The Vincentian Family at the UN joins in this statement of the Working Group to End Homelessness regarding the United Nations Summit of the Future which will be held 22-23 September, 2024 to call attention to the need to address homelessness in order to alleviate poverty and provide a home for all.
2024-0920 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
The WORKING GROUP TO END HOMELESSNESS (WGEH) Statement on the Summit of the Future and the Pact for the Future, (rev.4)
The Summit of the Future is leaving behind nearly ⅕ of the world’s population[i] who are experiencing various forms of homelessness across all countries and all economic levels. While “poverty” and “extreme poverty” is mentioned 28 times, the nearly 30-page outcome document expected after two years of deliberations, “Pact for the Future” fails to mention “homelessness” and the focused solutions required to alleviate this form of extreme poverty for individuals and families. The Summit of the Future and the Pact for the Future disregards A/RES/78/172, as well as other recent similar UN resolutions and reports, which “urges Member States to effectively address the structural and circumstantial drivers of homelessness” and improve access to affordable housing.
The “future we want” is one that recognizes the need for a safe, habitable, affordable, and secure home for all achieved through social protection, sensitive policies and programs to provide housing and end homelessness.
- The exclusion of specific references and actions to address the human rights of the estimated 100-150 million individuals and families experiencing homelessness worldwide diminishes the Sustainable Development Goals, where homelessness is also not mentioned, and refutes the Pact for the Future’s stated goal to “leave no one behind.”
- An estimated 108.4 million people have been forcibly displaced-both within their countries and across borders because of persecution, violence, wars and political conflict, natural disasters and face housing insecurity or homelessness because of migration.
- The 1.6 billion people worldwide estimated to be inadequately housed in slums and squatter settlements creating threats to safety and health not only need “safe and affordable housing” (Action 6. 25.c), but an international focus on climate change, economic uncertainty, political instability and investment in rural economies.
- Urbanization, a powerful tool for development in both developing and developed countries, has also become a source of homelessness as persons seeking employment migrate from rural areas and encounter a lack of infrastructure and affordable housing. Commitments in the New Urban Agenda to ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and to prevent and eliminate homelessness (NUA 33) remain unfulfilled. The progress on Goal 11 to achieve sustainable cities and communities in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, is far from the desired trajectory, demonstrating regression below the 2015 baseline. (The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023)
- Member States seeking to remediate the systemic and behavioral causes of homelessness including but not limited to unemployment, mental illness, substance abuse, violence against women, social exclusion, racial, religious, ethnic and economic discrimination, and the commodification of housing, must include the voices of people who experience these forms of poverty to create viable solutions, most importantly housing with social supports.
- Globally, millions of people, communities, and businesses lack clear, secure rights to the land, resources, and property they use, occupy, and depend on for individual livelihoods and community stability. This is because an estimated 70 percent of land in developing countries is unregistered or tenure is perceived to be insecure, thus representing a fundamental barrier for people living in poverty to overcome in their search for productive employment, economic opportunity and housing.
- The criminalization of persons who are experiencing homelessness, as well as forced evictions must be addressed (Action 7. 26) in a human rights context moving to the future.
- The collection of accurate and disaggregated data on populations and existing conditions to inform and assess progress and effectiveness of actions taken to fulfill the ambitious goals of every component of the Pact for the Future is critically missing.
- The exclusion of the voices of people and families experiencing homelessness and the limited role of civil society in deliberating on the Pact for the Future is a devastating omission in this process and must be prioritized as part of the reform of the United Nations as well as in securing an ambitious outcome at the Second World Summit for Social Development in 2025.
[i] Acknowledging the lack of up-to-date data, statistics cited are as currently used in UN Documents. See A/RES/78/172 (2); A/HRC/43/43 (2); SDG Metadata indicator Last updated 2021 12-20. The term “homelessness” as used in this paragraph includes: people living without accommodation, people living in temporary or crisis accommodation, and people living in inadequate and insecure housing.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:
❖ Lydia Stazen, Co-Chair of the Working Group to End Homelessness and Executive Director
of the Ruff Institute of Global Homelessness at DePaul University
(616) 212 7369 lstazen@ighomelessness.org
❖ James Walters, Co-Chair of the Working Group to End Homelessness and NGO
Representative for the Sisters of Charity Federation.
(516) 670 5958 jwalters@sistersofcharityfederation.org
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