A/HRC/29/41 corrupt practices. One interviewee had the following to say, which reflects the views of many: The policy for allocating land and construction of houses is problematic and inconsistent for the lay person. Government gives you land and you need to get permission to build. After waiting for [a] long [time], some people try to build without the permission of Government and at some point the Government will come and tell them to discontinue construction or destroy the houses. On the other hand, some officials are building houses without any Government intervention. It is not clear what the process is for getting permission to build and when you ask, they always blame it on the higher officials. It is only when you finish building that they intervene.22 41. Other factors compounded the problem, including poor governance, mismanagement and lack of clarity within institutional structures. In the mid-2000s, there was a major purge in the construction industry, with architects, building contractors and other skilled workers arrested and tried for corruption. This preceded a takeover of the construction industry by construction companies owned by the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, the ruling party in Eritrea. Those companies remain the sole providers of cheap labour, sourced from the national service, and the most important marketers of building materials, sold at prohibitive prices. 42. Added to this, the significant backlog of applications for land to build houses is creating a deep crisis, particularly in the capital and other major towns. While Eritrean citizens who have complied with their national service obligations could be allocated a plot of land, the land law imposed on them a requirement to develop the land and erect a building within a strict time frame, after obtaining a building permit, at the risk of repossession if the requirements were not strictly complied with. And yet, since the mid2000s, the authorities have delivered very few building permits, putting many of those who obtained a plot of land to build a home in a situation where it was impossible to comply with the law. People found themselves in a paradoxical situation where they had a plot of land, no building permit, with repossession hanging like a sword of Damocles over their heads. 43. Furthermore, many private individuals who were given access to land on the basis of usufruct rights did not have the requisite resources to construct residential houses within the required time frame. One issue identified as problematic was that existing land-use standards were high; it has been suggested that those standards could be lowered to increase the number of plots delivered, thus bringing down the costs of development, which are linked to plot size, and consequently making a house more affordable to low-income households.23 44. While a limited number of households were able to get bank loans, a significant percentage of individuals financed their homes themselves, built incrementally or built with remittances from Eritreans living abroad.24 To alleviate their housing problem, many individuals resorted to the practice of “selling” some part of the land allocated to them. The main motive was that, using the proceeds of such a “sale”, they could build a house for themselves in the remaining “unsold” part of the land originally allocated to them. Many argue that building a house would not otherwise have been possible, given the economic 22 23 24 12 Interview conducted by the Special Rapporteur during the period 9 March to 25 May 2015. See Eritrea, UN-HABITAT and UNDP, “Eritrea: housing/urban development policy report”, p. IV. Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa, Housing Finance in Africa: 2014 Yearbook (2014), pp. 71–74. Available from www.housingfinanceafrica.org/document/housing-finance-in-africa-2014yearbook.