Using human rights as a tool to stimulate change
In Northern Ireland, housing conditions are leading to poor health for residents. A group of social housing residents campaigned for improved living conditions, better service delivery and accountable decision-making using human rights indicators and benchmarks.
Seven Towers resident Michelle McFarland gives evidence at the Participation and Practice of Rights Evidence Hearing on the Right to Housing, 13 June 2007
Frank McMillan, Dessie Donnelly and Nicola Browne report on how residents are using human rights as a tool to stimulate change.
Discrimination in social housing provision in Northern Ireland has long had disproportionate effects on the Catholic community. This has created long waiting lists for Catholic families. By 2012, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive expects 94.4per cent of housing need in north Belfast will be Catholic. It is well-documented that substandard housing conditions affect residents’ health directly.
Since January 2007, a group of social housing residents in ‘Catholic’ north Belfast have campaigned to address these issues using human rights. The residents live in what is known locally as the Seven Towers – the largest high rise housing complex in Northern Ireland, constructed in the 1960s, and a critical part of the social housing stock for Catholics in north Belfast.
They worked with the Participation and the Practice of Rights Project (PPR) to highlight poor conditions, inadequate service delivery, and unaccountable decision-making around housing. While their work has focused primarily on the full implementation of Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (the right to adequate housing), many of the issues identified and monitored are integrally important to the health of residents and their families. Their work reveals both the interrelatedness of human rights and the importance of addressing power inequalities in the way policy is delivered.
Bottom up human rights indicators and benchmarks
A central aspect of the group’s campaign (and PPR’s approach) has been the identification and monitoring of human rights indicators and benchmarks. The use of indicators and benchmarks are based on states’ obligations to ‘progressively realise’ economic and social rights – this obligation requires that housing provisions, health services and outcomes get better year after year, not worse. Measuring whether services are improving helps hold states accountable for the delivery of this obligation.
Typically, human rights indicators and benchmarks are set and monitored by states or by international bodies like the United Nations. Working with PPR, these north Belfast residents have shown that indicators and benchmarks can be set and monitored using a participatory, bottom up approach as well. By involving those who are directly affected by poor housing conditions, residents can better identify the multi-faceted way poor housing conditions affect individuals’ wider lives, including their health.
Setting the indicators
Seven Towers high rise complex of flats in North Belfast, Northern Ireland
Residents set these human rights indicators and benchmarks through a development programme with PPR. The development programme focused on a series of core modules and activities including: confidence building; international human rights standards; identification of housing problems; action research; setting benchmarks and indicators; developing tactics and strategies; understanding power; and preparing for engagement with Government.
Through the programme, residents identified a broad set of problems in their individual flats and in the Towers more generally. They learned about human rights and linked many of the problems they experienced to international human rights and local policy standards.
The group first established a ‘baseline’ picture of how conditions were in the Towers. This evidence served as a marker against which progress was measured. Action research, carried out through surveys, monitoring report cards, photography, and focus groups, gave due weight to the first hand experience of residents who had to endure the housing conditions on a daily basis and therefore had a unique insight into the nature and extent of the problems they were facing.
On the basis of this research, the group chose six human rights indicators around which to set benchmarks, or specific timelines for change. These included pigeon waste build up behind ventilation partitions, drainage and sewage problems in individual flats, dampness and mould in flats, and – importantly – the participation of residents in decisions related to their housing. The group identified that participation was crucial to addressing power inequalities, ensuring the outcomes they achieved were supported by structural change that would render them sustainable. All of these issues had a basis in international human rights standards and were capable of being measured and monitored by residents.
Monitoring issues and achieving change
Importantly, the setting of human rights indicators and benchmarks does not ensure they will be implemented by states. The residents and PPR worked together to develop a high profile and focused campaign to ensure changes were made and that the lives and health of residents were improved through better policy implementation. After twelve months of monitoring, a number of positive outcomes were achieved. The pigeon waste has been completely removed; the sewage system has been replaced; most of the families have been moved out of the Towers and into suitable accommodation.
Yet the meaningful participation which would embed this progress has not materialised. The group is continuing their campaign to ensure residents can meaningfully participate in decision-making processes and can embed those changes in the future and across Northern Ireland.
The campaign included key steps that put pressure on the Minister for Social Development (who has responsibility for housing) and service delivery agencies. These are integral to the approach and included:
- Using international experts to validate the human rights indicators and benchmarks residents had set;
- Building a local, regional, and international coalition to support the work of residents;
- Securing a commitment by the Minister to prioritise the group’s human rights indicators and to meet benchmarks;
- Consistently monitoring whether the State was meeting the benchmarks set by the residents;
- Using concerted media and political strategies when the state did not meet those benchmarks;
- Focusing on the outcomes for residents and on the process by which the changes were achieved, and
- Working to develop a campaign to promote this type of accountability across Northern Ireland on housing issues.
Frank McMillan
Dessie Donnelly
Nicola Browne
Practice of Rights Project http://www.pprproject.org/
http://www.youtube.com/pprprojectVideos:
Compilation Video on the 1st Evidence Hearing on the Right to Housing (part 1): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKcSCl6550I
Compilation Video on the 1st Evidence Hearing on the Right to Housing (part
2): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI8f0DRJFxw
Residents’ Speak: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wI8f0DRJFxw
Shorter news clip after Minister pledged to work with residents:
Filed under: Rights to health
