Housing and Land
Description
Communities and locally operating companies respect land rights, including Indigenous rights to traditional lands and territories. Involuntary resettlement can have significant human, environmental, and economic impacts and only occurs when absolutely unavoidable, with careful input, planning, and implementation to avoid expropriation, to minimise adverse impacts, and to support fairly negotiated settlements regardless of legal rights. Housing for resettled and other community members considers family, cultural and other needs. Home ownership or other forms of housing tenure, including tenancy or co-op housing, are accessible to all community members. The community offers sufficient housing opportunities and vacancies to meet the needs of the community’s population, at affordable rates in locations that do not compromise residents’ ability to support their good health and wellbeing.
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Resources
The Right to Adequate Housing
Adequate housing is recognised as a human right under international law, yet well over a billion people are living without adequate housing. This fact sheet from the UN can help you better understand this issue and its legal implications. It explains what the right to adequate housing is, how it applies to specific groups, and who is responsible for upholding it. It also provides an overview of accountability and monitoring mechanisms at the national, regional, and international level. This resource will be most useful to sustainability practitioners, project developers, and engineers whose organisations own, manage, or develop physical infrastructure or other large-scale projects.
Land and Human Rights: Standards and Applications
This comprehensive resource from the UN's Human Rights Office of the High Commission can help you to better understand land and human rights standards and identify the ones applicable to your work. It provides a brief overview of the main international law standards relevant to land and human rights, as well as a range of concise, user-friendly summary sheets on key international legal standards for those working on land issues. These sheets illustrate the links between international human rights standards and land issues, along with examples of the concrete application of the standard by human rights mechanisms and references to relevant international standards and guidelines.
Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement: Good Practice Handbook
This expansive guide from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) can help you to implement resettlement and livelihood restoration processes in a wide range of land acquisition circumstances. It explains the risks inherent in involuntary resettlement and the opportunities it can provide to improve the living conditions and livelihoods of those affected. It also outlines a framework and methodology for planning, conducting socioeconomic studies for, designing, implementing, and monitoring the entire resettlement and livelihood-restoration process to achieve positive, long-term sustainable outcomes.
The Global Land Tool Network
The Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) has created a wide range of resources to support access to land and tenure security for all - especially for marginalised and vulnerable peoples. Their resources include primers, toolkits, and guides on the topics of land administration and information; land management and legislation; land-based financing; land policy and planning; and more. They have also produced a broad range of publications, including legislative and administrative land and property rights frameworks for different countries.
The Land Portal Foundation
The Land Portal Foundation was established to create, curate, and disseminate land governance information. They have created primers and webinars on key land-related issues, as have compiled a broad range of land data sets. They have also built a comprehensive library featuring thousands of reports, journal articles, policies, conference papers, training resources (and more) on a wide range of issues and concepts.
How to Ensure Better Outcomes for Women in Resettlement: A Toolkit
This resource from the World Bank can help you to support resettlement outcomes for women. It explains the gender gaps in resettlement and provides a comprehensive range of recommendations for implementing effective and equitable compensation, resettlement, and livelihood restoration plans. The guide also provides questionnaires to identify gaps in the integration of gender-specific elements in the resettlement process and to guide the development of appropriate action plans to improve a project’s performance in gender mainstreaming.
LandMark: Global Platform of Indigenous & Community Lands
This interactive platform can help you to close internal information gaps on Indigenous Peoples' and local communities' land rights. It provides precise, in-depth maps, data, and other information on lands that are collectively held and used, including legal status and key threats. It also includes analysis tools that calculate factors such as forest cover loss and carbon stock.