A/HRC/4/18 page 8 17. The Special Rapporteur thus strengthened the focus on women’s rights through the development of specific strategies for collecting information from States and civil society groups, including the elaboration of a questionnaire on women and adequate housing and conducting regional consultations with grass-roots and civil society groups.8 18. The questionnaire draws from experience gained during the study on women and housing, especially through regional consultations and testimonies received from women during country missions. It makes explicit the elements of women’s right to adequate housing. Using the indivisibility of rights approach, this questionnaire demonstrates the connections between various civil and political rights and economic, social and cultural rights in relation to women’s adequate housing, land and inheritance, including an emphasis on the close link between violence against women and the right to adequate housing. 19. Part I of the questionnaire solicits information on the legal and policy framework for realizing women’s adequate housing. Part II focuses on how different elements of adequate housing affect women. The questionnaire is structured around the expanded definition of the right to adequate housing provided by the Special Rapporteur which enables greater elaboration of the elements of “adequacy” as related to women’s lives and experiences. 20. The Special Rapporteur believes in the timeliness of presenting this questionnaire to the Human Rights Council as a tool with multiple uses. The questionnaire can be used to: derive indicators that would result in the collection of disaggregated data to monitor the realization and violations of women’s right to adequate housing; to collate information on the right to adequate housing for women with disabilities, particularly in relation to access issues - as recognized in the recently adopted (December 2006) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; by States and civil society for human rights education, thereby strengthening communities’ capacity to analyse and present violations within the human rights framework, including the capacity to access available monitoring mechanisms and international legal mechanisms for redress; to draft model questions for monitoring by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as a basis for a general recommendation on women and land and housing. C. Basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacement 21. From the start of his mandate, the Special Rapporteur has witnessed and increasingly received reports on forced evictions and displacement around the world.9 As recognized by several human rights bodies, forced evictions constitute prima facie violations of a wide range of internationally recognized human rights and can only be carried out under exceptional circumstances and in full accordance with international human rights law. As a result of forced 8 See, as one result of the global study, the three reports to the Commission on Human Rights and reports of seven regional consultations, at: www.ohchr.org/english/issues/housing/ women.htm. 9 The Special Rapporteur’s report (E/CN.4/2004/48) focused on forced evictions and included a recommendation to hold an expert seminar to elaborate guidelines.