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.