Habitat International Coalition

Description

Habitat International Coalition, or HIC, is an independent nonprofit alliance working on housing and human settlements worldwide.

Its members include social movements, community-based organizations, support groups and academics. The coalition draws strength from a worldwide membership spanning many countries across five continents.

HIC works to defend and implement the human rights linked to housing and habitat, including land, housing, clean water, sanitation and a healthy environment. It also covers access to public goods and services such as health, education, transport and recreation, and to livelihood and social protection. The coalition pursues this through advocacy, solidarity networking, popular mobilization, debate and analysis, seeking a shared civil society commitment to a sustainable and livable habitat.

Since the 1980s HIC has developed specific work on the right to the city, the social production of habitat, gender equality and sustainable habitat. It builds a theoretical and practical framework for the right to the city and accompanies social movements pursuing democratic management of cities. It also documents and shares lessons from community-led processes of designing, building and maintaining local environments, such as the Mexico City Charter for the Right to the City, developed with civil society, academics and local government.

The coalition traces its origins to the 1976 United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver, where NGOs organized to press governments on housing issues. It widened its membership beyond the global North from 1985 onward. HIC operates through regional reference centers for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean, alongside a Housing and Land Rights Network, with its general secretariat in Cape Town, South Africa.