Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

Security of tenure: Conditions and trends
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but also affects businesses and income-generating activities
within the informal enterprise sector. With as little choice
within the official employment sector as they have within
the official housing sector, hundreds of millions of people
subsist within the informal economy, providing vital goods,
services and labour to the broader society. Those working
within the informal economy are increasingly facing eviction
from the markets and kiosks in which they work.
The fact that there are many types of tenure and many
degrees of tenure security has important implications for the
development of policy and practice, not only in terms of
housing policy, but also in terms of human rights and how
rights relate to tenure. Having access to secure tenure
cannot, in and of itself, solve the problems of growing slums,
structural homelessness, expanding poverty, unsafe living
environments and inadequate housing and living conditions.
Nonetheless, it is widely recognized that secure tenure is an
essential element of a successful shelter strategy.
Measuring security of tenure
Box 5.3 Defining homelessness
For statistical purposes, the United Nations has developed the following definition of homeless
households:
households without a shelter that would fall within the scope of living quarters.They
carry their few possessions with them sleeping in the streets, in door ways or on piers,
or in any other space, on a more or less random basis.
In terms of national data collection, however, there is no globally agreed definition of homelessness.
The result is that those (rather few) countries that are collecting data on homelessness
tend to use their own (official and non-official) definitions, usually related to national legislation
and policy legacies. In general, the definitions used range from narrow ones of ‘rooflessness’ –
such as the one quoted above, embracing only those sleeping rough – to a wide range of
‘broader’ definitions which may include a variety of categories, based on the quality of dwellings,
the risk of becoming homeless, time exposed to homelessness and responsibilities for taking
alleviating action.
‘Narrow’ definitions are most commonly used in developing countries, while ‘wider’
ones are more commonly used in developed countries. Among the main reasons for this is the
very fact that some of the wider definitions of homelessness used in some developed countries,
i.e. defining all those ‘inadequately housed’ as being homeless, would categorize the vast majority
of people in some developing countries as homeless.
Depending on definitions used, the following is a sample of the most common categories
of conditions which may or may not be included in a given definition of homelessness: rough
sleepers, pavement dwellers, occupants of shelters for homeless persons, occupants of institutions
(such as persons in prisons or in long-term stays at hospitals), street children, occupants of
un-serviced housing, occupants of poorly constructed and insecure housing (vulnerable sites,
precarious tenancy), sharers (people who are ‘doubling-up’ with friends or relatives, when they
really want a place for themselves), occupants of housing of unsuitable cost (i.e. people in danger
of being evicted for non-payment), occupants of mobile homes, occupants of refugee and other
emergency camps, itinerant groups (nomads, Roma, etc.).
Source: UNCHS, 2000b; United Nations, 1998
Despite the fact that an individual’s, household’s or community’s
security of tenure is central to the enjoyment of basic
human rights and sustainable development, there are
currently no global tools or mechanisms in place to monitor
security of tenure. So far, it has been impossible to obtain
household data on secure tenure; nor has it been possible to
produce global comparative data on various institutional
aspects of secure tenure.
At the same time, it should be recalled that the 156
governments 14 that have voluntarily bound themselves to
promote and protect the rights contained in the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (ICESCR), which contains the most important international
legal source of the right to adequate housing,
including security of tenure, are currently required to
submit reports ‘on the measures which they have adopted
and the progress made in achieving the observance of the
rights recognized’ in the Covenant. 15 States are required to
answer a range of specific questions on housing rights
under a series of guidelines developed by the United
Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
(CESCR) to assist governments with their reporting obligations.
Many of these questions are directly linked to
security of tenure (see Box 5.4). Because the presentation
of such reports is legally required of all states parties to the
Covenant every five years, all governments bound by the
Covenant should have in place the means and institutions
required to collect comprehensive answers to these
queries.
Although few, if any, governments actually collect
statistics and other data on the many issues linked to
security of tenure, it is clear that they are expected to do so.
Yet, access to such information is vital in any society if policy
and practice are to be successful in addressing realities on
the ground. Placing greater emphasis on these legal duties of
states could facilitate the collection of more comprehensive
and reliable data on security of tenure. Among the initiatives
that deserve some attention in this respect is that undertaken
by the United Nations Housing Rights Programme (see
Box 5.5).
A number of global bodies, including UN-Habitat, are
wrestling with the problem of measuring the scope and scale
of security of tenure, and there is no clear methodology on
this yet which could produce robust information. UN-
Habitat is currently collaborating with a range of partners to
assess the limitations of a common monitoring strategy and
to develop a common strategy for an operational method for
measuring, monitoring and assessing security of tenure. In
the meantime, and for global monitoring purposes, in
response to its reporting responsibilities with respect to the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), UN-Habitat has
suggested that people have secure tenure when:
• There is evidence of documentation that can be used as
proof of secure tenure status.
• There is either de facto or perceived protection from
forced evictions. 16
Whatever form a global system for monitoring security of
tenure may eventually take, it should focus on the issues
already identified by the CESCR with respect to security of
tenure as a component of the right to adequate housing, as
summarized in Box 5.4.
Secure tenure is an
essential element of
a successful shelter
strategy