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News (33)
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World Bank’s Attack on Small Farmers |
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By :AfricaFocus Bulletin |
| 27 May 2019 |
Editor`s Note:
“Enabling the Business of Agriculture,” promoted by the World Bank, and now enhanced with a new sub-indicator on land policy, is presented as a way to advance agricultural development, particularly in Africa. In reality, notes a new report from the Oakland Institute, it gives an additional push to a
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Resident Revenge against Developers |
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By :George Hammond, Financial Times |
| 11 April 2019 |
Rising house prices and rents have sparked protests in London, Berlin and New York. Residents show how citizens are taking on city developers.
BERLIN—Last Saturday, as the sun shone on thousands of Berliners gathered in Alexanderplatz, one placard stood out in the crowd. Written on it — beneath a grotesque cartoon
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India’s Unrelenting Forced-eviction Crisis |
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By :HLRN-India |
| 09 April 2019 |
New report highlights the unrelenting crisis of forced evictions, finds over 200,000 persons evicted in India in 2018. Over 114 houses demolished every day, 23 people evicted every hour.
On the eve of India’s General Elections, Housing and Land Rights Network India (HLRN) held a press conference in New Delhi today
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World Bank Schemes to Privatize the Commons |
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By :Oakland Institute |
| 24 January 2019 |
The Highest Bidder Takes It All: The World Bank’s Scheme to Privatize the Commons details how the Bank’s prescribes reforms, via a new land indicator in the Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA) project, promotes large-scale land acquisitions and the expansion of agribusinesses in the developing world. This new indicator is
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UNHRC Adopts Peasant Rights Declaration |
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By :La Via Campesina |
| 30 September 2018 |
UN Human Rights Council passes a resolution adopting the peasant rights declaration in Geneva
GENEVA—Seventeen years of long and arduous negotiations later, peasants and other people working in rural areas are only a step away from having a UN Declaration that could defend and protect their rights to land, seeds, biodiversity, local
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India: Questioning “Smart-city” Wisdom |
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By :Rina Chandran, place |
| 03 September 2018 |
As India adds 100 Smart Cities, one tells a cautionary tale
India`s $7.5 bln plan to turn 100 urban centres into Smart Cities by 2020 does not address structural issues and ignores the needs of low-income and marginalised groups, experts say
LAVASA, India—When David Cooper and his wife were looking for somewhere
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Brazil: PT Promises to Resume Housing Scheme |
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By :Rede Brasil Actual |
| 23 August 2018 |
São Paulo—At a press conference in João Pessoa, the vice presidential candidate on the plank of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Thursday that, if elected, one of the goals of a possible PT government would be to resume the Minha Casa Minha (My House My Life)
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HICtionary Newly Updated |
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By :HIC-HLRN |
| 06 May 2018 |
HIC-HLRN has just updated the HICtionary: Key Habitat Terms from A to Z. This reference work is the result of deliberation and debate across multiple specializations, regions and cultures within the membership of Habitat International Coalition (HIC). The purpose of that debate—and this reference work—have been to consolidate and harmonize
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USA: Time for Change - Race & Homelessness |
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By :Jeffrey Olivet and Marc Dones, SPARC and National Alliance to End Homelessness |
| 11 April 2018 |
In recent years, an increasingly urgent dialogue has emerged around race and equity in [the United States of] America. But that dialogue has generally overlooked one of the most visible manifestations of racial inequity: homelessness.
Homelessness is not colorblind. People of color are dramatically more likely than their White counterparts to
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Out of Africa: Human Rights Habitat Struggles |
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By :Marie Huchzermeyer, CUBES/Wits Univ. and Joseph Schechla, HLRN |
| 07 November 2017 |
From Africa to the World: Struggling for Human Rights to Housing, Land and the City
Mid-October 2017, Nairobi was host to an intense engagement on housing rights, social justice and the right to the city. This was amid political turmoil in Kenyan towns and cities, and unrelated to this but largely
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India: What Exactly Is a Smart City? |
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By :Kumar Sambhav Shrivastava, Scroll-in |
| 04 September 2017 |
What exactly is a smart city? The Indian government does not want you to know. It thwarted the Bureau of Indian Standards’ plan to fix clear criteria for defining a smart city, and came out with a fuzzy ‘Liveability Index’ instead.
Are the urban centres selected by the Union government
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Global Peasant Movement Convene at Bilbao |
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By :Huffington Post |
| 28 July 2017 |
Global Peasant Movement Assesses and Responds to a Heated Political Moment
Four years ago, La Vía Campesina brought its peasant activists from around the world to Jakarta for its VI International Conference. The gathering was held in a padepokan, a Javanese center reserved for the teaching and exchanging of knowledge and
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“Spotlight” on UN High-Level Forum, SDGs |
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By :HIC-HLRN |
| 10 July 2017 |
As the UN High-Level Forum opens in New York, a global civil society report spotlights the role of big business in hindering development and deepening economic and social disparity.
Unbridled privatization, corporate capture and mass-scale tax abuse are blocking progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, argues a new report by a
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USA: House Passes Bank-deregulation Bill |
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By :Jeff Stein, Vox |
| 08 June 2017 |
The House just passed the biggest bank deregulation bill in a generation
On Thursday, Capitol Hill was consumed by former FBI Director James Comey’s testimony. But just after the high-profile hearing played out in the Hart Senate Office Building, House Republicans passed a mammoth, 580-page bill that would do more to
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Colombia: Seeking Justice from Chiquita Banana Wars |
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By :Matt Kennard and Nick MacWilliam, In These Times |
| 27 January 2017 |
Chiquita made a killing from Colombia’s civil war. Will their victims finally see justice? A long-running case against the banana giant is moving forward in U.S. court.
Getting an interview with Anabel (not her real name) is not easy. In Colombia, witnessing paramilitary violence against your family generally means you keep
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USA: 1st Trump Act Violates Housing Rights |
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By :Tom Cahill, U.S.Uncut |
| 20 January 2017 |
In First Act as President, Trump Raises Mortgage Rates on Struggling Homeowners
After Donald Trump was sworn in as president, he delivered his inaugural address. Then he went to the White House, whereupon he stuck it to homeowners.
One of President Obama’s last acts as head of the executive branch was to
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Following the Money: Justice for Land Grabs |
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By :Natalie Bugalski and David Pred, Inclusive Development |
| 16 December 2016 |
Following the Money: Illuminating the path to justice for global land grabs
This year, our organization, Inclusive Development International, launched the Follow the Money initiative – a new tool to fight land grabs and other corporate abuses. It’s a simple idea, but we believe it has the potential to be
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Vancouver Mayor’s “Intense” Housing Crisis |
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By :Ashifa Kassam, The Guardian |
| 21 November 2016 |
Vancouver mayor on housing crisis: “I never dreamed it would get this intense.”
Gregor Robertson’s platform in 2008 vowed affordable housing and an end to homelessness. Eight years and three terms later, the city’s housing market is in a perilous place – and has forced the mayor to get creative
His first
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China Buying up Australia’s Land |
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By :Michelle Innisoct, The New York Times |
| 31 October 2016 |
The land at stake is in Australia, but the focus is on China.
SYDNEY—Gina Rinehart, a mining magnate, is very rich—and very Australian.
Her ancestors immigrated to the country’s hardscrabble western reaches in the 1830s. A mountain range there is named after her family. In public, she sometimes adopts a characteristically Australian
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Rio’s Indigenous Trapped in Social Housing |
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By :Alix Vadot, Rioonwatch.org |
| 15 August 2016 |
In Estácio, a centrally located neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, Block 15 of the Zé Keti social housing complex, part of the Minha Casa Minha Vida (MCMV) program, has been the home of some of the city’s remainingindigenous families since June 2013. Its residents have described the complex, built on the grounds of the former
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World Bank Policies Imperil Land Defenders |
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By :Cyril Mychalejko, teleSUR |
| 04 August 2016 |
Just 5 months since the murder of Honduran environmental defender Berta Caceres, the Bank is passing new safeguards that do more harm than good.
The World Bank is expected to approve Thursday its new “Environmental and Social Framework” which civil society groups say weakens human rights protections and will likely endanger the very communities the safeguards are intended to protect.
At issue
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HIC Addresses Habitat III PrepCom3 |
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By :HIC-HLRN |
| 27 July 2016 |
The “New Urban Agenda,” from its inception, is inconsistent with historic agreements, today’s global priorities and the “world we need.” Particular interests have narrowed the Habitat Agenda to urban priorities, subordinated rural areas and ignored issues of forced migration, presuming that urbanization is “inevitable” and beyond human will or policy
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"Right to the City" Movement Goes Global |
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By :Francesca Perry, The Guardian |
| 19 April 2016 |
Right to the city: can this growing social movement win over city officials?
From the Taksim Square and Nuit Debout protests to bank takeovers in Barcelona and women’s workshops in Delhi, the pressure for more inclusive cities is mounting. As the UN gears up for Habitat III, will governments listen?
On
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HIC-critics on Habitat III Policy Papers |
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By :HIC |
| 05 February 2016 |
Since the very early stages of the Habitat III preparations, Habitat International Coalition (HIC) has called for the integrity of the Habitat II (1996) commitments and modalities; this demand has three related aspects:
• Processes must uphold the Habitat II-established principle to be as inclusive as possible;
• Maintain the Habitat Agenda,
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Habitat III Sins of Omission |
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By :Habitat for People - Not for Profit! |
| 01 February 2016 |
Today, a movement of concerned partners engaged in the Habitat III preparations issued a public challenge to the organizers of the global process, calling on them to rethink the omissions and design flaws that narrow the Habitat III public debate and presuppose its outcomes. From the beginning of the deliberative and reporting
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The World`s Most-segregated Cities |
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By :Peter Geoghegan, The Guardian |
| 28 October 2015 |
“Reclaim your community,” declared the posters. “Hipsters beware.” Pinned around London’s East End last month, they announced Fuck Parade, an anti-gentrification demonstration that culminated in an attack on a café selling bowls of cereal. Long the first port of call for cash-strapped new arrivals in the city—Irish, Jews, Bangladeshis and
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UN Expert: “Abolish ISDS Arbitrations” |
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By :OHCHR |
| 26 October 2015 |
NEW YORK—“Trade must be made to work for human rights and development and not against them,” the United Nations Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas, has said today.
In his fourth report* to the UN General Assembly, Mr. de Zayas focuses on
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Vision Critical in City Planning |
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By :David Dodwell, South China Morning Post |
| 09 September 2015 |
Cities: love them or hate them, they are likely to be the future for most of our children. Developed well, they can provide high quality of life and convenience – and huge environmental efficiencies. But developed poorly, they create a blight that will take decades to eradicate.
Today, 55 per cent
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German CSO Forum Addresses Habitat III |
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By :Forum on Environment & Development |
| 31 July 2015 |
The German Forum on Environment & Development was founded in 1992 after the UN conference in Rio on environment and development. Its purpose is to coordinate German NGOs in international political processes on sustainable development. It was strongly involved in the preparation and the civil society processes of the Habitat
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HIC Reviews Habitat III Issue Papers |
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By :HIC-HLRN |
| 31 July 2015 |
Habitat International Coalition has just issued its compilation of inputs from Members and officers following their review of the Habitat III Issue Papers. The 22 thematic contributions from technical experts selected by the UN-Habitat/Habitat III Secretariat have been drafted as a framework for the debate leading up to the Third
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French Council Bans Water Cut-offs |
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By :France Libertés and Coordination Eau Île-de-France |
| 29 May 2015 |
On Friday, 29 May, France’s Constitutional Council rejected the demands of [Société d’Aménagement Urbain et Rural] SAUR (the third largest French water multinational corporation), which alleged that a Law passed 15 April 2013 (loi Brottes n° 2013–312) violated its ‘freedom to engage in contracts and its freedom to do business’ (atteinte à
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Saudi Arabia Bulldozes Its Heritage |
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By :Carla Power, Time |
| 14 November 2014 |
For centuries, the Kaaba, the black cube in the center of Mecca, Saudi Arabia that is Islam`s holiest point, has been encircled by arched porticos erected some three centuries ago by the Ottomans, above dozens of carved marble columns dating back to the 8th Century. But earlier this month, any
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Predatory Lender Wells Fargo Bank Forced to Pay |
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By :The Baltimore Sun, The New York Times |
| 15 June 2012 |
Wells Fargo Bank: A Predatory Lender Pays up
The Baltimore Sun
15 July 2012
Baltimore`s effort to recover millions of dollars in lost revenue stemming from the wave of home foreclosures that followed the collapse of the housing market in 2007 was vindicated Thursday when Wells Fargo Bank, the nation`s largest mortgage lender,
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