Egyptian Housing Rights Day: “Prevent and Remedy Forced Evictions”

The Egyptian Center for Civil and Legislative Reform (ECCLR) organized the annual Egyptian Housing Rights event on 6 September held each year to commemorate the rockslide in September 2008. This fourth commemoration of the annual event in 2015 was held under the slogan “Stop Forced Evictions.”It came amid the forced eviction process suffered by the shack dwellers at Dar es-Salaam (Cairo) who suffered from abuses in the destruction of homes and property and the displacement of dozens of families without providing alternative housing for them, according to the urgent appeal issued by ECLR.

Several civil society organizations concerned with housing and urban development issues, and a range of government officials, representatives of the Ministry of Urban Renewal and Informal Settlements, which new ministry more recently has been dissolved and its functions subsumed within the Ministry of Housing. A group of citizens affected by forced evictions, including Dar es-Salaam, helped to create a dialogue among the parties concerned where participants identified government plans to develop informal areas, as well as highlight the abuses suffered by the residents of these areas during the implementation of those projects.

The Egyptian Housing Rights Day gathering presented three key development and resettlement issues:(1) an evaluation of the methodology for resettling families, (2) the criteria for allocating urban development projects and (3) the creation of a mechanism for reparations to ensure remedies, which always raises debate about how to implement such a mechanism effectively in accordance with proper legal standards. The issue of the recent forced evictions of shack dwellers in Giza Governorate consumed much of the debate, and participants asked the ministry officials present, when conducting the investigation to the abuses suffered by the population, to determine responsibility for issuing the eviction order, shootings, destruction of homes and property, and displacement. They also demanded an investigation into the corruption that usually characterizes the process of determining and limiting families eligible for alternative housing.

The second part of the Egyptian Housing Rights Day commemoration highlighted the contrast between the Egyptian government practices and obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and standing commitments of the Habitat II Agenda, promised at Istanbul in 1996, and of Egypt’s national report [Arabic] as input into the Habitat III Agenda that will be determined at Quito, Ecuador in 2016. In these historic instruments, the Egyptian government has reaffirmed its commitment to the public to the progressive realization of the right to adequate housing and to promote the principles of partnership and democratic participation. One of the key commitments of Habitat II was the pledge to “protect from and redress forced evictions” (paras. 40n, 61b, and 98b).

The second part of the event also included a presentation by civil society organizations (CSOs) presenting alternative-development projects that take a human rights approach and operationalize the principle of participation in the development and re-planning process. These included the Maspero Triangle Development Project, a project to develop the Batn al-Baqara community in Old Cairo, as well as to review the issue of development projects some areas of the Nuba people in the light of the problematic return to their native lands.

At the end of the event, ECCLR stressed the importance of respect for the constitutional principles that guarantee the right to adequate housing and prohibit forced evictions, and emphasized the need to amend laws that do not guarantee ensuring security of tenure, especially in informal settlements, and threaten to displace hundreds of thousands of families through re-zoning and urban development projects.