housing, and the privatization of services. Thus, the IFIs are a subject of all the foregoing MENA Program activities, integral to the training, action research, publications and alliance building that make up the other substantive goals.

Transnational Corporations (TNCs):
Promote human rights guidelines/obligations,
Expose HRAH violations.

The conduct of transnational corporations (TNCs) has a direct and obvious effect on the living conditions of workers and consumers, as well as the natural environment. Within the globalization context, TNCs seek the withdrawal of public authorities from their regulatory roles and assume more decisive roles in determining living conditions. In fact, the patron-client relationships come into higher relief with public institutions relying more heavily on private finance capital for operations and services.

HLRN is dedicated to the monitoring, study and needed advocacy to ensure that TNCs also behave as citizens with responsibilities to uphold human rights norms, on the one hand, and that public authorities retain and sustain both the authority and capacity to ensure human rights primacy. This monitoring and advocacy focuses on promoting and contributing to the draft TNC code of conduct as considered in the UN Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and other international forums. It is also exemplified by its role in the critical campaign against Caterpillar Corporation sales to Israeli forces conducting house demolitions in Palestine.

III.D At the regional level:
Regional Development Banks: Monitoring projects;
Arab League consultative status;
Trade blocs: Monitoring, assessing impacts, and addressing the deprivation arising from new blocs.

Especially through its regional programs in South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa, HLRN experience has taught that the regions provide the most-effective level of strategic cooperation and concerted action. In such cases, HLRN seeks to encourage and support HIC members and allies to undertake advocacy work in those regions as opportunities arise.

In addition to cooperating with the efforts of the HLRN Global Program in the MENA region, the Cairo Coordination office is pursuing possible consultative relations with the department of civil society relations of the League of Arab States as a channel for member engagement in relevent regional-level deliberations.

III.E The "Glocal" Level: Urgent Actions
Rally practical solidarity and support for victims,
Bond members into mutual and reciprocal support activities,
Denounce violations,
Proffer alternative solutions,
Institutionalize reciprocal alliances with other supportive networks.

In 2002-03, the HLRN Global Program developed an Urgent Action (UA) system encompassing a methodology, trainings, and a UA case database. As detailed in the first two goals, the raison d'être of this system was to advocate against housing and land rights violations through practical and effective expressions of solidarity and participant protests against violations in a broad network, with HIC-HLRN members at its core.

The UA system provides the arguments and methodology in brief that are available in the more-elaborated HLRN "Toolkit." It can be used to rally support for victims in cases involving individuals or groups, community or national scale issues, denunciations of violations and encouragement of problem-solving alternatives. The UA methodology and user's guide has been published and distributed throughout the network in four languages (Arabic, English, French and Spanish), and has been mounted on the HLRN Global and Regional Program websites.

The UA system already has covered several cases of forced eviction in MENA countries, as well as coordinated solidarity in the event of official repression of HLRN member organizations in the region, house demolitions and West Bank barrier construction.

III.F National-level Support
Law reform/legislation (legislative power);
Monitoring policies, programs, budgets, projects, and implementation instruments (executives);
Litigation/case law;
Policy and law reform;
Cooperation with National Institutions for Human Rights and local commissions;
Monitoring international cooperation and country positions at multilateral levels;
Advocacy campaigns.

HIC and HLRN do not establish national offices, conduct country-specific programs from centralized structures, nor does HLRN intervene independently in any national context. Those options remain the domain of local members.

The national-level activities that HLRN can support are the subject of individual, joint or collective initiatives by members of the country concerned. In certain cases, these initiatives and campaigns can benefit greatly from HIC-HLRN endorsement, adding an international-solidarity dimension. Moreover, material support is often needed to lunch or sustain national-focus campaigns at opportune times. MENA members of HLRN are eligible for support for national housing and land rights campaigns under the HLRN Global Program's "national focus grant" program. (See www.hlrn.org.)

For further information, please also contact:
Rabie Wahbe
MENA program officer
E-mail: rwahba@hic-mena.org or

Joseph Schechla
Coordinator
E-mail: jschechla@hlrn.org

Housing and Land Rights Network
MENA Program
7 Muhammad Shafiq Street, No. 8
Miuhandisin
Cairo, Egypt
Telefax: +20 (0)2 347-4360