GENEVA - Resettlement processes must uphold human rights, the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal said today, presenting his new Guiding Principles on Resettlement to the Human Rights Council.
"Resettlement after evictions and displacement is a massive challenge and shows poor performance globally," Rajagopal said. "At least some attention is often rightfully given to evictions and displacement, but what happens, or should happen, after people are uprooted often goes overlooked."
"The objective of these Guiding Principles is precisely to fill this gap in international law, policy, and practice, ensuring rights-compliant solutions for resettlement of all evicted or displaced people," he said.
The Special Rapporteur's latest thematic report introduces the first comprehensive set of human rights-based standards on resettlement, along with a legal commentary, aimed at ensuring that resettlement processes and outcomes uphold dignity, equality, participation and non-discrimination, while contributing to more just, equitable and rights-compliant systems of housing and land governance.
Although comprehensive data on resettlement remains limited, available evidence shows that poorly planned or inadequately implemented resettlement has frequently resulted in devastating consequences, including loss of livelihoods, social networks, and long-term housing insecurity.
Meanwhile, the number of people requiring safe and adequate resettlement is growing rapidly due to conflict, disasters, climate impacts and development pressures and projects, Rajagopal said.
"States must prioritise avoiding and preventing evictions and displacement in the first place," he said. "Land acquisition, expropriation or assertion of eminent domain that risks or leads to displacement and resettlement need to rest on strict compliance with international human rights norms and standards, and cannot be justified by just pronouncing them to be in the public interest."
"Where resettlement is unavoidable, it must improve, not worsen, people's living conditions, and guarantee secure tenure, access to services, livelihoods, benefit-sharing and community life," Rajagopal said.
The Guiding Principles are intended to provide guidance to States, international organisations, businesses and non-State actors during all stages of resettlement processes. They build on and consolidate the findings of two previous thematic reports of the Special Rapporteur on the issue of resettlement, to the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.
"I call on States, international organisations, businesses and non-State actors to integrate the Guiding Principles into legislation, policy frameworks and operational practice," he said.
"These Guiding Principles offer a practical roadmap for ensuring that resettlement becomes an opportunity for community-driven development, rather than dispossession, and I hope that they will catalyse concrete action to improve resettlement practice and outcomes globally," Rajagopal said.
