Demolition Before Verification: Nepal’s Eviction Drive and the Right to Housing
Within weeks of assuming office, Nepal’s new Prime Minister Balendra Shah directed security forces to clear informal riverside settlements across Kathmandu Valley. On 25 April, bulldozers rolled into various such...
From Housing Rights to Street Situations: The Juridical Narrowing of Homelessness
On 30 March 2026, the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) adopted a resolution on the human rights of persons in street situations without a vote, marking the first standalone...
Affordable Housing and Reasonable Standards of Sanitation in Kenya
In the Global South, particularly in Africa, to be born and raised in a poor background is to learn the harshness of life too early. It’s waking up in a...
The Changing Tides of Delictual Liability: State Failure at the Intersection of Housing and Property Rights in Johannesburg
A recent South African High Court decision, Changing Tides 74 v City of Johannesburg, marks a significant legal turn, testing how private law can respond to chronic state inaction in...
Finding the Essence of Non-Retrogression: A Path to Stronger Social Rights Accountability
Time and again, States have been warned by courts, UN bodies, and NGOs against taking retrogressive steps in economic and social rights. For instance, cuts to essential healthcare funding or...
When Bulldozer Justice Breeds Injustice: Indian Supreme Court Curtails Arbitrary Demolitions
On 13 November 2024, the apex court of India delivered a landmark judgment in In Re: Directions in the matter of demolition of structures addressing the important injustice being caused...
Bromwell Street: Constitutional Court judgment moves one step closer to a socially and spatially just South Africa
On 20 December 2024, South Africa’s Constitutional Court (‘Court’) handed down a landmark judgment in Commando and Others v The City of Cape Town addressing the important issue of spatial...
Indirect Criminalisation of Homelessness: Justice Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson
Homelessness continues to disproportionately affect the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations in the US and across the world. However, there is a discernible change in judicial opinion in the US...
The US Supreme Court’s ‘Grants Pass’ Decision: A Reflection of Broader Problems with Affordable Housing
The decision of the US Supreme Court (‘the Court’) in City of Grants Pass v Johnson allows cities to impose criminal penalties on homeless people for sleeping in public areas,...
The Aberdeen housing crisis: Cementing housing rights in Scotland
In February 2024, hundreds of residents of privately and council-owned houses in Aberdeen began being moved out of their homes after around 500 homes were found to have been constructed...
A Justiciable Right to Housing? The UK Supreme Court’s Decision in R (Imam) v London Borough of Croydon
In a December 2023 decision, the UK Supreme Court sought to clarify how courts should use their remedial discretion to make mandatory orders against local authorities. In doing so, the...
Thubakgale: Bringing Home the Right to Adequate Housing Against a Recalcitrant Municipality
An August 2023 housing rights decision of the Pretoria High Court in South Africa is the latest in a protracted dispute for the Thubakgale applicants against a municipality, in their...
