A/HRC/4/18 page 32 (g) Location. Adequate housing must be in a place that enables access to employment, primary health care, education and other social services and civic amenities. The financial and temporal cost of transport must not place excessive financial and other demands on the household. In addition, both rural and urban housing must be in a location that is safe, particularly from environmental hazards and pollutants. Q20. Do women face any particular constraints in accessing services and resources necessary for livelihood because of where they live? What policies and measures are adopted to alleviate them? (h) Cultural adequacy. Housing configuration, spatial design and site/community organization should be determined locally and in harmony with a community’s cultural preferences and attributes. Q21. Are women from all cultural, ethnic, religious or other backgrounds enabled to express cultural diversity, participate in the planning process (also see questions 23 and 24 below) and have the right to self-determination in relation to housing? Please share such cases and examples. (i) Freedom from dispossession, damage and destruction. Each individual and community has a right to a place to live without threat of dispossession from land, all forms of their property, their homes and resources, as well as all individual and collective holdings required to sustain livelihood. Q22. Does the State effectively safeguard the right not to be subjected to arbitrary interference with home, person and privacy, including dispossession? What are the policies and measures adopted to protect women, including female-headed households, and compensate, resettle or provide for restitution where dispossession takes place? (j) Access to information. Individuals and communities must have access to appropriate data, documents and intellectual resources that impact upon their right to obtain adequate housing. Having access to appropriate data means being informed about potential industrial and natural hazards, infrastructure, planning design, availability of services and natural resources and other factors that affect the right. Q23. What laws and policies exist to facilitate access to information that impacts upon the right to adequate housing, including information about potential industrial and natural hazards, infrastructure, planning design, availability of services and natural resources? Are women regularly accessing such information and benefiting from it? (k) Participation. Effective participation in decision-making is essential to the fulfilment of all other rights, as well as the elements of the right to housing. At all levels of the decision-making process in respect of the provision of and right to adequate housing, individuals and communities must be able to express and share their views; they must be consulted and be able to contribute substantively to such processes that affect housing, including, inter alia, location, spatial dimensions, links to community, social capital and livelihood, housing