Press Release

Nigeria and Zimbabwe named as two of the World's Worst Housing Rights Violators

For the first time the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) has identified the countries guilty of most consistently abusing and defying international housing rights law and the United States is among ten nations chosen to receive the award.

The list includes Burma (Myanmar), Colombia, Croatia, Guatemala, India, Israel, Nigeria, Pakistan, USA and Zimbabwe. (See Winners Information attached.) The countries were selected on the basis of reliable data which confirmed the widespread occurrence of housing rights violations in recent years with a particular focus on the previous twelve months.

Forced evictions, which often involve the complete destruction of someone's home, are a gross violation of human rights under international law. To coincide with the Housing Rights Violators' Awards COHRE is releasing the figures of its latest Global Survey on Forced Evictions which concludes that over the past two years more than five million people worldwide have been forcibly evicted from their homes with another six million people facing the threat of forced evictions.
NIGERIA

The Nigerian government is responsible for persistent forced evictions and the massive destruction of properties in communities across the country that has left thousands of people homeless. These communities include the Odi in Rivers State, Pera, Kyado, Gbeji, Chome, Ifer, Joolarshilile, Iorja, Vasse, Zaki Ibiam, Ise Adoor, and Tor Donga.

Thousands of people face eviction in Lagos in the coming year as the government plans a ´beautification´campaign to clear the city of some of its slums - which one government minister termed an ´eyesore´ - in time for the All Africa Games and a Commonwealth conference which are due to be held in Nigeria in 2003.
In May 2001 5,000 residents were violently evicted from their homes on the Apostolic Church Estate in a suburb of Lagos where some of them had lived for more than 40 years following the order of a supreme court judge. In March 2002 residents of a residential building in Lagos were given thirty minutes to leave their homes.
Women in Nigeria are routinely denied their right to housing and property inheritance leaving them at a distinct economic disadvantage.

The Laws they are breaking: The African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights; the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination; the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

ZIMBABWE

Zimbabwe, which was until the mid-1990s grouped among the more prosperous and politically stable countries in Africa, has since seen both its economy and political stability shattered. At the heart of the conflict are the violent invasions of mostly white-owned commercial farms by war veterans and t
eir supporters. These attacks, in which people have been terrorized and some killed, valuable properties destroyed, and thousands of black Zimbabweans put out of work, have been perpetrated with the support, direct or tacit, of Robert Mugabe's Government.

· Approximately one million people comprising farm workers and their families have been forced to leave their homes in recent years.

· 20,000 people have been forced to flee their homes due to their affiliation to the opposition movement over the past two years.

The laws they are breaking: The African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights; The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination; the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women; and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Bret Thiele
Legal Officer - Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE)
8 N. 2nd Avenue East
Suite 208
Duluth, MN 55802
tel/fax: (218)-733-1370
www.cohre.org