Public Works Studio (Lebanon) submitted a special report on “DISCRIMINATION, SEGREGATION AND THE RIGHT TO ADEQUATE HOUSING” to the General Assembly and to the Human Rights Council 2021, in answer to the the call by UN Human Rights special rapporteur’s working group, Mr. Balakrishnan Rajagopal.
The deadline to submit the report is on May 14 2021, to be submitted to the forthcoming General Assembly. The second related planned report will be presented in 2022 to the Human Rights Council.
Accordingly, Public Works Studio publishes the report drafted in English for public review and to solicit further contribution from those concerned and interested in shedding light on the policies and practices of discrimination and segregation in relation to housing rights in Lebanon.
Based on multiple investigations and research on housing conditions in Lebanon, as well as our daily monitoring through the Housing Monitor, the report includes details on laws, procedures and practices that infringe on housing rights and discriminate between a number of social groups in Lebanon, namely the elderly, women, Palestinian refugees, Syrian refugees, and Migrant domestic workers. This discrimination and spatial segregation is enabled by a bundle of laws and policies, such as the financialization of land and housing, inequitable development, land planning, property and buildings laws, rent laws (particularly the rent law issued in 2014 and amended in 2017), personal status laws which include inheritance laws, labor laws and the Kafala system, and the legal status of refugees in Lebanon.
The Questionnaire in Arabic is found here (It does not include answers by Public Works Studio)