A/HRC/43/43 services and facilities, with no security of tenure, facing discrimination, poverty and economic marginalization.59 55. Around the world, camps for refugees and internally displaced persons are often overcrowded and provide inadequate shelter and services. Sometimes they provide no basic services at all. Often, they act as an inappropriate substitute for long-term housing. 56. Migrant workers are often housed by employers in substandard conditions, for example in transport containers or makeshift accommodation devoid of basic facilities. 60 Domestic workers residing in households have been forced to sleep in kitchens or on bathroom floors, deprived of privacy and vulnerable to abuse and violence. 57. Such conditions are made worse by anti-migrant rhetoric that is increasingly translated into laws and policies. Access to homeless shelters is sometimes restricted to nationals or to documented migrants; in some jurisdictions, it is a criminal offence to rent accommodation to undocumented migrants. 58. Implementation measures: (a) States must ensure the equal enjoyment of the right to housing without discrimination for all internally displaced persons and all migrants, regardless of documentation, in conformity with international human rights and humanitarian law. 61 States must ensure coordination between migration, internal displacement and housing programmes to ensure the right to adequate housing in all contexts. Reception and other centres for migrants must meet standards of dignity, adequacy and protection of the family and other requirements of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. 62 Migrant children should never be separated from their parents or guardians, and families that have been separated by displacement should be reunited as quickly as possible;63 (b) Any differential treatment in qualifying for different types of housing based on immigration status must be reasonable and proportional, and not compromise the protection of the right to housing for all people within the State’s territory or jurisdiction. 64 There should be no discrimination on the basis of immigration status in access to emergency shelters and States should ensure that housing providers are neither permitted nor required to convey information to authorities that would discourage undocumented migrants from seeking shelter for themselves and their families. Housing providers, civil society organizations and individuals should not be penalized for assisting migrants to secure shelter or housing.65 Access to longer-term housing must be provided, where needed, as soon as possible; (c) Effective protective mechanisms must be in place for migrants to secure effective remedies for violations of the right to housing and non-discrimination. Specific protective measures and remedies are required for migrant workers living in housing 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 14 E/C.12/2017/1, A/HRC/14/30, paras. 14 ff., and OHCHR, The Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Migrants in an Irregular Situation. See, e.g., A/HRC/14/30, para. 49, and A/HRC/40/61/Add.1, para. 81. See the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ general comment No. 20, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s general recommendation No. 30 (2004) on discrimination against non-citizens, para. 32, and the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, art. 43 (1) (d). See also the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, objective 15, and the global compact on refugees (A/73/12 (Part II), paras. 78–79). See, e.g., OHCHR and the Global Migration Group, Principles and Guidelines, Supported by Practical Guidance, on the Human Rights Protection of Migrants in Vulnerable Situations (Geneva), principle 11. See the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, principle 17 ff. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, general recommendation No. 30, para. 32. Principles and Guidelines on the Human Rights Protection of Migrants in Vulnerable Situations, principle 13, para. 4.

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