- VIDEO: Meet Elisângela, the Other Face of Rio de Janeiro’s Olympic Legacy Elisângela wasn't home when they arrived. Her 17-year-old daughter called her cellphone, frantic, to break the news: "There are several men from the municipal government here at our door; they're saying they're going to demolish our house." Elisângela raced home to try to negotiate, to no avail. In a few hours, the home she and her family had spent years building was now a pile of rubble.
- Derailed: Cambodia’s Poor Paying the Price for Railway Development Every year millions of people around the world are forcibly displaced from their lands, homes and livelihoods to make way for large-scale infrastructure projects. Most often those who are forced to sacrifice their place on earth for both public and private interests are amongst the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.
- Global Networks and WITNESS Unite Against Forced Evictions Today marks the first day of a six week period of focus on housing issues around the world called World Habitat Days. Collectively representing hundreds of organizations and thousands of activists, WITNESS, our partner the Habitat International Coalition, and 5 housing and land rights networks have organized the World Habitat Days to draw global attention and actions to housing issues around the world - as part of our larger focus on forced evictions.
- Video Shows What Happens After a Forced Eviction and Why They Should Be Prevented Amnesty International lent support to filmmaker and friend Chris Kelly and others to produce a short documentary about the forced eviction of residents of Boeung Kak Lake where 4000 families are now facing forced eviction.
- Dams and Human Rights: Using Video to Resist Evictions It's International Day of Action Against Dams and, as we kick off our global forced evictions campaign supporting dam-affected communities at risk of eviction in Mexico, this post looks at how video and visual imagery have helped propel campaigns to protect human rights in different dam-resistance struggles around the world.
- Thousands At Risk of Losing Their Homes in Accra, Ghana This week, WITNESS, and other land and housing rights organizations, signed a public statement demanding a stop to the planned forced eviction of thousands in Ghana’s capital city Accra. The signature campaign was organized here at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal.
- Forced Evictions in the Name of Development In an earlier blog post my colleague Sam Gregory introduced our new focus on gender-based violence. Our second focus area is what is known as development-induced displacement, or the forced eviction of people and communities in the name of development.
