INTERNATIONAL CALL: ZERO EVICTIONS FOR CORONAVIRUS
The Coronavirus pandemic is now plaguing every country in the world, but the 1.8 billion people living in abhorrent housing conditions and homelessness, sometimes lacking even water or a toilet, are primarily at risk.
The International Alliance of Inhabitants calls for the mobilisation and local/global solidarity of grassroots organisations.
The Coronavirus pandemic is now plaguing every country in the world, but the 1.8 billion people living in abhorrent housing conditions and homelessness, sometimes lacking even water or a toilet, are primarily at risk.
It is not the first pandemic, it is not the most serious so far, but it shows the failure of the neoliberal system, which has entrusted health to the private sector and is detonating a financial crisis worse than that of 2008, to find long-term solutions.
This time it is more evident because the first informations on the impact of the virus and the quarantine of tens of millions of people are mainly from developed countries such as China, South Korea and Italy. Other countries, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America, have so far declared few cases, but unfortunately perhaps only because they are not registering them. This is a health crisis that risks worsening the migration crisis due to ongoing wars and North/South inequalities.
The International Alliance of Inhabitants first and foremost expresses its complete solidarity with the affected populations and with those in the frontline of healthcare and civil protection.
It also warns about the severity of the impact of the virus on the lives of hundreds of millions of people, their right to health, their right to housing security, their right to the city. The poor and homeless are at the utmost risk from the spread of the virus. Often living in the peripheries, in cramped or small spaces, overcrowded, coupled with being disadvantaged in many cases to accessing the proper health care and precautions, they not only face the daily struggle to keep or access housing, but now a global epidemic disproportionately puts them in greater danger.
Under the pretext of purifying coronavirus-infected areas, as in the past for other epidemics, or on the pretext of resilience to face climate change, there is also a serious risk of increasing evictions and displacements of people, families and communities from sites that will be capitalised on in the subsequent speculative relaunch of the economy.
This is why the International Alliance of Inhabitants calls for the mobilisation and local/global solidarity of grassroots organisations:
- Let's properly inform the inhabitants on the need for total respect of the health regulations indicated by the World Health Organization in all homes, in all neighborhoods and cities, there is not only the Coronavirus that threatens health.
- We ask all governments to take immediate action to comply with their legal obligations arising from the ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in particular art. 11 (right to housing) and art. 12 (right to health protection) with public policies on health, housing and urban planning, based on human and environmental rights, not on profit.
- We ask that these policies be financed by renegotiation / cancellation of sovereign debt, in particular by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
- We call for the immediate end to all external sanctions on food and medicines to countries that suffer from them, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Iraq and Iran. These measures are not acceptable, their persistence is a crime against humanity.
- We call upon the United Nations to coordinate this alternative structural effort and to monitor the implementation of the World Health Organization's guidelines with the collaboration of the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Housing and the Right to Health.
- We ask all governments and institutions to respect the activists committed to the struggle for these human rights, inviting the UN Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders to take action.
Urgent: Governments must make safe housing available to the homeless, and must freeze evictions, and foreclosures of residents' homes, including by means of requisition actions, and reduce rents cost.
Zero Evictions for Coronavirus: the Right to Health must come first!
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The International Alliance of Inhabitants is a global network of grassroots organizations founded in 2003, active on all continents, in particular with the Zero Evictions Campaign. It has established the International Tribunal on Evictions which has so far held nine sessions and enjoys the collaboration of the UN Rapporteur on the Right to Housing.