This brilliant book, ‘Housing and Human Rights’ by Jessie Hohmann, is a model of theory and practice. It concludes in Chapter 9 with five human rights principles, or premises, for a just housing future. Hohmann explores each premise, building on earlier chapters, and the five principles provide a neat capstone for her instructive study. This blog suggests the author’s concluding principles not only speak to the future of housing, but also the future of human rights.

The five principles are as follows. First, human rights are not top-down projects but forged in political claims and struggles emerging from below. Secondly, human rights must be guided by a commitment to substantive equality and questions of distribution. Thirdly, human rights must be decolonial and reparatory. As the author puts it: “Unredressed injustices echo through the generations” and demand “an adequate reckoning of these accounts.” (p 230) Fourthly, human rights push back against visions of the world which see everything as a commodity; instead, it insists upon a place for public goods. Fifthly, human rights must respect planetary boundaries and ecological limits. Hohmann rightly observes that this principle requires “an element of humility” (p 247).

The conclusion’s five principles resonate with my experience of social rights, especially the right to adequate housing. As Chief Human Rights Commissioner in Aotearoa New Zealand, I led a national human rights inquiry into what my colleagues and I called “the right to a decent home”. We worked closely with the National Iwi Chairs Forum, the lead organisation representing the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa (Māori), as well as civil society organisations. The inquiry’s various reports rest upon Framework Guidelines on the right to a decent home in Aotearoa, which include a chapter on colonisation. The Framework Guidelines devote a section to the values that are embodied in human rights. These values endeavour to reflect the world views of both Māori and non-Māori. In her book, Hohmann gives careful attention to Indigenous peoples and housing. Her concluding principles chime with the Framework Guidelines.

After stepping down as Chief Commissioner, and inspired by Māori, I’ve tried to re-imagine human rights for our challenging times. Hohmann’s five principles help to point the way forward. Agreed, we need to engage with social movements emerging from below. We must take more seriously economic inequality and public goods (the ‘commons’). We need to grasp pluralistic (not only liberal) values. Indeed, our planetary limits are existential.

However, more collective thought is needed. Contrary to the liberal myth, human rights are not apolitical, so do we need to remove narrowly understood human rights from the limited, liberal world view and relocate re-imagined human rights in another political paradigm, such as participatory, democratic socialism?

And what to do about the corporate leviathans that threaten our planet and widen economic inequalities? For literally thousands of years, humanity has tried to devise arrangements for the democratisation of state public power, such as the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, free and fair elections, freedom of the press, other human rights, and so on. We’ve not solved the problem of undemocratic state power, but we have made some progress. What about the democratisation of corporate public power? The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights are a step in the right direction, but few commentators would argue that the Guiding Principles democratise corporate public power. Should the global human rights movement confront the immense challenge of democratically unaccountable corporate public power? Hohmann compellingly suggests it should.

This book makes a terrific contribution to the struggle for “a just housing future”. But it goes further than that. It helps us think about the future of human rights.