Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

11
CHAPTER
ENHANCING TENURE SECURITY
AND ENDING FORCED EVICTIONS
The objective is to
… guarantee that all
persons,
everywhere, can
enjoy appropriate
degrees of secure
tenure throughout
their lives
A new … approach
to security of tenure
… must combine
the laws and
principles of human
rights and jurisprudence
with the best
of the tried and
tested approaches to
secure tenure
Ensuring that everyone enjoys the legal and physical protections
provided by security of tenure will continue to be one
of the major challenges facing policy- and law-makers in the
coming years. Chapter 5 reviewed some of the current
trends on secure tenure, while Chapter 6 explored a crosssection
of some of the key policy responses that have been
employed to address the problem of tenure insecurity
throughout the world today. This chapter expands on the
findings in Chapter 6 and offers a series of proposals
designed to strengthen the prospects of security of tenure by
focusing on the human rights dimensions of a status that is
increasingly seen as an enforceable human right.
A range of efforts are under way dedicated to tackling
the global security of tenure crisis. From the <strong>Global</strong>
Campaign on Secure Tenure to the work of Cities Alliance
and others, and the countless efforts of non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and community-based organizations
(CBOs), numerous organizations are now actively seeking to
expand tenure protection around the globe. And yet, given
the massive scale of the problem, to date these efforts have
effectively only begun to scratch the surface. Much work
thus remains to be done if the goal of security of tenure for
all is to be achieved. Moreover, there is a need to work
towards the integration of the many diverse and often
competing approaches to providing tenure security (see
Chapters 5 and 6). The objective is to address the issue of
security of tenure in the most effective, just and rightsconsistent
manner in order to guarantee that all persons,
everywhere, can enjoy appropriate degrees of secure tenure
throughout their lives.
In many respects, the eventual outcome of these
discussions will be highly determinative of the shape of cities
in the future. Whichever approach ends up influencing
policy-makers from the international to the national and local
levels will have considerable ramifications not only for the
current generation of hundreds of millions of people living
under the constant threat of forced eviction and other
threats because of their insecurity of tenure, but also for
future generations, as well. 1 As shown above, there is
considerable evidence, for instance, that freehold title-based
approaches to the conferral of security of tenure, while
possessing many positive features, may, in fact, result in
greater numbers of people being forced into situations of
tenure insecurity, both now and certainly in the future.
Conversely, continuing to embrace the status quo will also
surely lead to increased levels of insecure tenure. While
various approaches presented in the past have been criticized
as overly simplistic and potentially harmful to the
rights of the poor, it seems timely to consider whether more
flexible and innovative approaches to secure tenure or some
other path might stand the best chance of achieving the
most desired outcome.
This chapter provides an overview of the main
elements of a human-rights based approach, focusing on a
comprehensive understanding of the interrelationships
between housing, land and property rights. It calls for
enhanced efforts to support and develop innovative
approaches to tenure, taking into account the wide range of
experiences from all over the world, and it calls for enhanced
efforts to combat homelessness. This is followed by a discussion
of the roles and potential contributions of local
authorities and an overview of how the obligations of nonstate
actors can be strengthened and clarified. The last part
of the chapter provides a set of recommendations for future
action to end forced evictions and enhance security of
tenure.
A HUMAN RIGHTS–HUMAN
SECURITY APPROACH TO
SECURITY OF TENURE
What is needed in the coming years, therefore, is a new,
more nuanced approach to security of tenure. Such a new
approach must combine the laws and principles of human
rights and jurisprudence with the best of the tried and
tested approaches to secure tenure (i.e. those that have
actually yielded the most concrete results in practice):
formal and informal, legal and illegal, and modern and
customary. Thus, it must incorporate the positive attributes
of each view of tenure within a consolidated package – a
new and more refined set of measures that can be employed
to steadily increase the degree to which security of tenure is
enjoyed by everyone. The eventual emergence of such an
integral approach to the question of tenure should be given