Home » Zero Evictions Campaign » World Zero Evictions Days and for the Defence of the Land 2015 » OCTOBER 2015: WORLD ZERO EVICTIONS DAYS AND FOR THE RIGHT TO LAND

Mostra/Nascondi il menu

Zero Evictions Campaign

OCTOBER 2015: WORLD ZERO EVICTIONS DAYS AND FOR THE RIGHT TO LAND

Call for popular mobilisation and solidarity around the world during the month of October 2015 to stop evictions. A key step towards the alternative World Urban Social Forum for Habitat III.

Cities constitute the centre of economic accumulation and transformation, as well as the concentration of economic-political power. In this process, the participation of the State guarantees to those in power a social order that allows the functioning and reproduction of a productive system and a class structure. It can be seen in this context that the corporate real estate sector stimulated the financial crisis that resulted in millions of evictions due to mortgage debts and defaults on rental payments in cities across Europe, the United States and Latin America, which evicted, swindled and robbed working families of their social assets.

Millions more have been evicted in Africa and Asia, frequently through fraud and violence, by businesses and governments that have taken over communal property, land and water, destroying local societies in the name of promoting the modernisation of cities, mega projects, industrial farming practices and mineral extraction. 

Lastly, wars, above all in the Middle East, the food crisis in Africa and the consequences of climate change have displaced entire populations and forced them to migrate.

It should be noted that in October 2016 in the city of Quito, Ecuador, the United Nations and UN-Habitat will be convening the Third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III). At this global event, financial interests dictate the direction of the development of cities in order to boost their speculative gains. They therefore disregard the right to housing, the city and habitat, as capitalists and their allies attempt to displace nature and the workers in cities to take control of both the commons and public policy.

It is up to grassroots movements to challenge the international stage to demonstrate that the construction of fair, sustainable and democratic territories and cities is possible. So, with the aim of protecting the right to housing and land, grassroots movements and social platforms have mobilised in large numbers, coordinating efforts and discovering the complicity of national governments, bankers, real estate and finance companies, judges, magistrates and notaries, who habitually form a genuine cartel of organised crime.

The World Assembly of Inhabitants (WSF Tunisia 2015) has therefore highlighted the fact that grassroots movements around the world embody the only possibility of social transformation and they are urged and compelled to commit to the unavoidable task of mobilising people, communities and neighbourhoods during the month of October 2015 to promote the World Zero Eviction Days – for the Defence of Land, and equally to set the path towards the alternative World Urban Social Forum for Habitat III.

Global grassroots movements are of nature and in nature, and we will therefore, in solidarity, defend and liberate our mother nature from the war of the kings of concrete.

In this context, during the month of October, the International Alliance of Inhabitants is calling all grassroots, community and neighbourhood organisations, cooperatives, mortgage debtors, tenants, workers and all people to defend our Right to Habitat, to call on national governments to STOP evictions! And to everyone, including local authorities and the United Nations, to support this imperative action.

The World Zero Eviction Days – in Defence of Land will take place throughout the month of October 2015 and consist in promoting global solidarity with local struggles in all countries, through street art, rallies, marches, sit-ins, carnivals, assemblies, forums, concerts, press conferences, fairs, festivals with local food and music, as there is an urgent need to defend, preserve and protect our Mother Earth.

Because every inhabitant of the world has the passion and the talent to live well on our planet, we call you to participate in the World Zero Eviction Days! 

Contact: wzed2015@habitants.org

Facebookfacebook.com/InternationalAllianceInhabitants

Twittertwitter.com/InhabitantsIAI  - #ZEROEVICTIONSDAYS2015


The Volunteer translators for housing rights without frontiers of IAI who have collaborated on the translation of this text were:

Lucy Christmas, Silvia Guimaraes Yafai

Comments

Log in or create a user account to comment.