A/HRC/43/43/Add.1 27. Domestic jurisprudence has concluded that forced eviction – at least in the context of waterfront communities – is unconstitutional. The High Court of Lagos State held in 2017 that, in the absence of adequate notice or provision of alternative shelter, forced evictions violate the fundamental right to dignity and constitute cruel and inhuman treatment contrary to section 34 of the Constitution. 28. Despite this, hundreds of thousands of Nigerians, most of them women and children, have been evicted from their homes, often experiencing brutal force (including the lethal use of firearms, arson, arbitrary arrest and assault), which has resulted in deaths, injuries, miscarriages and stillbirths and inflicted unimaginable suffering and trauma among the most vulnerable parts of Nigerian society. Most evictions occur with little or no notice, with no consultation with the communities, with inadequate or no compensation and/or resettlement and result in homelessness and further impoverishment. In many instances, evictees relocate to other informal settlements, where they are evicted a second or third time, and then still face the continual threat of eviction.36 29. A resident of an informal settlement in Port Harcourt told the Special Rapporteur: “If you remove the roof over my head, you do not need to kill me, I am already dead.” Forced evictions reinforce a cycle of social and economic vulnerability: the urban poor who are subjected to evictions often lose all of their belongings and are forced to relocate, sometimes to distant areas, losing access to their livelihoods, families, churches, mosques and other support networks. Even though evictions are often justified by the Government as “slum upgrading” or “development” projects, they consistently fail to benefit vulnerable Nigerians and seem to serve mainly the interests of private investors. 30. The Special Rapporteur met with members of communities who had undergone forced evictions, some of them repeatedly: (a) in Lagos: Ilasan, Ikota (where Maroko residents have been displaced), Makoko and Oniru Estate, including Otodo Gbame evictees, the Agoegun in Bariga; (b) in Port Harcourt: Agip/UST Waterfront, Nejmanze, Abonnema Wharf, Ogoniland, Echue and Darick Polo; and (c) in the Federal Capital Territory: Karamajiji. She was touched not only by their suffering, but also by their resilience and their capacity to organize themselves and defend their human rights, including the right to housing. The role of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who assist them through legal aid, litigation, capacity-building, mentoring and fundraising is truly commendable. The Special Rapporteur encourages them to continue their critical work. She recommends that the Government and the international community support them with funding and by furthering their participation in public affairs. C. Inhumane living conditions in informal settlements 31. Owing to the colossal gap between the housing needs of the population and the housing supplied by entities in the private and public sectors, informal settlements continue to expand at very rapid rates. According to UN-Habitat, 69 per cent of the urban population of Nigeria lives in informal settlements 37 and according to the state government of Lagos, the country’s largest urban area, there is a housing deficit of 2.5 million units. 32. The Special Rapporteur visited informal settlements in Abuja, Lagos and Port Harcourt and observed living conditions that constitute an assault on human dignity, perhaps the most severe she has witnessed during her mandate. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in paragraph 8 of its general comment No. 4 (1991) on the right to adequate housing, set out the international standards that housing must meet in order to be considered “adequate” according to international law. As far as the Special Rapporteur could observe during her visit, most of those standards had not been met, 36 37 8 Amnesty International, The Human Cost of a Megacity: Forced Evictions of the Urban Poor in Lagos, Nigeria (London, 2017), p. 15. UN-Habitat, “Habitat country programme document Nigeria 2017–2021”, p. 3.