Law Campaign
World habitat day observed
Campaigning for right to adequate shelter
The United Nations has designated the first Monday in October every year as World Habitat Day to reflect on the state of human settlements and the basic right to adequate shelter for all. It is also intended to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat.
Twenty years ago -- on December 5, 1979 -- the State Supreme Court issued its first court ruling in Callahan v. Carey, ordering the City and the State to provide emergency shelter in New York City to homeless men. This court order resulted from a class action lawsuit filed by Robert Callahan, a homeless man who like so many in the late 1970's slept on the streets of New York and led to a 1981 consent decree that established the historic right to shelter.
This simple right to shelter has been the bedrock principle upon which New Yorkers have provided compassionate support to men, women, and children who fall through the safety net and find themselves homeless.
UN-habitat announced Indonesia to host the global celebrations of World Habitat Day this year. The event is always celebrated on the first Monday in October each year to reflect on the state of human settlements and the basic right to adequate shelter for all. It is also intended to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat.
The theme of this year's World Habitat Day was the Millennium Development Goals and the City. This theme, chosen by the United Nations, to remind all of us that in the year 2000, world leaders meeting at the dawn of the new Millennium, committed themselves to launch a concerted attack on poverty, illiteracy, hunger, unsafe water, disease and urban and environmental degradation by adopting a set of eight goals. In September, the UN General Assembly already hold a five-year review meeting to weigh progress on the eight goals.
UN-habitat is working with a number of international and civil society organizations, cities and governments to realize Target 11 of Millennium Development Goal 7 - improving the living conditions of at least 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2020. We are also working together on Target 10 of MDG 7 reducing by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water. The Global Campaign on Urban Governance and Global Campaign for Secure Tenure enhance this work through a series of UN-habitat programmes, mainly in developing countries, that shoulder the heaviest poverty burdens.
Source: UN-habitat
