COHRE Housing Rights Bulletin Vol3 2010

Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions

Vol. 3 No. 10 - December 2010

Bulletin on Housing Rights and the Right to the City in Latin America

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N°

Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions

EDITORIAL

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Politics and housing in 21 century Latin America P4

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THE FUTURE OF LATIN AMERICAN CITIES P8 WOMEN’S RIGHT TO HOUSING: TRENDS AND CHALLENGES IN LATIN AMERICA P12 THE DILEMMAS OF THE USE OF LAND IN LATIN AMERICA P16

A decade of housing rights, and wrongs, in Latin America As we approach the end of the “decade of the future”; the first ten years of the 21st century; a time when we had hoped things were going to take a turn for the better; it is a good time to reflect back on the advances made in housing rights and the challenges that still lie ahead.

During the last decade, new and old housing legislation has been implemented in almost every country in Latin America and thousands have benefited from new housing plans.

However, ten years on from the start of the millennium, hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans still don’t have a place to call home or are forced to live in areas that lack some of the most basic services.

The question today is: where will we be in another ten years’ time?

COHRE’s final bulletin of the year – and the decade – focuses exactly on that and we have some of the most recognized regional experts on housing exploring current and future trends on the issue.

Lawyer and housing rights expert Alejandro Florian Borbon spoke to COHRE about the past and current advances and challenges faced by most countries in Latin America.

In the interview, Florian Borbon analyses whether Latin America’s recent “move to the left” has had any impact in people’s ability to enjoy their right to housing and talks particularly about the cases of Brazil and Colombia as the two sides of the “housing coin”.

In her article, regional urban planner and architect Graciela Marini introduces the city of the future - a large conglomerate

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of buildings and private areas, with a growing migrant population and a place where those with fewer resources become socially displaced, or “urban exiles”.

But perhaps the biggest future trend we have seen in the last decade is the new use governments and private companies have given to land previously used for housing and the production of food.

The populations, Marini argues, will not have access to a house, goods or services and will be expelled even from irregular settlements, usually controlled by other groups.

As Colombian lawyer and researcher Margarita Flórez explains, the trend of land stockpiling we have witnessed in most of South America seems to be responding to the need to produce larger amounts of crops for food and biofuels.

But the production of crops to answer an environmental need seems also to be having an impact on local ecosystems – including the availability of drinkable water and land for housing.

Amongst them, women and children have been – and will be – particularly affected by problems related to housing.

In their story, Laura Gil y de Anso and Julia Ramos, researchers at the University of Buenos Aires, argue that even though most countries in the region have made progress when it comes to women’s rights, inequalities persist.

Governments in Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Chile, amongst others, have, so far, focused on building houses in large numbers without considering the particular needs of those who will live in them, including women. They have not taken into consideration, for example, women’s particular needs when it comes to safety and the location of houses.

It is clear that the start of 2011 marks the end of a decade that was a mixed bag when it comes to housing rights.

It is impossible to predict what will happen next but what it is certain is that thousands of Latin Americans will continue to work to make the next decade a decade for housing rights.

Josefina Salomón

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Interview by Josefina Salomón

Politics and housing in 21st century Latin America During the past decade, most countries in Latin America have experienced political transformations that have given rise to governments considered “progressive”. But have those changes had any impact on the housing situation of thousands of Latin Americans? Lawyer and housing expert Alejandro Florian Borbon spoke with COHRE about past and current improvements and challenges.

A large proportion of the population in Latin America suffers from problems related to their housing situation.

How would you describe the situation in recent years? Have there been any improvements or have things deteriorated?

The spectrum of housing problems in Latin America is very wide.

We know that amongst those most affected by housing problems are those who cannot access an adequate home; families forced to live in informal settlements and victims of natural disasters or forced displacement.

However, because we lack clear and consolidated data on this issue, it is very difficult to make categorical statements

regarding improvements and deteriorations, particularly when we face a region as big and diverse as Latin America.

In order to make a fair analysis, we need to separate the evolution of the situation of particular people and any improvements in public policies, constitutional and legislative changes towards improving housing from a rights perspective, in line with state obligations, which we know is only visible in the mid- to long-term.

During the last decade, we have witnessed what many have described as a “turn to the left” in governments across the region. Do you think this has had an impact on housing policies?

I think that huge expectations had been CENTRE ON HOUSING RIGHTS AND EVICTIONS P.4

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created and, in general terms, we have seen positive evolutions in terms of the intentions and the political discourse of governments that are politically aligned with the left.

However, when it comes to implementing policies and the speed of that implementation, we can see huge disparities across the region, probably caused by the capacity governments have to confront the economic structures that control the resources and strategic elements that establish if social housing is a right or a good.

As has become evident, this is not a theoretical issue. In fact, even when governments might be “progressive”, resources such as land, public and financial services and some essential goods are still mainly controlled by economic agents that prioritize their own earnings above the right of people to adequate housing.

Is there any country in Latin America that has acted particularly well when it comes to housing?

There’s no doubt that Brazil has been

doing well.

There, we have witnessed the consolidation of a process of over two decades of social struggle that began at the local level around the issue of urban reform.

Today, Brazilians have laws such as the “Statute of the City”; new institutional approaches to the issue of housing, mainly via the Ministry of the Cities and its council; and new financing plans such as the “Fund for Popular Housing”, which has a significant budget.

In addition, they have a strong social movement that is still working and preparing itself for the challenge of executing, consolidating and strengthening concepts such as the social function of property and urbanism under the innovative concept of the “right to the city”.

Do you think that any country in Latin America has gone backwards when it comes to housing?

I believe Colombia has gone backwards in issues of housing. The scale of the phenomenon of forced displacement caused by violence and the concentraCENTRE ON HOUSING RIGHTS AND EVICTIONS P.5

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Alejandro Florian Borbon is a lawyer, advisor on housing policies at Fedevivienda and Board member of the Habitat International Coalition.

tion of land, added to recent flooding and the traditional deficit of housing for the poor population, places the country in an unprecedented housing emergency.

This emergency is almost impossible to resolve with an unfair and inefficient housing policy, focused on subsidies for people to acquire houses from a market where strategic goods such as land and financing are controlled by private agents and where the state has been inefficient in guaranteeing their public function.

What have civil society organizations done when it comes to housing?

Civil society organizations have been the main support for the majority of the poor population in the region; people who live in informal housing settlements.

Even though not always organized and coordinated, during the past 40 years, hundreds of civil society organizations across the region have managed to impact new public policies and instruments in Latin America.

However, we seem to be facing the challenge to expand, qualify and continue to mobilize the social movement, and raise the population’s awareness on issues of housing rights when large forces try to convince them that a home is a “good” and an object for speculation.

Along the same lines, experience continues to show the need to review the relationship between social movements and “progressive governments”. The “natural” journey many social leaders make towards government positions should not weaken social movements, which will involve an organizational effort that, apparently, has not been considered

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thus far and has become a key issue on the agenda of social movements working on housing.

What do you think are the main challenges for Latin America in terms of housing?

I believe it is necessary to review the paradigms of planning and private property without limitations and, in this way, facilitate the real possibility of the state acting when it comes to their obligation to guarantee adequate housing.

The scale of the housing problems faced by millions in the region requires more effective approaches and planning methods, able to interpret the general conditions and less vulnerable to pressure from the interests of corporations.

In addition, the need to improve and widen the models of production and improvement of social housing is urgent.

For this task, the experience of those who have managed social housing will be essential.

The management of knowledge is of vital importance, including the knowledge to establish priorities and optimize the relationship between society, universities and the state. There’s no doubt that we have seen, across the region, huge conceptual, methodological and technological advances, even though scattered and outside of the appropriate channels for people to make the best of them.

The current environmental problems and in particular, the impact of climate change in people’s lives could be the trigger for collective actions that make people across the world establish priorities and limits to speculative forces which, with the excuse of economic growth, produce homes that fail to match poor people’s real needs.

Do you think governments in the region will take the necessary action to face those challenges?

I would prefer to say that in order to trust states, even those with the most “progressive” governments, it is essential to have an organized and qualified social movement, able to encourage citizens in their democratic functions.

In other words, the democracies we currently have in the region are still precarious and vulnerable, amongst other reasons because civil societies are still developing their abilities to defend their rights and the democratic system.

The agenda of the right to adequate housing is going through a process in which the role of democratic governments that act on behalf of the real needs of people is deepening, and moving away from a role of being, like today, simple “hostages of the markets”.

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By Graciela Mariani

The future of Latin American cities During the past few years, cities have been transformed at a higher speed than ever before in history. Architects, urban planers and sociologists say that this development is likely to accelerate in the next decade. But how will the city of the future affect the rights of its inhabitants? Regional Urban Planner Graciela Mariani explores the main trends.

It is not easy to be an urban planner in Latin America. There have always been economic and political interests that took precedence over the implementation of our plans and projects and even over existing urban legislation. However, in the past few years, since the global economic crisis hit, that trend has increased.

The close relationship between urbanization processes and economic crises has lead to the emergence of big realestate businesses that destroy our cities, transforming them into centres for the speculative use of urban land. That land goes from being a social good to an exclusive market object.

When economic interests come before other interests, the needs of the people

are usually relegated to a lower position.

The city stops being inhabitable; quality of life is lost; public transport cannot cope even when it increases in quality and frequency; trips to work, study or to have fun take endless hours; and there are many people who don’t even have the time or the money to make them

When economic interests come “ before other interests, the needs of the people are usually relegated to a lower position.

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and end up sleeping on the streets in the centre of town.

An “exclusive city” is generated, in ways compact and at the same time

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fragmented, which expels those sectors of the population that are not useful to its proposes.

The city of the third millennium In the Latin American city of the third millennium, we can find three kinds of housing developments that clearly dominate the space. The rest of the space, in between these developments, is a “no man’s” land.

1. Luxury housing complexes with central services, recreational space and sports equipment. They are located in central and privileged areas near the city and close to the general public.

They are invading the space and taking up preferred locations – green and public spaces – generating social exclusion and segregation for the most economically vulnerable sectors.

The rest of the city starts dis“ appearing with the invasion of these urban developments and the only things left are isolated patches of land.

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2. Gated communities, which offer similar services, but in the shape of neighbourhoods, with large green spaces and gardens. They have community rooms, pools, restaurants, transport services and even private lakes and are set aside for the upper classes. Located in the outskirts of cities and provided with private security, they are situated in large urban areas of little productive value, either because they have been developed to their maximum capacity or because they are not useful for growing crops.

Graciela Marini is an

3. Social housing developments, either in the form of community or individual housings, with little state intervention and in the hands of private developers.

They are built in small spaces, with lowquality materials and in places with serious transport difficulties and security problems. Credit to access them, even when they are low in price, requires meeting a series of conditions including legal work and a stable, secure income – meaning that many of these projects do not benefit large sectors of the population.

architect and regional urban planner with the University of Buenos Aires. She is the Founder and Director of the network Our Cities (Red Nuestras Ciudades) and a consultant with several non-governmental organizations working on housing issues. She is also a correspondent with “La Ciudad Viva”, a digital magazine on

The rest of the city starts disappearing with the invasion of these urban developments and the only things left are isolated patches of land. Even historical buildings start disappearing, despite existing legislation that is supposed to protect them. The identity of neighbourhoods starts to disappear, together with quality of life, space for social interaction and the quality of new builds.

cities.

Old and historic neighbourhoods are destroyed to make room for new tall buildings, of low quality and with an

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internal design more focused on taking advantage of space, even at the price of functional and comfortable design.

A new process starts taking place called “wild urbanization”.

“Wild urbanization” This is a process through which degraded areas of the city become in fashion and people with higher incomes move into them, attracting new luxury developments for the privileged classes and tourism and, at the same time, expelling the original population, which can sell their property at good prices and access other houses in the same or better condition, in a more depressed area, far away from the centre..

between the services provided in the old city and the highly sophisticated requirements of the new city. Space becomes scarce, the solutions become expensive and the city becomes a large metal and cement, anti-economical mass.

This is the moment we are socially experiencing now: something needs to be done with what has already been built and the large existing population density for which our urban structures are not prepared.

The non-citizen doesn’t have “ genuine rights in the new city, she becomes an “urban exile”; socially displaced.

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This process of privileged misappropriation that displaces some in favour of others creates a vicious cycle by which those who have the least have no other alternative but to migrate some place else where they can find a job – or end up in an informal settlement.

These processes, caused by speculative capital, generates the “vicious circle of the wild urbanization” that expels its population to the underdeveloped periphery.

When new constructions are built in a pre-existing urban structure, an irrational competition for resources emerges

A lot has been said about this dehumanizing progress, where building is not focused on the use of future in-

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habitants but only on the sale and rent value by businesses who only look for economic benefit.

Speculative capital is not interested in the inhabitants, their health, the environment or any human needs.

Cities of the future and “urban exiles” In these conditions, the future is truly discouraging. The non-citizen doesn’t have genuine rights in the new city, she becomes an “urban exile”; socially displaced.

This new exile does not have a house nor goods, cannot access a job, and must rely on charity to live, gathering metal scraps to recycle and eating from the rubbish. You cannot imagine how many people in Buenos Aires eat from the trash today.

We have witnessed, particularly in the last decade, the struggle of social urban movements for the ownership of the land, the legitimate right to housing, water and drainage and the regularization of land ownership.

These are claims that for a long time have been worked on by local organizations that have managed to influence legislative development, planning of public policies, to stop against evictions, improve urban management and territorial reorganization.

These new public polities, generated by the participation of the community, have forced many governments in Latin America to take serious measures on these issues, through the development of updated urban and environmental policies, direct interventions on the land, specific controls and the introduc-

tion of new measures regarding financing of urban land, amongst others.

This way, the city starts to take shape as a good that everybody can enjoy.

However, data regarding urban growth and future migrations are shocking. It is estimated that most of the cities’ new urban inhabitants will be poor, resulting in a phenomenon that the organization Agenda Habitat calls “urbanization of poverty”, and the creation of precarious settlements.

These settlements will be characterized by lack of access to public transport, security, safe water, safe drainage and other infrastructure problems such as low-quality housing and overcrowding.

There will even be families of “urban exiles” that will not even be able to access those irregular settlements, because even those areas are managed by groups that produce “informal markets” of land or occupied housing, charging a rent to access them, to have security and permission to remain in the area.

What can we do?

As urban planner Jordi Borja has said, there is a clear relationship between the city and citizenship.

The city provides the necessary conditions to exercise citizenship: physical organization, security, access to basic goods and services, social redistribution, politico-cultural integration in which all citizens have the right to express themselves not only with their vote, but also to call for good public policies.

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By Laura Gil y de Anso and Julia Ramos

Women’s right to housing: Trends and challenges in Latin America Numerous investigations have shown that Latin America’s housing crisis is particularly affecting women, but what has been the impact of public policies implemented in the past decade and what are the challenges ahead?. Laura Gil y de Anso and Julia Ramos from the Gino Germani Research Institute explore the current situation and the outlook for the upcoming years.

Today, it is almost unquestionable that cities are at the very centre of Latin America’s development. As centres of cultural, social, political and economical development, cities represent, for millions of people, places able to guarantee their wellbeing.

However, the forces of the market and even some of the plans implemented

by Latin American governments to narrow the existing gap between the demand and the availability of houses have ended up relegating women and children to disadvantageous urban experiences.

As Segovia (2002) has pointed out, far from building spaces of protection and security, for privacy and rest, housing in poor neighborhoods across Latin America has becomes far too often the

space in which the effects of poverty are expressed: small houses built with poor materials that host several functions, including family life and the development of businesses to improve their living conditions.

At the Latin American “ level, the inequality faced by

women with fewer resources has increased in the past few years...

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At the Latin American level, the inequality faced by women with fewer resources has increased in the past few years, having a negative impact in their likelihood to access a house and the range of goods and services provided by cities.

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Along these lines, it is important to point out that the inadequacy between the location of the house home and the labour market, urban infrastructures and services (health, education and other social services), has particular impact on women’s day to day lives.

From a gender perspective, it is also possible to identify various obstacles that prevent women from accessing a home and land or enjoying the right to own their house or to inherit it in equal conditions to men.

Advances in Latin America Countries in the region have made efforts and have moved forward towards fulfilling their commitments to guarantee women’s right to housing.

Those moves have shown a new aspect in the relationship between women and housing. Women have begun to see themselves as subjects who have rights and have become more active in claiming them.

Women have begun to see “ themselves as subjects who have rights and have become more active in claiming them.

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The recognition of women’s rights in the constitutions and legislation of every country in the region has been the result of the hard work of nongovernmental organizations and the women’s rights movement.

That is seen, for example, in the work done by the Red Mujer y Hábitat and

the Red de Mujeres Líderes Barriales in Bolivia who have managed to have the right to housing included as a fundamental human right in the country’s new constitution, approved in 2009.

However, even if we recognize important advances in the law regarding the equality between women and men, many of these are never translated into concrete instruments for women and children to be able to access adequate housing.

The gender perspective is rarely – or only formally – incorporated in public policies, particularly those that look at the problems related to access to housing for sectors with fewer resources.

The responses from states have been

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characterized by the development of urban and housing policies that, beyond governments’ declarations and commitments, continue to assume a limited concept of house and of user.

The interdependence between housing and access to jobs, public services,

“ ...policies are generated with the idea of an abstract user, with no gender..... „ transport, and a healthy environment is not considered, which has a negative impact on women’s lives when it comes to merging their obligations inside and outsider the domestic sphere.

Also, policies are generated with the idea of an abstract user, with no gender (or a default masculine gender), without taking into consideration the particular needs women have and without considering their culturally constructed multiple roles (reproductive, productive and

in the community) when designing and building homes.

Governments in Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Chile, amongst many others, tend to build houses without consulting those who will live in them about their needs.

These urban policies focus on the notion of a house as a good, favouring quantity over quality.

Under that logic, it is assumed that people have the same interests and needs in relation to housing – without considering their social and economic status, their ethnicity, gender and age – with housing becoming a means to an end.

In Guatemala, for example, the housing policy promoted through the Fondo Guatemalteco para la Vivienda (FOGUAVI) ended up becoming a source of income for building companies and private banks instead of benefitting lower income sectors in general, and women in particular.

However, contrary to this exclusive

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housing production policy, several countries in Latin America have been trying projects that promote access to housing in a collective and self-managed way and one in which women play a particularly crucial role.

In the city of Buenos Aires, for example, the Movement of Occupants and Tenants (Movimiento de Ocupantes e Inquilinos, MOI) has, through the Programme of Self-Management of Housing (Programa de Autogestión de la Vivienda, PAV), built housing complexes in central areas, under a model that is able to fulfil women’s specific needs when it comes to housing and claiming the right to the city for lower income sectors.

community participation and self-management as central points.

Maria Laura Gil y de Anso is a sociologist at the University of

Housing, women and challenges In this context, it is important to advance policies for access to housing and urban land that include a gender focus able to consider the particularities, priorities and requirements of women and children in relation to urban space.

Buenos Airesand a fellow at CONICET, working in the area of urban studies in the Gino Germani Investigations Institute.

She is also a teacher of communications and

Those policies must also take into account measures to reduce the gender gap when it comes to opportunities related to housing, the development of an integrated housing policy and the creation of management instruments that allow for the safety of women.

specializes in the field of habitat and gender.

Julia Ramos is a sociologist specialized in the planning and evaluation of social policies at the

The development of a gender and equity commission in the Uruguayan Federation of Housing and Mutual Help Cooperatives (Federación Uruguaya de Cooperativas de Vivienda por Ayuda Mutua, FUCVAM) also constitutes an indicator of women’s presence in organizations and their constant battle for recognition of the value of their work as equal to that of men.

For their part, efforts made by the Municipality of Quito, Ecuador, are also important in terms of a housing policy that includes elements such as the guarantee of ownership, location and availability of infrastructure and services, including

It is also necessary to have quality indicators and statistics disaggregated by gender relating to housing and access to land ownership in order to be able to design public policies that focus on the realization of a more equal and democratic city for men and women.

University of Buenos Aires. She is a fellow at CONICET working in the area of urban studies in the Gino Germani Investigations Institute and specializes in the field

Finally, it is essential to promote management instruments that effectively stimulate citizen participation – particularly of women – in deciding housing policies.

of habitat and gender.

There is no one better able than a user herself to decide her own housing needs.

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By Margarita Flórez

The dilemmas of the use of land in Latin America Aside from being a source of food, water and housing, the use of land in Latin America is the subject of great debate and dispute. But how much land should be set aside the production of food and biofuels? And are crops for biofuels affecting the availability of land for housing? Margarita Flórez from the Latin American Institute for an Alternative Society and Rights looks at some of these issues.

It is paradoxical that in the 21st century, when science and knowledge are supposed to provide solutions and improve performance, a large proportion of capital is generated through investment in urban and rural land. This gives the feeling that today, just as in the past, land speculation is the key decision-making factor in the global economy.

The already well-documented process of speculative land stockpiling at the global level consists of the purchasing or leasing of large land areas by countries or private investors in order to establish large plantations and grow food to satisfy internal and external demand. This has become a massive challenge for small producers and for the aspirations of those who don’t own land.

Areas of national territory that did not mean much in economic terms in the past have today gained new value, generating price speculation that has led those who own land to conclude that their best hope is to sell it, practically forcing others to do the same, as they no longer have a role in the new economic structure.

Food and biofuels Changes in patterns of land ownership and use started in Latin America around the mid 1990s.

It was then that Latin American economies, forced by structural cuts and the aggressive implementation of a market economy, began to focus on the export of raw materials, increased their production of crops for biofuels, and substituted the production of foods CENTRE ON HOUSING RIGHTS AND EVICTIONS P.16

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with the massive import of produce.

Land stockpiling became part of a cycle in which agriculture and land are organized along the lines of a new “export logic�, taking advantage of the natural resources of a particular country for export.

Extensive agriculture, plantations and stockpiling of land involves alterations to the ecosystem and the intensive use of natural resources, with consequences for the environment and the local population.

In Colombia, for example, experts have warned about the consequences of the irresponsible use of natural resources, such as water.

Despite having a high rainfall level, Colombia has serious water-shortage problems iand it is thought that 209 out of the 1,100 municipalities in the country have suffered water shortages during dry years.

The new types and amounts of crops in the country will require higher quantities of water and will generate higher levels of residual waters.

Another problem is the cutting down of trees, with the consequent erosion and increase in river deposits.

Changes in the use of land also generate risks with regard to the land itself, including the use of fertilizers,

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pesticides, further degradation of the land, including ground erosion, and an increase in pestilence due to the intensive production of single crops.

The production of crops for biofuels in particular has generated liquid residues that contain chemicals that pollute the land and water.

Damage to the ecosystem impacts on the availability of water for the local population and this, combined with the loss of land, often forces people to trade-in their traditional jobs in order to try to be part of a job market for which they are not trained. In most cases, they end up without land and with no means of subsistence.

Agricultural policy, land stockpiling and right to food Economist Jayati Ghosh has warned that the global food crisis will not only continue but get worse.

Ghosh also says that the crisis affecting food crops for local populations, particularly in the developing world, has been affected by a number of issues, including: two decades of market liberalization; a decrease in the quantity of usable land; land-stockpiling; and a lack of credits and subsidies, making national agriculture unviable.

In its report on the Right to Food, the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur points out that the stockpiling of land could violate the rights recognized in Article 11 of the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which states that it is the obligation of states to guarantee that every person under their jurisdiction has access to a minimal amount of adequate and nu-

tritional food to protect them against hunger.

Margarita Flórez is a researcher at the Latin American Institute for

The policy of substituting national agriculture based on small and medium sized producers for imported goods from large growers increases with the process of leasing and purchasing of land on large scale. However, its negative impact on the right to food does not occur in isolation – it is part of a series of policies that facilitate the process as a whole.

an Alternative Society and Rights and a lawyer specialized in environmental issues.

For more information, please contact: www.ilsa.org.co and globaliz_ilsa@etb.net. co.

In Argentina, for example, soya is not grown for national consumption but mainly for export. Furthermore, the majority of crops grown on a large-scale, including ethanol for biofuels, is not meant for human consumption.

This has resulted in decrease in the production of food. People who sold their land have often not been able to find stable jobs and in the middle of an economic crisis, the money they raised from selling their land has been spent.

Future outlook A possible solution could be to limit the trade in land, as is being debated in Brazil, where there are new legislative proposals for a system to control capital denied to the agricultural sector. With this proposal, the purchasing of land would be limited to a specified number of hectares and it would be no longer possible to purchase land in the country’s border areas for reasons of national interest.

The question of land stockpiling is also being debated in Argentina, where, according to the Argentinean Agrarian Federation, almost 7 percent of land is being held by foreign interests. In that

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country, even multinational companies have bought ecological reserves, preventing their original inhabitants from accessing them.

When we see a small number of groups – including private investors and foreign governments – owning a large proportion of land, it threatens the very likelihood of developing strategies that will ensure food and land for those who need it most across Latin America.

It cannot be forgotten that food and land are fundamental human rights that continue to be ignored and abused across the region. The success of any future official policies in the area of land and housing will depend on the attention governments pay to those rights.

Editor Josefina Salomón Design and layout åtta design sàrl Photos Cover / Transport in shanty-town in Sao Paulo, Brazil ©Silvia Ciprian. P4 / Panoramic view of shanty-town in Sao Paulo, Brazil ©Justinknabb. P5 / Shanty-town in Sao Paulo, Brazil ©Silvia Ciprian. P6/ Marginalized neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela ©Cristina Cusani. P8 / Panoramic view of La Paz, Bolivia ©César Angel Zaragoza. P9 / Homes in Potosi, Bolivia ©César Angel Zaragoza. P10 / Buildings in north Quito, Ecuador ©Eddie Rodriguez von der Becke. P12 / Women in shanty-town in Sao Paulo, Brazil ©Silvia Ciprian. P13 / Woman walks in shanty-town in Sao Paulo, Brazil ©Silvia Ciprian. P14 / A Woman and a child walk in a shanty-town in Sao Paulo, Brazil ©Silvia Ciprian.

P16 / Peasant family in Guatemala ©Justinknabb. P17 / Girls walk in Municipality of Waslala in north Nicaragua ©Justinknabb.

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