Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Enforcing Social and Economic Rights: The Right to Adequate Housing in South Africa

Enforcing Social and Economic Rights: The Right to Adequate Housing in South Africa EVADNÉ GRANT* Poverty continues to be the most serious, invidious and widespread human rights violation that we must confront. Governments’ responses to other human rights challenges may become, in the end, mere palliatives absent enforceable plans and the determination to tackle poverty. Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a statement to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 23 June 2006.1 INTRODUCTION Mrs Irene Grootboom lived with her family and her sister’s family in a shack in a squatter settlement in the Western Cape in South Africa. The area had no water or sanitation services, a lack of drainage left part of the settlement waterlogged and only a tiny minority of shacks had electricity. Having been on a waiting list for housing for a number of years, Mrs Grootboom could see no other way of improving the appalling living conditions of her family but to move their shack to a better location. The site chosen was, however, on privately owned land which had already been earmarked for housing development. The owner of the land obtained an eviction order and in May 1999, as winter set in, she and her family were forcibly ejected, their home http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png African Journal of International and Comparative Law Edinburgh University Press

Enforcing Social and Economic Rights: The Right to Adequate Housing in South Africa

Download PDF
28 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/edinburgh-university-press/enforcing-social-and-economic-rights-the-right-to-adequate-housing-in-fCU05INMyo

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
Subject
Articles
ISSN
0954-8890
eISSN
1755-1609
DOI
10.3366/ajicl.2007.15.1.1
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

EVADNÉ GRANT* Poverty continues to be the most serious, invidious and widespread human rights violation that we must confront. Governments’ responses to other human rights challenges may become, in the end, mere palliatives absent enforceable plans and the determination to tackle poverty. Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in a statement to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on 23 June 2006.1 INTRODUCTION Mrs Irene Grootboom lived with her family and her sister’s family in a shack in a squatter settlement in the Western Cape in South Africa. The area had no water or sanitation services, a lack of drainage left part of the settlement waterlogged and only a tiny minority of shacks had electricity. Having been on a waiting list for housing for a number of years, Mrs Grootboom could see no other way of improving the appalling living conditions of her family but to move their shack to a better location. The site chosen was, however, on privately owned land which had already been earmarked for housing development. The owner of the land obtained an eviction order and in May 1999, as winter set in, she and her family were forcibly ejected, their home

Journal

African Journal of International and Comparative Law – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Mar 1, 2007

There are no references for this article.