Context
Land and housing are central to women's empowerment, family security and overall community development. Especially in light of crises arising from the HIV/AIDS pandemic and issues of climate change and food insecurities, there is increased acknowledgement that grassroots women's land and housing access, control and ownership is vital to development. At the same time, housing, and especially land, are highly political and traditionally, the realm of patriarchy. Multifaceted issues, such as food security, HIV/AIDS and urban migration, make land and housing complex and difficult issues to tackle.
The Huairou Commission's Land and Housing Campaign members hold a unique position in the struggle for women's housing and land - demanding land and housing for women as essential to development and women's empowerment - insisting on land and housing as a basic human right of women. Thus, Campaign activities underscore this platform by ensuring grassroots women are surfaced in all aspects of housing and land, enhancing their ability to claim, gain and maintain land and housing within their communities and in the larger policy arena.
Since 2003 the Huairou Commission's Land and Housing Campaign has been working with grassroots women's groups in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean to identify, highlight and bring visibility to the innovative, on-the-ground strategies and practices they implement, as true agents of change.
The Land and Housing Campaign also supports peer learning exchanges and sharing through Grassroots Women's Academies; facilitates grassroots women's presence and voice in larger international forums such as the World Urban Forum; and provides support for mapping of best practices. The Land and Housing Campaign has concentrated on building partnerships by linking grassroots groups with development entities as well as grassroots groups to each other, especially with institutional processes such as the Global Land Tool Network. In 2008, the Campaign has built and strengthened partnerships with a number of key organizations, such as the Institute of Housing Studies (IHS) in the Netherlands on evictions; UNDP and OSI; the Centre on Housing Rights; Cordaid and others on the intersection of land and housing and HIV/AIDS.
Organizing a PLATFORM FOR ACTION AND ADVOCACY, as a global movement for grassroots women's land and housing, is the core developmental goal of the Campaign. Its activities are cross cutting across all of the Land and Housing Campaign's activities.
Surrounding or supporting this primary goal are the developmental objectives:
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Increasing grassroots women's VOICE AND VISIBILITY |
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Facilitating grassroots women's KNOWLEDGE BUILDING AND SHARING |
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Supporting grassroots women to MONITOR AND HOLD DECISION MAKERS ACCOUNTABLE |
These developmental objectives establish a continuum of objectives and related activities of grassroots women's strategy development, implementation, strengthening and sharing.
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