COMMITTEE ON THE ELIMINATION
OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION
Forty-eighth session
26 February - 15 March 1996

STATEMENT BY THE COMMITTEE ON THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION TO THE SECOND UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE ON HUMAN SETTLEMENTS
(HABITAT - II)

Adopted on 14 March 1996

1. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination regards the convening of the Second U.N. Conference on Human Settlements as an opportunity to reaffirm the right to housing as one that shall be available without racial discrimination in accordance with article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination.

2. Like other treaty bodies, the Committee believes that the right to housing should be interpreted as a right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity. In its General Recommendation XX the Committee has affirmed that to the extent that private institutions influence the exercise of rights detailed in article 5 of the Convention, States parties must ensure that the result has neither the purpose or the effect of creating or perpetuating racial discrimination.

3. In its General Recommendation XIX the Committee observed that in many cities residential patterns are influenced by group differences in income which are sometimes combined with differences of race, colour, descent, national or ethnic origin, so that inhabitants can be stigmatized and individuals suffer a form of discrimination in which racial grounds are mixed with other grounds. The Committee therefore affirmed that a condition of racial segregation can arise without any initiative or direct involvement by the public authorities. It has invited States parties to monitor all trends which can give rise to racial segregation, to work for the eradication of any negative consequences that ensue, and to describe any such action in their periodic reports.

4. The economic, social and psychological consequences of residencial segregation are far-reaching. They limit access to many kinds of service, both public and private. They distort participation in political processes. They affect the formation and maintenance of social groups. They can lead to segregation in education. In particular, they influence the sense of moral worth, or the lack of it, which children acquire as they grow up in favoured or in stigmatized neighbourhoods.

5. For these reasons, the Committee calls upon the Conference on Human Settlements to give priority attention to residential segregation in any consideration of the right to live in dignity.