A/HRC/40/61 to housing has become a central focus of social movements and city declarations of human rights.5 6. The Special Rapporteur has found that in all countries, the right to housing is understood by rights holders essentially as it is defined under international human rights law: “the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity”. 6 The question that follows, and is invariably put to the Special Rapporteur, is: “Where do we go to claim our right to housing?” The first and most important step to realizing the right to housing is for States to answer that question, to ensure that the right to housing is afforded fair hearings and effective remedies, “by all appropriate means”, through courts, tribunals, rights-based strategies, human rights institutions, and community-based and informal justice systems. 7 II. Access to justice for the right to housing: the normative framework A. The right to housing made whole 7. Article 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted to him [or her] by the constitution or by law. This applies to all rights in the Universal Declaration without distinction, including the right to housing under article 25. 8. The division of the rights in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into two separate covenants and the provision of an optional complaints procedure only for civil and political rights when the two covenants were first adopted led to debates and confusion regarding the obligation to ensure access to justice and effective remedies for economic, social and cultural rights. This differential treatment of the two categories of rights translated into restrictions on access to justice for the right to housing. Usually, only those components of the right to housing that conform with a civil and political rights model of protection from State interference, such as freedom from cruel and inhuman treatment or from interference with privacy and home, were provided with access to justice. 9. As the Secretary-General noted in a 2013 report, the initial confusion regarding access to justice for economic, social and cultural rights has “since been largely overcome”. In the last two decades, “the United Nations human rights system has consistently recognized the right to an effective remedy for violations of economic, social and cultural rights”. 8 These advances, with significant support from civil society, culminated in the adoption by the General Assembly, by resolution 63/117, of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, heralded as “human rights made whole” by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and putting an end to the differential treatment of the two categories of rights. 9 10. These historic advances at the international level grew out of national- and regionallevel struggles for the right to housing, led by human rights defenders. Behind the famous case names are women such as Olga Tellis in India, Irene Grootboom in South Africa and Felisa Alicia Saavedra in Argentina and street children such as Villagran Milagra in 5 6 7 8 9 4 See information on the new global movement The Shift, available at www.unhousingrapp.org/theshift. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 4 (1991) on the right to adequate housing, para. 7. The Special Rapporteur thanks States, national human rights institutes and civil society organizations for their submissions for the present report. They are available at www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Housing/ Pages/AccessToJustice.aspx. The Special Rapporteur also thanks Bruce Porter for his assistance in preparing the report. A/HRC/25/31, para. 2. Louise Arbour, “Human rights made whole”, Project Syndicate, 26 June 2008.