HUNGER AND HOMELESSNESS RELATED, SAYS SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON ADEQUATE HOUSING IN STATEMENT TO WORLD FOOD SUMMIT

12 June 2002




Hunger and homelessness are two tragic and related phenomenon, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, Miloon Kothari, said in a statement issued in Geneva for the World Food Summit: Five Years Later currently meeting in Rome

“Being homeless or surviving in inadequate and insecure housing including lack of secure tenure has a direct bearing on your ability to feed yourself and to gain food security”, said Mr. Kothari, who was appointed by the Commission on Human Rights in September 2000 to report on the status of realization of housing rights across the world. At its recent session of in Geneva in April 2002, the Commission encouraged him to bring the issue of housing to the attention of global conference reviews, including the Rome Summit.

In developing countries alone, 1.2 billion people lack access to potable water and 2.4 billion are without access to sanitation services. “Problems of such magnitude are due to the lack of a global will to put into practice, in both analysis of the problems and in developing solutions, the human rights-based principles and instruments including acting upon the rights to food and housing”, said Mr. Kothari.

“There is a clear and intrinsic link between the right to food and the right to adequate housing. Both rights are enshrined in article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), as integral components of the right to an adequate standard of living.”

The Special Rapporteur urged the World Food Summit to unequivocally adopt the human rights framework and call for instruments and solutions that can lead to fundamental and systemic solutions to the grave crisis of the right to food and land rights facing millions of the world’s dwellers. In his written statement, he also highlighted the importance of international cooperation, and pointed out that globalisation policies – including agricultural and services trade, intellectual property rights, finance, heavy burden on debt servicing and structural adjustment – had to be managed in a way that is consistent with the duties and obligations of States which they voluntarily accepted under international human rights instruments.

In urging States to take further steps to close the gap between recognition of the human rights relevant to achieving food security and their realization, he stated that he will continue to work closely with the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, who is participating in the Summit, as well as relevant UN treaty bodies in order to assist States and partners in implementing the Millennium Declaration.

The full text of Special Rapporteur’s statement is available at http://www.unhchr.ch/housing/wfs5.doc



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