Description

Over ten percent of Phnom Penh’s inhabitants have been evicted in the past two decades. As land prices have soared, 150,000 people have found themselves without home, in some cases traumatised by having watched their homes and belongings destroyed by excavators.

Not only Phnom Penh’s inhabitants are at risk. At this very moment, a billion people all over the world are either threatened with homelessness or living in bad housing conditions, due to large-scale investments of financial and real estate capital, social, economic and racial discrimination, wars and natural disasters. Instead of diminishing by 100 million by 2020 as laid down by Objective No. 7 of the Millennium Development Goals, this figure is destined to rise by another 700 million by 2020.

What are the underlying causes for this situation?

Under the title Resistances and Alternatives for the Right to Habitat, the World Assembly of Inhabitants encourages exploration of the common structural factors of the neoliberal system that lie behind the persistent and systematic violation of land and housing rights around the world.

From Sep. 15 to Oct. 31 2011, the Assembly calls upon all housing and land rights activists to organize and join in mass actions to demand genuine fulfillment of the right to housing and land for all, an immediate end to forced evictions and land grabbing, and a halt to the persecution and intimidation of activists.

Please join us for the Phnom Penh solidarity event, which will include speeches by activists, short-films by students, video footage and photos of evictions, as well as a call to sign a petition to make Phnom Penh an Eviction Free Zone.

This event is organised by the Housing Rights Task Force (HRTF).

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