A/HRC/34/51 households that are most in need, and lead to greater socioeconomic inequality. 57 World Bank development programmes concentrate on what they consider to be the building blocks of housing finance such as title registration, foreclosure procedures, lending regulations, long-term funding instruments, and improving the liquidity of mortgage assets in order to reduce the costs of credit-risk underwriting for investors. 58 Those policies, combined in many cases with austerity measures that reduce social protection and housing programmes, have meant that development programmes frequently support the emergence of a financialized housing system that may be at odds with States’ obligations to prioritize the needs of those in the most desperate circumstances.59 V. Lack of access to justice, effective remedies and accountability 51. Financialization is made possible through the legal enforcement of agreements between lenders and borrowers. It relies on legal systems governing property rights, zoning laws and contracts and also on an increasingly complex system of international and regional treaties governing the terms and conditions of investments and government actions that may have an impact on profitability. 52. The excessive financialization of housing is directly related to systemic patterns of inequality in investment treaties and in domestic law that fail to recognize the paramountcy of human rights over investor interests and deny access to justice for those whose right to housing is at stake. Ensuring meaningful accountability of financial institutions and private actors to the right to housing will require a significant transformation of current systems of law and accountability and new avenues of access to justice at the local, national and international levels. A. Investment treaties 53. There are currently almost 2,500 bilateral investment treaties in force and almost 300 treaties with investment provisions. 60 Provisions in investment treaties generally provide protection for investors from actions by States without imposing obligations on them to uphold human rights. Investors are guaranteed fair and equitable treatment, protection from direct or indirect expropriation and other protections and have access to an investor-State dispute settlement procedure to seek damages for breaches of those provisions. The effect of those protections is that investment in housing and real estate for the purposes of speculation and the accumulation of wealth becomes a protected “right”, while government measures to regulate investment to protect the right to housing may be the basis for claims against States by private investors for massive damage awards. 54. Claims have recently been brought against the Dominican Republic and Panama, for example, on the basis that government decisions to cancel planned luxury developments in 57 58 59 60 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and World Bank Group, “World Bank Group support for housing finance” (Washington, D.C, 2016), pp. 22-29. Available from https://ieg.worldbankgroup.org/Data/reports/housingfinance.pdf. Loïc Chiquier and Michael Lea, eds., Housing Finance Policy in Emerging Markets (Washington, D.C., The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank, 2009), p. xliv. See Padraic Kenna, ed., Contemporary Housing Issues in a Globalized World (Farnham, Ashgate Publishing, 2014). See the International Investments Agreements Navigator. Available from http://investmentpolicyhub.unctad.org/IIA. 15