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The International Tribunal on Evictions: a Guide

Thematic axes: Land, Housing, Inhabitants

World Assembly of Inhabitants

The International Alliance of Inhabitants is an international network of inhabitants associations and social movements, cooperatives, communities, tenants, owner of their homes, homeless people, inhabitants living in deprived areas and working-class neighbourhoods. The aim of the IAI is building another possible world starting with the achievement of the right to housing and to the city. The World Assembly of Inhabitants supports the convergence of these struggles, essential to meet this challenge.

Context

• The forced evictions of millions of people of all ages is a global phenomenon, which is continuously increasing in violence and size. Faced with this scandal, international organisations have become silent, increasingly allowing widespread impunity to take shape.

• There are multiple initiatives for inhabitants organisations and citizens to resist evictions and find solutions, whether on a neighbourhood, city, country or international scale. These initiatives suffer from a tragic absence of backing and support.

• One of these initiatives is the International Tribunal on Evictions, a Tribunal of opinion which holds an important moral burden and weight in the media. It has been able to give a voice to the thousands without a voice, in particular to victims and people at risk. It has been meeting yearly since 2010 in Geneva, and 2014 in Milan. Another initiative of the civil society, constructed by and for the social organisations, is the World Map of Urban Habitat.

• One of the difficulties met by organisations, groups that deal with threats of eviction, or simply the activists engaged in action, is knowing where and how to act so that these immediate or proximate threats can be known, heard and shared. 

Objectives

  • Inform the inhabitants organisations about The International Tribunal on Evictions
  • Discuss the Tribunal, and its impact to cope with forced evictions throughout the world.
  • Empower the inhabitants organisations and encourage them to use the Zero Evictions Warning System and the World Map of Urban Habitat as common tools to fuel the International Tribunal on Evictions.
  • Provide a topical contribution to the final declaration of the World Assembly of Inhabitants as well as the common agenda for mobilisation of the inhabitants organisations and networks.

Methodology:

  • Presentation at the International Tribunal on Evictions (ITE) of its objectives and working arrangements, but also outlining its limits and challenges for next sessions. A summary will be given of the cases submitted to the ITE in Milan. This presentation will be followed by a debate between the participants. [1 hour]
  • Presentation of certain cases (causes of evictions, inhabitants’ strategies, etc.), generally with representatives of organisations presenting their systemisation in the Zero Evictions Alert System  (local level) and the World Map of Urban Habitat  (national level). [1 hour]
  • Explanation of the procedures to follow with respect to documenting the cases and presenting them at the next ITE by using the Zero Evictions Alert System and the World Map of Urban Habitat, and for new exchanges with the participants [1 hour].

The session will end with a call to attend the 5th ITE Session which is scheduled to take place during the World Urban Social Forum in Quito in October 2016, an alternative to the Habitat III. The schedule for putting local sessions in place during the World Zero Evictions Days 2015, will be discussed in particular.

Participants:

All the organisations and inhabitants networks involved in these struggles are invited to