A/HRC/13/20 D. Role of candidate cities and countries in the bidding process: positive and negative practices 58. During the bidding process, authorities of candidate cities and countries expose their strategy for the organization of the event and make commitments to the International Olympic Committee or FIFA, the local population and the international community as a whole. Housing concerns and commitments, however, are often neglected in the planning and bidding process, which can lead to violations of human rights. 59. States have the duty to respect, protect and fulfil the right to adequate housing. States neglect their duties when in planning and bidding to host events they fail to respect existing access to housing, to regulate and monitor actions by State agents and third parties, to grant adequate legal and institutional protections, to investigate and prosecute abusers or to provide redress to victims. 60. In recent years, the International Olympic Committee and FIFA bidding processes have resulted in some good and bad practices from candidate cities with regard to housing. Focusing on the events to be held in coming years, it is important to trace back the housing commitments of the bid proposals and evaluate compliance. 61. London’s bid book for the 2012 Olympic Games encompassed an environmental impact assessment with socio-economic aspects, but no attention was paid to, or independent impact assessment conducted on, the housing impact of the event, nor was an explicit commitment to respect human rights included in the proposal. Nonetheless, the London bid entails a commitment to limit the construction of new venues to a minimum to avoid disrupting the existing housing stock, limiting the number of possible forced evictions. The London bid also included a commitment to devote 50 per cent of new dwellings to social housing.59 Official plans also indicate that 10,000 new homes, 35 per cent of which will be affordable housing, and several community facilities will be constructed in the Olympic Park to combat the historic deprivation in the area. Regardless of these commitments, a number of social housing units are being destroyed in connection with the Games, and local residents are being displaced from Olympic sites (see para. 23 above). In some cases, however, the authorities have sought to resettle displaced communities; for example, the London Development Agency is building new sites to relocate 35 traveller families from Hackney and Newham.60 62. Some of the practices of the bidding process for the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games in 2010 have been considered an example of best practice. When adopting the Vancouver Olympic bid book, alongside the Inner-City Inclusive Agreement and the MultiParty Agreement, the organizers undertook to ensure that the Games would be socially and environmentally sustainable. These commitments included the guarantee that all people would benefit from the Olympics and that the most disadvantaged sectors of society would not be negatively affected.61 The Inner-City Inclusive Agreement encompassed the commitments to avoid evictions, contain house prices, ensure no one was made homeless as a consequence of the Olympics and that 30 per cent of new dwellings would be allocated to social housing. The Olympic Village in Whistler will be transformed into a residential neighbourhood, where most units will be price-restricted and reserved for local residents; 250 units from the Olympic Village in Vancouver will be assigned to non-market housing; 10 SRA hotels were acquired to stabilize low-income housing stock; $250,000 were allocated to the expansion of Covenant House emergency shelter and $250,000 to 59 60 61 “Fair play for housing rights”, op. cit. Information provided by the International Olympic Committee. Olympic Oversight Interim Report Card, Impact on Communities Coalition, 19 April, 2009, p. 1. 17