Issues Home About Contact Us Issue 24 - December 2021 عربى
Editorial
Promises, Promises
Once again, 10 December invokes the memory and promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the expectation it generated for better world, after the scourges of war. On this World Human Rights Day, several years on from the 2015 and 2016 global commitments under the 2030 Agenda, Paris Agreement and New Urban Agenda, More

Regional Developments
Commission of Inquiry on Crimes in Israel/Palestine
In special session last May, the UN Human Rights Council  decided in resolution S-30/1 to “urgently establish an ongoing independent, international commission of inquiry, to be appointed by the President of the Human Rights Council, to investigate in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in Israel all alleged violations of international humanitarian law and all alleged violations and More
HIC Statement: Decriminalize Palestinian Human Rights CSOs!
 In response to Israel’s recent attack on six prominent Palestinian civil society organizations, fallaciously designating them as ‘terrorist organizations,’ HIC released a statement of support and solidarity. The organizations include HIC Members, partners, colleagues and friends. Since the baseless attack, new, disturbing elements have come to light. Reports revealed that human rights activists affiliated with these organizations were targeted by More
Toward a Regional Strategy for Human Rights beyond State Borders
 Over the course of two days (6–7 last September), the HIC-HLRN held a virtual workshop in cooperation with the Extraterritorial Obligations (ETO) Consortium, for the Middle East and North Africa region, in order to develop a base of knowledge, regional strategy and capabilities of HIC Members and allies in the region concerned with the human rights obligations to states outside More
New Book: Counting on Land Justice in Yemen
 In this new study, Counting on Justice, HIC-HLRN and the Social Democratic Forum - Yemen have co-produced the findings and future vision of land restitution in Yemen for those dispossessed of their properties by both the previous regime of Ali Abdalla Salih and the ongoing conflict in Yemen. This publication is the result of five years of fact gathering, consultation with More
Women, Land and Development Policy
 Palestine’s Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) concluded a training event on “Land, Women and Socio-economic Development” in the Arab Region at Erbil, Kurdistan Iraq on 25–26 October 2021. This event came as part of their agreement of cooperation with UN-Habitat/GLTN under the “Arab Region Program on Good Land Governance in Support to Inclusive Development, Peace and Stability”, funded by More
Localizing Tenure Guidelines in Iraq
 Within the framework of HIC-HLRN cooperation with members in raising and building their capacity, the Regional Reference Center for the Middle East and North Africa is preparing to hold a series of training sessions with its members of civil society in Iraq. The program will seek to localize global norms on equitable governance of land and other natural resources. Central More
Arab States in Green Transition
 How are Arab states managing and funding their ‘green transition’ to mitigate and adapt to climate change? This simple question deserves an answer that shows how 24 governments are doing their part to face the world’s greatest existential challenge, while also pointing out shortcomings and new hazards and questions that arise for both the state and its citizens. That was the More
Climate Justice: From Procrastination in Glasgow to Hope at Sharm al-Sheikh
 A forward-looking view of CoP26 from the MENA region by Hala Subhi Murad, Dibeen Association (Jordan) Let`s start with a question, the results of which became clear and evident at the beginning of the second week of the Conference of the Parties to the Climate Change Convention CoP26: Did the parties actually meet in order to come up with binding and More
Member News
Women and Habitat – Africa Working Group
A growing group of HIC Members collaborating on women-and-habitat issues meets monthly to share experiences and plans, as well as exchange information about upcoming opportunities for advocacy and other join action. HIC’s Women and Habitat Africa Working Group (WHAWG) produced the statement to mark Urban October to create more awareness of urban housing issues by sensitizing More
Advocating for the Urban Food Insecure
 The Coordinating Committee (CC) of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) welcomed a new facilitator for the Urban Food Insecure constituency in 2021: HIC affiliate Hala N. Barakat (Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights). Although her mandate started officially at the beginning of October, she began actively participating More
International Developments
UNHRC Recognizes Human Right to Environment
It is now possible to authoritatively claim the human right to the environment, rather than tentatively refer only to “the link between human rights and the environment,” or “the human rights dimensions of the environment.” In its recent 48th session, the UN Human Rights Council has adopted milestone resolutions recognizing the human right to a safe and clean environment as critical More

UNHRC Creates Climate-change SR Mandate
On 8 October, the Human Rights Council created a new mandate for a Special Rapporteur (SR) on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change. The Council decided to appoint the new SR for a period of three years and requested its subsidiary Advisory Committee to conduct a study and to prepare a report, in More
Copping out at CoP26
The 26th Conference of Parties (CoP26) ended in grave disappointment at the state delegations who weakened the commitments needed to save the planet from multiple climate disasters. This CoP, the supreme governing body of international agreements on climate change action, finally took place in Glasgow, Scotland, on 31 October–13 November 2021, after being delayed by one year due to the More
Climate, Broken Promises, Carbon Offsets
Despite lawsuits, calls by millions of Americans in the USA to halt federal fossil fuel expansion, and the U.S. president’s own promise to tackle the climate crisis with the urgency it requires, the Biden Administration oil and gas lease sales across 80 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico and hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands last month, on 17 November, More
Land among Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
As previously reported in Land Times/أحوال الأرض, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) has been deliberating over its draft General Comment on Land and economic, social and cultural rights for more than a year. Since the drafting team of CESCR experts presented their 1st version during the Committee’s 68th session in October 2020, the CESCR Secretariat More
HIC @ UNHabitat Executive Board
During the second session of the Executive Board of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme 2021 (15–16 November), Habitat International Coalition (HIC) presented an oral intervention, addressing three agenda items as follows: Under Agenda Item 3 (Reports by the chairs of the ad hoc working groups), HIC encourages UN-Habitat and its organs to develop with partners an appropriate stakeholder-engagement policy, operation More
Global Action for Gender and Land Policy Impact
In August 2021, HIC kicked off its ‘Connecting across Human Rights Related to Habitat: Civil Society Action for Gender and Land Policy Impact’ project. The initiative is run by HIC Members, with support from the HIC General Secretariat and Reference Centers (HIC-HLRN, HIC-MENA, and HIC-AL), as well as the University College London-based Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality (KNOW) program. More
The Power of Data: Women’s Land and Home
HLRN and partners have completed the “Assessing Impacts of Women’s Dispossession from Land and Home” project, which gathered survey data to demonstrate the values at stake. This phase of the project was carried out in collaboration with HIC Members Zimbabwe People’s Land Rights Movement (ZPLRM), Civic Forum on Housing and Habitat Zambia (CFHHZ), Shelter and Settlements Alternative: Uganda Human Settlements More
HIC Statement on Climate Justice
The following is the statement by HIC President Adriana Allen on the occasion of World Habitat Day, 4 October 2021.   Back in 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted for the first time a resolution (Resolution 7/231) that explicitly recognized the implications of climate change for the fulfilment of human rights. While this did little to bring about fundamental changes, More
 
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