A/HRC/4/18
page 5
(UN-HABITAT) convened an expert group meeting on urban indicators in October 2002 to
address some of these concerns, in which both the Special Rapporteur and the Office of the
High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) participated.3
4.
The Special Rapporteur addressed the issue of indicators and tools for monitoring the
right to adequate housing in his reports in documents E/CN.4/2003/5 and E/CN.4/2004/48,
wherein he outlined relevant issues and possible options for taking this work forward. Since
then there has been some progress in this area, including the work undertaken by Paul Hunt, the
Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the highest attainable standard of physical and
mental health (see E/CN.4/2006/48), by UN-HABITAT4 and by OHCHR in support of the
ongoing reform of human rights treaty monitoring bodies and the reporting procedure.5 There
has also been considerable progress at the civil society level in refining indicators for monitoring
the right to adequate housing.6 The Special Rapporteur would like to draw attention to the expert
consultation organized by OHCHR on 19 and 20 December 2006, where housing rights
indicators were discussed and to which he actively contributed.
5.
After reviewing these developments, the Special Rapporteur believes that the conceptual
work on human rights indicators has sufficiently progressed and provides a basis for endorsing
an illustrative list of indicators for monitoring the right to adequate housing. While presenting
such a list in annex II, based on discussions at the expert meeting in December 2006, the Special
Rapporteur would like to draw attention to issues critical to understanding and applying the
suggested framework at the national and subnational levels.
6.
The first issue relates to the imperative of disaggregated data for monitoring human
rights. Identification of vulnerable groups has to be the starting point for seeking specific
information for monitoring the enjoyment of those rights. Thus, for the right to adequate
housing, there is, in most instances, a need to have data disaggregated by sex, major population
age groups, regions (including rural and urban) and, where possible, in relation to other groups,
including racial, ethnic or religious groups, minorities, indigenous peoples, refugees, internally
displaced persons and migrants. Moreover, while some data may be presented at the individual
level and some at the household level, often there may be a case for further disaggregation by
household types, including by female-headed households. Human rights monitoring in addition
also requires indicators that reflect the substantive standards of the right, which incorporate
human rights principles, including gender equality, non-discrimination and participation.
3
See Guide to Monitoring MDG Target II, UN-HABITAT, 2003, p. 6, which provides the
definition of a slum.
4
Report of the Expert Meeting on Housing Rights Monitoring, organized by the United Nations
Housing Rights Programme (UN-HABITAT and OHCHR) in Geneva in November 2003,
available at www.unhabitat.org/programmes/housingrights/expert_group_meeting.asp.
5
6
Document HRI/MC/2006/7.
See for example the work done by the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN),
http://toolkit.hlrn.org.
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