The Right to Housing and Hegemonic Owner Occupation – Video Link
On May 6, 2024, the HRUG regular seminar on “Community Matters–Law and Pre-legal/Informal Settings” was successfully held. The seminar was chaired by Professor Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz of Southeast Asia Biodiversity Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Professor Peter Herrmann (a researcher of CSU Human Rights Center), Mehmet Okyayuz (a professor of political science at Middle East Technical University, Turkey), António Duarte (a professor of psychology at the University of Lisbon, Portugal), Associate Professor Li Juan (a researcher of CSU Human Rights Center), Joe Finnerty (a social policy analyst, School of Applied Social Studies, University College Cork, Republic of Ireland) and Ewa Spasowski (a human rights expert and former UN human rights officer in Uganda and Switzerland) participated in the discussion, and they shared, reported and supplemented some corresponding views. This seminar centered on Eco-environmental protection and animal rights.
Based on his expertise and research background in ecology, Prof. Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz presented the mechanisms by which elephants, the world’s largest terrestrial animal, interact with ecosystems, and their population conflicts with humans. In his view, if human-elephant conflict cannot be reduced, there is no future for elephants and any other species that may have potential conflicts with humans. On the one hand, people make efforts to increase the elephant population to avoid its endangerment; On the other hand, more elephants mean more humans at risk of being attacked and killed. In the context of human rights, conservation of biodiversity is a complex and difficult subject, so we should think how to protect species without burdening local communities. He mentioned that in the past few years, there have been some not-so-fair incidents of people from indigenous communities being forced to leave their homes. Some radical non-governmental organizations (especially in Africa and India) attempt to make a big deal out of opposing policies to conserve species.
People wish to provide the best path for the conservation of humans and other creatures, but the reality is that the conservation of both requires compromises. In addition, there are some very unique animals that are intelligent and sentient — do gorillas and elephants have “human rights”? Just a river in New Zealand (the Whanganui River) has also been given “human rights”.
With regard to the northward movement of Yunnan elephants and human’s responses mentioned by Associate Professor Lijuan, Prof. Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz noticed that due to drought and lack of food, the elephants may move into densely populated areas during their migration. It is commendable that the Chinese government has taken timely and effective measures to respond on the migration of the Yunnan elephants, and that the community has been concerned about the safety of the herds. Fifty years ago, anywhere in the world, humans tended to kill elephants to avoid economic costs. In the current China, we have seen thousands of vehicles, drones and staff arranged by the Chinese government to guide the herds and avoid human-elephant conflicts while successfully guiding the migration. He emphasized goodwill alone is not enough and that good conservation policies are required to avoid the complex task of placing animals in unsuitable environments and causing great damage.
Prof. António Duarte raised the issue of animal rights in the context of the human-elephant bond. Prof. Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz argued that elephants play a very distinctive role in Asian cultures. People are highly tolerant of their activities, avoid conflicts with them but at the same time don’t want to have them in their community. However, as natural habitats overlap more with human gatherings and legal protections become improved, the likelihood that elephants will move freely into human communities increases, people’s willingness to avoid conflict with elephants erodes. So many people believe that the authorities are more concerned about the elephants than the inhabitants. People support environmental and ecological conservation — protecting tigers, elephants and rainforests – because there is no price to pay.
In response to Professor Mehmet Okyayuz’s question on “whether there is a theoretical field and a platform for scholars to discuss this topic in the context of human rights”, Professor Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz introduced a specialized platform belonging to the United Nations system — The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which has a dedicated “Human-Wildlife Conflict &Coexistence Specialist Group”. He mentioned that human rights issues are not being raised very explicitly at the moment, and that main issues dealt with are how to protect elephants and protect people from elephants. The questions of how to coexist and how to draw the boundaries of human tolerance are very pressing, while human rights are not discussed much. In the past period, some commissions have been horrified by allegations of human rights violations due to the protection of elephants or rhinoceroses, and this may be a better entry point.
Prof. Peter Herrmann commented on the relationship between humans and wildlife as a multi-stage, multi-layered process in which the once coexisting model had been completely destroyed, a view shared by Prof. Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz. He pointed out that hundreds of years ago, human lifestyles prevented conflicts with wildlife such as elephants and tigers, and that this interaction has been completely changed with the development of human society. The question is how consensus should be reached in the future. In response to Prof. Peter Herrmann’s further observation that “people have to balance the system against their own interests”, Prof. Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz argued that in some sparsely populated islands, maintaining an average per capita consumption of resources doesn’t seem to cause a big problem. Compromises are needed in order to create a balance between human’s good life and the ecosystem. Human rights are a red line that will play a role in a series of negotiations and compromises. Human’s existence will be short, and we will eventually be gone as we came.
On the forms of realization of animal rights, Professor Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz proposed that rivers, trees or elephants can’t participate in this discussion as “representatives”, and that it is necessary for human beings to participate from the standpoint of legitimate rights. In the face of many hypothetical discussions about “humans not having the final say”, he asserted that humans do have many rights, and that there is no need to change this; what needs to be thought about is how to exercise those rights. For humans, the future will be better than the past, and our lives and the world will be improved. Prof. António Duarte believed that children’s rights face the same problem, namely, that children, like animals, are in a situation where they can’t participate in negotiations. On the other hand, it should be taken into account that non-human biological rights are also human rights, which means that humans have the right to protect the rights of other organisms in our ecosystems. And the idea of “compassionate protection” (organisms have the right to be protected from suffering due to human intervention) once existed for a while. But he preferred to emphasize the population perspective rather than the individual perspective of “compassionate conservation”, that is, the right to ensure their survival ( the population is sustainable, capable of reproducing and surviving in the long term) as the most important right. New Zealand has debated at length how to grant rights to natural ecosystems, and insists that rivers have “human rights”. Regardless of the complexity and implementation of the law, at least the cleanliness of rivers and normal water circulation should be guaranteed, and to maintain things in good condition is the most basic requirement.
2024年10月25日，HRUG定期研讨会之“适足住房权与支配性业主占有权”主题会议顺利召开。本次会议由爱尔兰国立科克大学应用社会研究学院政策分析家Joe Finnerty主讲，土耳其中东科技大学政治学Mehmet Okyayuz教授主持，中南大学人权研究中心研究员Peter Herrmann教授、土耳其中东科技大学政治学与公共管理系Ilknur Dede教授、中南大学人权研究中心研究员黎娟副教授、伦敦经济学院访问高级研究员Efe Can Gürcan副教授参与讨论。会议聚焦于适足住房权，深入对比欧洲与中国的住房制度，探讨住房与人权的紧密联系。
Joe Finnerty详细阐述他在2024年中欧人权研讨会上关于适足住房权的主题发言，强调适足住房权作为基本人权的重要性。他指出，过去几十年间，住房市场经历了从公共住房供应为主到金融化和投机性市场的重大转变，这一过程加剧了全球城市中心区住房的不可负担性，增加了家庭的不稳定性，并加深了财富不平等。为解决这一问题，他提出恢复社会住房计划、改革城市发展和土地管理制度，以及增强对住房人权的认识和承诺等对策。
在评议环节，Ilknur Dede关注到农村地区居民在获取安全住房方面面临的困境，Joe Finnerty对此表示赞同，并指出农村无家可归者往往被忽视。Peter Herrmann则就适足住房权的定义和住房质量的差异提出了疑问，Joe Finnerty回应称，适足住房权与其他概念存在区分，且住房质量因家庭财务状况而异。
Mehmet Okyayuz观察到，国家越富裕，为社会住房所做的努力反而越少，并引入福利国家的话题。Joe Finnerty认为，福利国家能够缓解资本过剩，促进卫生政策的发展，住房政策也能在解决住房可负担性、质量和可获得性方面发挥重要作用。
黎娟对比英国与中国房地产市场的显著差异，指出英国学生普遍面临高昂房租问题，在中国，大城市如北京的房价高昂较为突出，但多数地区房价尚属合理，租房价格也比较亲民，这主要是由于中国土地公有制及近几十年快速的城市化进程所致，使得大量集体土地被征用以建造房屋，供需相对平衡。她强调，中国土地所有权制度的改革和城市化进程与英国的土地私有制形成鲜明对比，导致了不同的房地产市场动态。此外，她还讨论到户籍制度的变化，指出随着中国经济的发展，该制度对人口流动的影响正在减弱。
Joe Finnerty进一步强调政策调整对于适应住房市场变化和应对金融化挑战的重要性，并讨论新自由主义对住房政策形成和执行的影响。他呼吁采取更加综合和长远的视角来解决住房问题，以构建一个更加公正、可持续的住房体系。Peter Herrmann则强调土地政策、住房开发和社区规划等住房政策的多个层面，以及政策在住房发展过程中的干预作用。
Efe Can Gürcan提出新自由主义在欧洲住房政策中的作用，以及中国新的住房政策与最近户籍制度改革的关系等问题。Joe Finnerty表示政策干预可以在住房开发过程的不同阶段进行。黎娟回应道，中国城市房源充足但存在供过于求的问题，政府因此推出了公租房并降低租金，旨在解决新移民住房难题及土地财政问题。同时，随着城镇化率的提升，户籍制度对人口流动的约束减弱，农村人口也能在城市购房生活。国家富裕后，能为更多人提供社会保障，户籍制度逐渐失去其重要性。
会议最后，Mehmet Okyayuz向所有与会者表示感谢，并强调了住房问题的紧迫性，鼓励大家继续关注和深入讨论这一重要议题。
(Transcription: Tiantian Yu, Ying Li; Translation: Yaxing, Bai)