Forced evictions and displacement of communities from their homes and habitats destroy lives and livelihoods, particularly of impoverished inhabitants, often with collusion of both State actors and private interests. In the context of urbanization and the scramble for economic resources, this phenomenon continues to accelerate. Despite the development of international legal prohibitions against forced evictions that violate human rights, a lack of effective domestic human rights-based laws and policies ensuring equitable access to housing and land make forced evictions and dispossession the norm in many countries. Housing rights monitors often lack quantification methods and capacity to document these violations and adequately assess their mounting costs and damages.
HIC-HLRN has developed the Housing Rights Violation Loss Matrix as a central tool and reference for determining the full consequences that persons, households and communities undergo through the process of forced eviction and displacement. This Eviction Impact Assessment (EvIA) methodology can be utilized by housing and land rights defenders, legal practitioners, field researchers and/or actual victims everywhere to determine a wide range of losses and costs that typically are associated with forced evictions, but are rarely recognized or documented.
You can download an instructive introduction and the EvIA tool (Excel file) below:
