Statement by India in the Agenda Item 3 Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination, during the 61st Session of the Human Rights Council (23 February – 31 March 2026), 
(Full statement) Geneva, 5 March 2026

Subject of the report: Guiding Principles on Resettlement (A/HRC/61/43)

Mr. President,

India takes note of the report of the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, submitted pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 55/11.​ We congratulate Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal on completing his six-year tenure as Special Rapporteur and acknowledge theody of work undertaken under this mandate since May 2020.​

Mr. President,

It may be recalled that this mandate was established by the former Commission on Human Rights through resolution 2000/9 of 17 April 2000. It was conceived squarely within the framework of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR), anchored in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The very title of the foundational resolution "Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context" reflected its ESCR character: housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, not as an autonomous civil-political right. Let me also clarify that the ‘right to non-discrimination’ is also to be examined in that context.

As this mandate transitions to its next holder, we believe it is both timely and necessary to assess candidly whether the thematic orientation over the past six years has remained faithful to this foundational character.

Mr. President,

Over his tenure, the Special Rapporteur submitted twelve thematic reports to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. India has engaged constructively with each one of them. However, our assessment of these reports reveals that the mandate has progressively departed from the core ESCR and developmental framework within which this mandate was conceived.​

Expansion of the Mandate

The Special Rapporteur has sought to expand the housing mandate well beyond its original parameters, into international criminal law, environmental justice and migration governance by challenging States' policy choices on migration and housing. While interlinkages between rights are acknowledged, the mandate's foundational purpose was to address housing as a developmental and socio-economic concern, not to forge new categories of international crimes or serve as a platform for advocacy on armed conflict and migration policy.

Disproportionate Focus on Conflict and Discrimination

The Special Rapporteur dedicated unprecedented attention to armed conflict scenarios. Nearly every other report centres on discrimination and marginalized groups: spatial segregation, housing discrimination, criminalization of homelessness, and migration. While these are valid concerns, they have come at the direct cost of attention to the structural, developmental, and supply-side challenges that affect the vast majority of the world's population in low-income and middle-income countries. There exist other mandates and mechanisms within the UN human rights system specifically designed to address situations of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.

Advocacy Framing Over Practical Solutions

Rather than engaging with practical development solutions that States, particularly developing States require and addressing the structural barriers to housing provision at scal, reports are focused on advocacy. 

Mr. President,

We believe that a more sustained engagement with the core developmental challenges that drive housing inadequacy across the Global South should be central to the mandate of the SR. In that sense, we highlight the following challenges:

Rapid Urbanization and the Housing-Urbanization Nexus

The developing world is experiencing urbanization at a speed and scale unprecedented in human history. For example, Africa's urban population alone is projected to double from 700 million to 1.4 billion by 2050, with 80 per cent of the continent's population growth occurring in cities. India will add over 200 million new urban residents in the coming decades. In these conditions, contested land tenure and surging urban land demand fuel land disputes. Urbanization-housing nexus in developing countries, is perhaps the single most important structural driver of housing inadequacy globally and demands some attention.

Land Tenure Insecurity and Land Administration Failures

Land tenure insecurity is a defining feature of housing markets in developing countries. In many low-income developing economies, lack of formal land markets fail to make secure, appropriate land available to low-income populations, thereby forcing the majority to obtain land through informal channels. While the former Special Rapporteur, Leilani Farha, produced Guiding Principles on Security of Tenure (A/HRC/25/54), the current mandate holder did not follow up with an updated thematic report addressing the evolving land governance challenges in the Global South.​

Housing Finance Gap

Limited access to housing finance is a fundamental constraint. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, formal mortgage finance reaches only 1 to 5 per cent of the population, and the housing deficit is estimated at over 50 million units with a financing gap of USD 1.4 trillion. There is a shortage of housing finance to low-income households in developing countries. Formal mortgage markets serve only a small minority, and microfinance for housing remains underdeveloped. The Special Rapporteur's affordability report (A/78/192) touched on this from a global perspective but not with the depth or specificity required for developing-country contexts where the gap between financing available and investment required is most acute.

Fiscal Constraints and Competing Development Priorities

Most developing-country governments lack the fiscal capacity to provide housing at scale. Public investment in housing has declined globally, and available resources are inadequate to meet the enormous demand generated by rural-urban migration. The concept of "progressive realization" under ICESCR, while legally valid, remains practically challenging when governments face competing demands for health, education, infrastructure, and security. 

High Construction Costs and Supply-Chain Bottlenecks

Construction material costs have risen significantly in developing countries, making even basic housing unaffordable for large sections of the population. Supply-chain constraints, import dependency for materials like cement and steel, and the lack of local manufacturing capacity add to costs. 

Informal Settlement upgradation

The reports focus heavily on forced evictions as violations requiring prohibition. It may be legally sound but practically insufficient. In developing countries, informal settlements house hundreds of millions of people and require in-situ upgrading strategies. Forced evictions also have to be seen from larger society perspective. Countries are grappling with these challenges in their own contexts and there are no easy solutions. There is a need to discuss how to build inherent capacities of informal settlement communities.

Infrastructure Deficits

Adequate housing requires access to basic services like water, sanitation, energy, transport. In many developing countries, communities lack adequate drainage systems. They are also exposed to flooding and landslides. While one of the reports touches upon marginalization of underserviced communities but the issue is framed primarily through a discrimination lens rather than as an infrastructure and planning challenge.​

Rural Housing

The overwhelming focus of the reports has been on urban housing, neglecting the rural housing crisis in developing countries where populations lack adequate shelter, face insecure customary land tenure, and live in structurally inadequate housing. 

Governance and Institutional Capacity

Weak governance institutionscand bureaucratic inefficiencies in building permits and registration systems are major obstacles to housing delivery in many parts of the world. These institutional barriers are rarely addressed in reports that frame housing challenges primarily through a rights-violation lens rather than a governance-deficit lens.

Climate Adaptation Without Green Conditionalities

While the climate report discussed climate-resilient housing, it framed the issue primarily in terms of emissions reduction and just transition. For developing countries, the more pressing concern is adaptation, i.e. protecting existing housing stock from extreme weather, building climate-resilient new housing with appropriate technologies, and ensuring that climate finance reaches housing sectors in the Global South without imposing unaffordable "green conditionalities" on already stretched national budgets. Development expenditure in low-income countries cannot simply be diverted to climate mitigation strategies when the more immediate challenge remains putting roofs over people's heads.​

Demographic Pressures

Many developing countries face enormous housing backlogs driven by rapid population growth. The Special Rapporteur did not address demographic pressures as a structural driver of housing inadequacy in any thematic report.

Mr. President,

Turning to the recent report titled “Guiding Principles on Resettlement”, we have following observation:

The Guiding Principles attempt to provide a single framework for resettlement across an extraordinarily diverse range of situations, from development projects and urban renewal to armed conflict, heritage protection, and climate displacement. A one-size-fits-all approach cannot adequately address the vast differences in context, institutional capacity, historical experience, and developmental stage.

Resettlement in the context of a large infrastructure project in a developing country, resettlement following natural disaster, and displacement during armed conflict present fundamentally different challenges. Conflating these within a single set of principles risks producing guidance that is either too abstract to be useful or too prescriptive for the diversity of situations it seeks to address.​ Resettlement processes must be undertaken in close relationship with a country's own historical, legal, constitutional, and cultural context.

India's own extensive framework illustrates this: the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act of 2013 provides detailed safeguards for consultation, consent, adequate compensation, and rehabilitation. Constitutional protections safeguard tribal populations. The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act of 2006 protects against eviction from forest land. These are products of India's own historical experience.​

Many developing countries have evolved their own approaches to resettlement based on customary land governance, community consultation, and phased relocation strategies. The Guiding Principles would benefit from greater recognition of this diversity rather than prescribing uniform standards.

Normative Overreach

The inclusion of extraterritorial obligations for States in the context of resettlement represents a significant normative overreach. Progressive realization of ESCR is fundamentally a domestic obligation of States within their own jurisdictions. Extending resettlement obligations extraterritorially goes beyond the established scope of the ICESCR and the original mandate.​

While the Guiding Principles address development-induced displacement, this specific challenge caused by infrastructure projects, Special Economic Zones, and urban renewal in developing countries deserves a development-sensitive treatment that acknowledges the developmental benefits alongside displacement risks. The framing must not create normative barriers to the development that is itself essential for realizing the right to adequate housing at scale.

Mr. President,

India's own record demonstrates what treating housing as a core developmental priority within an ESCR framework can achieve precisely the approach we believe this mandate should champion.

Under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), India has implemented the world's most ambitious public housing programme. Under PMAY-Gramin, millions of housing units have been completed and delivered.

India has complemented this with the Smart Cities Mission, Affordable Rental Housing Complexes for urban migrants, the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act 2016, and the Land Acquisition Act 2013 for fair and consultative resettlement.

Mr. President,

As the Council appoints the next Special Rapporteur for this mandate, we urge a return to its foundational ESCR character and developmental purpose. The right to adequate housing is, at its core, a question of development, of mobilizing resources, building institutions, planning cities, financing construction, and ensuring that no one is left behind.

What the developing world needs from this mandate is not new international legal categories or advocacy for moratoriums, but practical, development-oriented guidance.

We look forward to engaging constructively with the incoming mandate holder and trust that the mandate will be exercised in a manner that serves the actual housing needs of the billions who continue to lack adequate shelter.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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