Disney, Julian --- "Habitat II: The Road to Istanbul" [1996] HRightsDef 4; (1996) Human Rights Defender

Habitat II: The Road to Istanbul

Julian Disney

The United Nations Conference on Human Settlement - commonly known as Habitat II - will be held in Istanbul next June. It is a sequel to the first Habitat conference held twenty years ago in Vancouver.

The principal themes of Habitat II are adequate housing and sustainable human settlements. The conference is intended to produce a document agreed by all participating nations. This document, which is likely to be called the Habitat Agenda, will include statements of basic goals, principles and commitments, followed by Global Plan of Action for their achievement.

Three Preparatory Committee meetings have been held to draft the Habitat Agenda. All UN member states are entitled to participate fully as members of the Committee. At the final meeting, which was held in New York in February, most states attended some sessions although the principal roles were played by the European Union, the G77 group representing about 130 developing countries, and the United States. Australia and Canada were also prominent. Many national deleg-ations included experts in fields such as housing, urban management, rural development, and the environment but most negotiations was conducted by professional diplomats based in New York.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were allowed to attend some of the Committee negotiations and to circulate proposals to participating states. In the recent New York meeting, they were also allowed to make some joint statements at the outset of negotiating sessions but not to intervene in detailed discussion of particular passages. Several hundred NGO representatives were present at different times of the meeting, with many of those who were most active around the committee rooms being from organisations mainly interested in the needs of disadvantaged people.

The principal task of the New York meeting was to finalise as much as possible of the Habitat Agenda for formal agreement in Istanbul. Due largely to poor organisation and chairing, however, less than half of the 42-page draft was finalised. Indeed, many hours were spent altering vague or convoluted passages, which were unlikely in any event to be of any practical signif-icance, in such ways that they became even vaguer or more convoluted.

The draft Habitat Agenda consists largely of a wide-ranging summary of problems and proposed responses in relation to the provision of adequate housing and the development of sustainable human settl-ements. Within these sections, mention can be found of almost every conceivable problem and response in these wide-ranging areas. There is, however, little attempt to identify priorities for action which are sufficiently selective and specific to provide reasonable ground for believing that they will be implemented. It is unlikely that the limited time available for further negotiation in Istanbul will substantially remedy this crucial deficiency.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, some useful progress was made in New York. The Australian Government, with advice from its National Consultative Committee and input from NGO meetings convened in Sydney and Melbourne, had developed a number of priorities for strengthening the draft Habitat Agenda. These priorities were pursued vigorously by the Australian delegation which consisted of several public servants from the Department of Housing and Regional Development and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (principally AusAID), myself as chair of the Government[Otilde]s National Consultative Committee, and two NGO representatives (John Nicolades and Eleri Morgan-Thomas) nominated respectively by ACOSS and the Australian Council for Overseas Aid.

One of the delegation[Otilde]s highest priorities was to obtain agreement that all participating states be invited to include in their principal address to Habitat II a statement of specific actions which they will take within the next five years in their own countries in order to implement the Habitat Agenda. These individual and specific commitments would complement and Ògive teethÓ to the inevitably vaguer general commitments to which all states will subscribe in the Agenda itself.

This proposal was based on one which was sponsored successfully by Australia for the recent Women[Otilde]s Conference in Beijing. It was extended, however, to include invit-ations to inter-governmental institut-ions (such as the World Bank and IMF) and regional groups of governments (such as ASEAN and APEC). After sustained lobbying, the Australian proposal for Istanbul was adopted by the Preparatory Committee. It will now be necessary to encourage a wide range of positive responses to the invitations, thereby helping to achieve practical outcomes from the conference and develop a useful precedent for processes at other UN conferences.

Another priority for Australia was to ensure that the Agenda reaffirmed the right to adequate housing which has been previously recognised in the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other international agreements. At earlier preparatory meetings, the existence of this right had been strongly disputed by the United States, with tacit support from some European countries. Intensive, and sometimes heated, discussions in New York did not produce a resolution but it appears likely that the eventual agreement will reaffirm the existence of such a right. It is to be hoped that it will also strengthen monitoring and enforcement of the Covenant.

In accordance with its other prior--ities, the Australian delegation helped to insert or strengthen language in the Habitat Agenda relating to the circumstances and needs of indigenous people, women and people with disabilities. In relation to the first and third of these groups, it led the way with support especially from Canada. It combined again with Canada to strengthen recognition of the need for geographically-balanced development and for strengthening secondary cities, although this issue remains unduly neglected in the document.

The delegation also was successful in obtaining more emphasis in the draft Agenda on urban planning and management, secure land tenure, water and sanitation, and public and community housing. It had little success, however, in trying to strengthen the sections relating to the international economic environment so that they emphasised the need for effective international cooperation in financial regulation, taxation and other areas essential to promote productive investment and sustainable development.

Final governmental negotiations at Istanbul will provide an opportunity to reaffirm and strengthen the human rights regime in relation to housing and perhaps to improve implementation mechanisms within the UN (especially in the UNCHS secretariat in Nairobi and in the regional UN commissions). Istanbul will also be the venue for a promising array of expert conferences and seminars that is being organised by the UN, professional bodies and NGOs. The ideas and interactions engendered by these gatherings may well be the significant outcome of the Habitat process.

*Julian Disney is Professor of Law and the Director of Public Law Program at the Australian National University.