Indonesia shamed for failing to address the homeless, slums
Indonesia shamed for failing to address the homeless, slums
Agence France-Presse, Geneva
Indonesia, Guatemala and Serbia-Montenegro won an award on Wednesday for failing to address a massive problem of homelessness and slums, while Scotland was praised for its "rare" protection of the right to housing, an advocacy group said.
The Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) launched the annual Housing Rights Awards last year to focus attention on the plight of more than one billion people worldwide who it said live in slums and some 100 million people who are homeless on any given night.
"Although few governments have done enough to enforce the widely-recognized right to housing, this year Indonesia, Guatemala and Serbia-Montenegro stand out for their appalling disregard for housing rights," said COHRE's executive director, Scott Leckie.
The group chose Indonesia from a short list of about 15 countries because, it alleged, the government had allowed the violent eviction of people from cities and was guilty of housing- related crimes in the provinces of Aceh and Papua.
Guatemala was given the Housing Rights Violator Award because it had ignored various rights to housing and land, according to COHRE.
And Serbia-Montenegro "continues to discriminate severely against the Roma, many of whom live in conditions far worse than many of the most horrendous slums found in the developing world," Leckie said in a statement.
Last year 10 countries won the dishonorable title, including the United States, and Leckie hoped some had been shamed into tidying up their act.
"We have entered into dialog with governments we didn't necessarily have dialog with before," he told AFP.
Pakistan and Croatia -- two other winners in 2002 -- had conducted much closer talks on the issue with COHRE as a result of being blacklisted.
"Hopefully that has trickled down to the local level and made a difference to some of the two billion people in the world who don't have housing rights," Leckie continued.
The reduction in winners this year was simply an attempt to focus more on the worst perpetrators, COHRE explained.
In contrast, the Scottish Executive won the Housing Rights Protector Award for the adoption of a new law -- the Homelessness (Scotland) Act 2003 -- which aims to open more doors to people without a roof over their head.
By choosing Scotland from a short list of just four or five countries, "we are making the important point that housing rights are real rights capable of full implementation by governments, and able to be enforced by homeless and inadequately housed people," Leckie said.
The title is to highlight "a government that has taken housing rights seriously, which is often rare," he added.
COHRE plans to visit Scotland to hand the award officially to the executive, but no similar trip is planned to the three rights violators.
In addition, the non-governmental organization bestowed a new honor -- the Housing Rights Defender -- on Rachel Corrie, the U.S. activist killed in Gaza in March by an Israeli bulldozer, while protesting against the demolition of a Palestinian dwelling.