Spotlight on an Understudied Institution: Evictions and the Magistrate’s Court in South Africa
TRANSCRIPT: Spotlight on an understudied institution: evictions and the Magistrate’s Court in South Africa (Recorded August 2019) Rishika Sahgal (0:11) Welcome to RightsUp! RightNow, a podcast at [the] Oxford Human...
Demolitions in Muslim neighborhood in Delhi are unconstitutional
Image description: Bulldozers demolishing buildings in Kolkata, India in January 2020. On 20 April 2022, the homes and shops of people in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood in Delhi began to...
Thubakgale: Obscuring the Right to Access to Adequate Housing
There is a housing crisis in South Africa, which is largely due to the State’s failure to carry out its constitutional mandate to provide access to adequate housing. However, the...
Indian Supreme Court’s Eviction Order Puts Thousands at the Risk of Homelessness
On 7th June, 2021, the Indian Supreme Court passed a controversial order directing a municipal corporation in the state of Haryana to remove “encroachments” on forest land and “forcibly evict”...
Keeping a Roof Over Your Head: Diverging Approaches to Pandemic Evictions in Brazil and the US
On April 28, 2020, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing issued a guidance note calling on states to ‘[d]eclare an end to all evictions of anyone,...
Setting the Record Straight on Socio-Economic Rights Adjudication: Kenya Supreme Court’s Judgment in the Mitu-Bell Case
On 11 January 2021, the Kenyan Supreme Court delivered the judgment in Mitu-Bell Welfare Society. The case concerned the unlawful eviction and demolition of the homes of over 3,000 families...
Kenyan Supreme Court on Structural Interdicts and Application of UN Guidelines on Evictions
The Kenyan Supreme Court has overturned a Court of Appeal decision which found that the forceful eviction of the inhabitants of Mitumba village was not in violation of their fundamental...
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Reading of the Fair Housing Act: An Interpretive Approach Aligned with Legislative Policy
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s long tenure on the U.S. Supreme Court produced a limited but meaningful body of work in fair housing cases. Although overshadowed by her historic rulings on gender-based...
Foreign National Rough Sleepers Penalised Under the UK’s Revised Immigration Rules
On 22 October 2020, the UK Government’s Home Office Department published a Statement of Changes (‘SoC’) to update the UK’s Immigration Rules. The 507 page document confirmed that from 1...
Right to housing and dignity denied: Indian Supreme Court orders eviction of slum dwellers within 3 months
In a recent order passed in the case of MC Mehta v. Union of India, the Supreme Court has given directions to remove around 48,000 slum dwellings that run along...
Grenfell: Human Rights and a Ban on Combustible Cladding?
A number of key human rights issue arise following the Grenfell Tower Tragedy in which 72 people died, and many more were displaced. In December 2017 the Equality and Human...
Rude Awakening for over 20,000 Residents of Kibera in Kenya
On Monday, 23 July 2018, over 20,000 residents of Kibera slum in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi woke up to the rude awakening of their forced eviction from a place they...
