A/HRC/4/18 page 2 Summary The present report, submitted in accordance with Human Rights Council decision 1/102, aims at providing practical and operational tools to promote, monitor and implement the human right to adequate housing. The report also identifies a normative gap - the non-recognition in international human rights law of the human right to land. The conceptual work on human rights indicators has sufficiently progressed and there is currently a good basis for endorsing a list of indicators for monitoring the right to adequate housing. The Special Rapporteur urges Governments to test and adapt these to establish national benchmarks consistent with their human rights obligations, and to participate actively in piloting and validating them with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT). In its resolution 2002/49, the Commission on Human Rights entrusted the Special Rapporteur with the additional task of conducting a global study on women and adequate housing. He therefore integrated a gender perspective in every aspect of his mandate through the development of specific strategies for collecting information from States and civil society groups, including the elaboration of a questionnaire on women and housing that has become a useful tool for monitoring the realization of women’s right to housing and land. The Special Rapporteur has throughout his mandate cautioned against the practice of forced evictions. As a result of an International Workshop on Forced Evictions, basic principles and guidelines aimed at assisting States and the international community in significantly reducing the practice of forced evictions have been elaborated. The Special Rapporteur requests the Human Rights Council to ensure wide dissemination of the Basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacement annexed to this report and urges States to incorporate them into national laws and policies. In addition, this report discusses the importance of, and proposes strategies to strengthen the legal framework to promote and implement the human right to land, an issue the Special Rapporteur believes is of particular significance for implementing the right to adequate housing.