Issues Home About Contact Us Issue 29 - September 2023 عربى
Editorial
Norms and Data
Toward the end of a recent hybrid meeting of minds on the contemporary problems and challenges in the urban habitat sphere, the moderator posed the question: “What is missing?” That time—and typically—often what is needed in our discourse are the existing norms and data. Commemorating World Habitat Day 2023, as every year, gives us an More

Regional Developments
Human Factors at Derna
The people of Libya’s coastal town of Derna are still collecting the dead from under mud flows and washing up on the shore. Their numbers are likely to rise into the tens of thousands. A total of 891 buildings were destroyed; 211 buildings were partially damaged, and 398 others were submerged in mud. Of an estimated total Derna population of More

Arab States @ HLPF 2023
This year, five Arab States volunteered to report their progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda: Bahrain, Comoros, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Syria. Only days before the HLPF, Syria inexplicably withdrew and had its Voluntary National Review (VNR) removed from the websites, leaving the remaining four to go through the process, representing the region. After each state More

Habitat Rights in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara
As in the case of other illegal occupations and colonization, Morocco’s invasion and effective control of Western Sahara has accompanied gross violations of human rights, in particular the human right to adequate housing amid the occupier’s practice of dispossession of land, forced eviction, house demolition and plunder of natural resources. The new publication by The Sahrawi Association in the United States More

Green Transformation Finance in Jordan
Jordan is a country particularly vulnerable to climate change, with increasingly high temperatures and lower rainfall. Meanwhile, Jordan takes on the additional challenge of providing food, housing and public services to the estimated 3.35 million refugees (about a third of the population) currently living in the resource-poor country. Climate risks are increasing with each passing day, and residents need more More

FAO’s State of Land and Water Resources Report
The State of Land and Water Resources (SOLAW) in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region is part of a FAO flagship series of reports launched in 2011. The FAO regional office in Cairo published the latest SOLAW report in 2022, and should be a subject of discussion in the FAO Regional Conference and Regional CSO Consultation in early More

Trending Habitat Crimes against Palestinians
When things seem like they could not get worse, they do. Since last reporting, the Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) have faced an escalating cycle of grave violations under Israel’s illegal occupation, especially with Israeli military forces and settlers attacking Palestinian habitat. Throughout 2022, 500 people, including 267 children, fled seven local communities, due to attacks by settlers and More

Syria: The Turkish Occupation’s Deprivation of Water
Since 2019, authorities in Türkiye and Türkiye-controlled militias have deprived the affected population in Syria’s al-Hasaka Province from equitable, sustainable and safe access to, use of, and control over their water resources due to the repeated disruptions of the Alouk water pumping station, the primary source of water in the region. Türkiye, acting as an occupying power in parts of More

Loss and Damage in Iraq: The Marshes as Example
Iraq ranks fifth among the most climate-affected countries in the world. Iraqi society has become considered the most fragile due to its influence and being affected by negative environmental components arising from serious environmental deterioration, resulting from two devastating wars, a decade of siege, and the continuation of conflicts after the year 2003, which led to the complete destruction of More

Human Rights and KSA’s Neom Project
This feature updates readers on the continuing human rights issues around Saudi Arabia’s much-advertised Neom megacity project. The following is an excerpt from the recent communications of UN Human Rights Special Procedures with Public Investment Fund Chairperson and Chairperson of the Neom Company’s Board of Directors Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as the principal duty bearer in this case. The initial communication More

Member News
Dibeen Association: UN Human Rights Prize
On the path to strengthening the human rights approach to the environment, the UN Human Rights Prize is an affirmative step. Interest in the environmental field as a human right did not begin with the announcement of a prize here, or a decision there. Activists and scholars in the environmental field, social movements, and later civil More

Sahrawi Mine Action Coordination Office (SMACO)
After long cooperation with HLRN, Sahrawi Mine Action Coordination Office (SMACO) joined HIC in 2021 as a defender of land rights in the hazardous context of conflict, occupation and war. SMACO was created in 2013 as the mechanism to coordinate humanitarian landmine action in Western Sahara, east of the berm, in line with International Mine Action Standards. In cooperation with well-known international More

International Developments
Urgent Action! 5K Families Face Eviction in Chile
Eviction orders in San Antonio and Cartagena, Valparaíso Region, Chile, five thousand families affected In August 2023, the Court of Appeals of Valparaíso (Chile) ordered the eviction of 254 hectares of the Bellavista Sector, where some 4,000 families live, and 1,000 more families in the Placilla Sector, both in the conurbanization area between the cities from San Antonio and Cartagena. We More

“We Never Want to Be Resilient”: Stakeholder Perspectives at SDGs’ Mid-point
Major Groups and Other Stakeholders (MGOS), as established at the 1992 UN Environment and Development Conference, are an integral part of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs, as enshrined in the UNGA resolution 67/290. They bring forth the voices, sentiments and aspirations of the people, often those who are most marginalized and left behind. They are also experts, rights holders More

HLRN Side Event on Loss & Damage
The Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) is a dynamic and multisectoral alliance of international partners committed to improving equitable and sustainable access to, use of and governance of land and increasing tenure security for all. GLTN especially focuses on improving the situation of the poor, women and youth. HIC-HLRN is among the Network’s founding partners, who include international rural and More

UN-Habitat Assembly and Stakeholders
“UN-Habitat is back!” proclaimed UN-Habitat Executive Director Maimunah Mohd Sharif after delegates unanimously approved the Ministerial Declaration and ten resolutions during the final plenary of the Second Session of the UN-Habitat Assembly (UNHA2). These outcomes set the long-troubled UN organization’s operational agenda for the next four years, in addition to the normative guidance already embodied in the New Urban Agenda More

Rights of Children, Future Generations amid the Triple Planetary Crisis
Children are saying loudly: “The environment is our life.” “Adults [should] stop making decisions for the future they won’t experience. [We] are the key means [of] solving climate change, as it is [our] lives at stake.” “We are the future generations and, if you destroy the planet, where will we live?!” A voice for the generations yet unborn has yet to More

‘Access’ Is Never Enough
In the recent generation of global habitat-related policy documents, it is common to find references emphasizing access to housing as a goal. However, the insertion of an adjective risks excluding others, and doing so in the context of the human right to adequate housing has degraded language and its meaning, narrowed corresponding state obligations and led to misconceptions that beg More

GLTN Partners Prepare Phase 4
For continued improvement of land reform and management, emphasizing security of tenure and developing and disseminating pro-poor and gender-sensitive land tools, HIC-HLRN participated at the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) 9th partners meeting at Nairobi, 2–4 May 2023. That meeting sought to prepare members and partners for the Phase 4 GLTN Program for a period of four years (2024–2027) under More

Reparations & Remedy for Loss & Damage
The following is derived from the HIC-HLRN contribution to the Human Rights and Climate Change Working Group as a basis for advocacy before the Loss & Damage Fund’s Transitional Committee, in advance of its third meeting on 29–31 August 2023. It is by now axiomatic that societies that have contributed the least to climate change are suffering and will continue to More

Shrinking FAO-CSO Engagement
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has stated its conviction that hunger and malnutrition can be eradicated in our lifetime, but to meet the Zero Hunger Challenge, political commitment and major alliances with key stakeholders are crucial. FAO further claims that partnerships are at the heart of its mission to help build consensus and collaboration for More

 

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