 Hello everybody and welcome, very warm welcome to today's IID debates event, which is all about exposing the hidden value of export housing in informal settlements. Today's event is co-hosted between IID and Habitat for Humanity and we are really delighted to have you all here. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to join us and explore this important issue. That's it from me on housekeeping and so I am now very delighted to introduce our moderator for today, which is Alexander Apsan-Fadiani, who is a Christopher researcher here at IID. Alex is always yours. Great, thank you so much Juliet and it's great to have you here with us and to bring together this fantastic panel. Well, as we are aware, we are seeing a deepening of a global housing crisis and we know that this is affecting particularly the majority of the world living in informal settlements. If we are to address today's climate emergency and if we are to accelerate the advances of the SDGs, we will need to radically intensify our actions to improve housing informal settlements. And now is really the time to have these conversations and to move into real actions. In the last few days, we had the high level political forum who has reviewed the stagnation of the urban SDGs and where there has been a serious call to make a real change to the advanced target 11.1, which is related to housing, access to housing and adequate basic services. And at the same time, also in the beginning of this month, we've seen UN habitats approving a resolution in accelerating the transformation of informal settlements and slums. We do have a global call and a global alignment calling for actions in this context and we really need to see how we move from dialogue to real impacts on people's lives. So in that context we are discussing today about how can we use evidence that demonstrates the impacts of improving housing in informal settlements in actually making this change happen in addressing the housing crisis and bringing about change on the ground. And this is really the topic of our conversation. And we have here a fantastic panel that Juliet maybe if we can put that slide back up again that I can tell you a little bit more about the people we we brought together today to have this, this conversation with. We're going to start with my colleague Camila Cosinha who is a researcher here at IID on housing justice, and my friend and colleague, Jose Manuel Roche that is an independent consultant, and he's a fellow at OFI at Oxford University. And we together we were commissioned by Habitat for Humanity to do a report on the impact of improving housing informal settlements in terms of human development and they're going to be telling you a little bit about the evidence that we collected and some of the key highlights from that report. Then we'll be followed by by inputs from Raquel Ludermie, she's an advocacy manager for Habitat for Humanity in Brazil, and we're going to be talking to her about how that type of evidence can be useful for her work in Brazil at the local national level. Then we're going to be discussing with Lorena Zarate, who is a founding member of the global platform for the right to the city. She has been the president of Habitat International Coalition in the past, and she, she's an extremely we always like talking to Lorena because she has a kind of a clarity in her way of thinking that really helps us navigate the complexity of international mobilizations and international solidarity and we're going to get some insights from her. How can grassroots social movements be utilizing this type of evidence to affect change locally and globally. Then we have with us Rolieta Peruca, who is a deputy director for the SHIFT and again, she has been doing fantastic work in this field. The SHIFT is a really extremely important organization that has been doing advocacy in terms of housing rights internationally. And we, they use evidence in such a strategic way and we wanted her to talk to us about what more can be done in this respect. And then finally, last but not least, we have some inputs from Amanda and Trichin. She's the one that actually commissioned the work for Habitat for Humanity that we did. And she's the director of global affairs and advocacy at Habitat for Humanity International, and we were really going to ask her so what next, you know, what's Habitat for Humanity going to do next? With this evidence, how are they thinking about advancing change on the ground through the use of this kind of evidence? So that's our setup. But before we start, we wanted to have a kind of set of questions to you, to the audience, to the participants here with us in the Zoom call. We have a poll. And Juliet, maybe we can launch that. So we have a few questions to you, which are some of the questions we addressed in the report. And maybe I'll give you a few minutes just to read them. But if we were to massively improve housing in informal settings across the world, what's the kind of returns we would see in terms of income, health and education. And here's some questions. Please fill in what are your thoughts and we will disclose the answer by the end of our presentation today. So if you can please submit your answers there. And then we, if you know, if you read our report, you would know the answer. So it's okay. We can answer the right answer and that's okay. And it would be great to hear your thoughts on that. So I think we will let you let you answer those questions as we move forward. And, and then we, I'm going to bring in Camila Cosina, we're going to start the presentation about our report. Camila, I'm heading over to you. Thanks, Alex. Sorry I was putting the presentation on and I was mute. Thank you very much, Alex. Thank you very much Juliet and everybody who is joining us today. I'm going to be very brief and trying to summarize some of the key messages but also a little bit of the background of how we came with this report and its findings. We are going to do this presentation together with Jose Manuel Roche. Alex already say this is a report that was commissioned by Habitat for Humanity for the launch of their home equals campaign that looks specifically at housing informal settlements and improving house and trying to assess what are the impacts of improving housing in informal settlements if we were doing this at scale. I mean, Alex has already done a good job in introducing like what is the kind of crisis that we are facing here. And for us always the starting point was to acknowledge that access to housing to adequate housing is a human rights and the global housing crisis is a human crisis, and that is already contemplated by international frameworks and commitments, but for the task in a way and the invitation from Habitat for Humanity at the beginning of this report was even if we recognize this beyond recognizing that the access to adequate housing is a human right and that's that has a value on its own right of course. What will be all their meaningful impacts of security and equitable access to adequate housing and informal settlements. And more so if housing improvements take took place at a massive scale in a country, what will be the income health and education impacts for the residents of informal settlements and income health and education for those who are not less familiar with it are the three components of what is called the Human Development Index the UNDP measures annually. So we wanted to understand like in that kind of standardized measure what will be those impacts, as I say if housing improvements took place, and a massive scale in a country. We're not going to give you too many details about the methodology that's something that you can find in the report but just to give you a bit of a sense of the rationale of it. What we did was to start for what research has already find out what research says about what are the linkages between improving housing and these three dimensions, and we review hundreds of boards, articles, research that will show some of those connections and from there we try to identify some of the viable some of the linkages and to make some assumptions and inevitably this will imply some degree of simplification simplification in order to build a model that could actually extrapolate some of those grounded research into more kind of global analysis and from there we model impacts and we try to build some some recommendations and some finding that will be again grounded with the complexity of reality. So that's why we did this and I'm going to go through very very very very quickly is to understand to what extent and in which ways housing was an enabler of these three dimensions of HDI and just to give you like again an overview. So we started to look at like lots of research very grounded that started to link, find linkages for instance between access to pipe and water and and and and health particularly of children, or of concrete floors and issues of visibility in housing and the connection with a series of illnesses particularly with children in all the research that will engage more specifically with mortality and the housing materials that we know is one of the dimensions of adequate housing. But also with other dimensions of housing for instance how overcrowding has impacts on particular kind of health outcomes, but also location for instance and how location and other important dimension of housing is connected with certain aspects of health. And also even some research that has shown quite a quite explicit linkages between housing tenure and different outcomes of in health. And the same with it with education and again I'm not going to go into my detail but research that shows for instance linkages between the impediment of learning and a lot of a series of variables that are connected to housing, or again housing overcrowding and rates of dropout of schools, research that shows more specifically linkages between tenure status and child's education achievement. And again overcrowding being a very important variable also in education in one research particularly looking at linkages with literacy tests but there are other research that shows and with other variables of education. Location again and location also linked with issues of gender disparity and school enrollment that is a very important variable that cat across many of the of the evidence that we found and also again linked to tenure status but also the issue of gender security, how force force resettlements and the risk of evictions have actually a very important impact on issues of education, access to water and in general to any kind of infrastructure and basic service also linked to education and particularly again with a gender component for instance for the time spent particularly for girls by girls on collecting water and their impact on their access to education. Within the same income I'm going to go very quickly here issues with any electrification and income between water supply and access to basic service and income. So far with the ability and the amount of money that families spend yearly on repairing houses for instance, issues of security and tenure and income again location and access to livelihoods and employability. And in general the whole kind of linkage between the housing construction industry and and income and GDP more generally. So, I'm going to pass it to Jose. Now what we did with that was basically kind of trying to try find all these like kind of grounded findings and trying to build some assumptions in scenarios that will make us from the more kind of moderate to the more optimistic scenario. So, Jose, now, not to you. Thank you Camilla. So we move then to model the impact of access to adequate housing in terms of the human development index dimensions. The table that we have here present assumptions in our model. And they were based on the evidence emerging from the literature that Camilla presented earlier. So for example, we know that improving access to adequate housing will reduce child mortality. And by avoiding preventable death, life expectancy will increase. And now of course we have an impact on overall human development and the human development index, the HDI. So the statistical model uses this assumption to generate three scenarios. As you can see in the columns in the table. An optimistic, a moderate and a cautious one. Next slide please. So here are the top results. First, as much as 10.5% of economic growth may be attributed to direct impact of improving housing in informal settlements. And as a way of comparison, this is equivalent to the fast economic growth experienced by China between 2005 and 2010. And in contrast, country with high human development experienced 4.5% average economic growth during the same period. So such large increase in national income is an outstanding outcome, no doubt. And it's worth, of course, noting that this increase will likely be greater than the cost of improving informal settlements. The World Bank estimated that countries would need to spend up to 8% of the GDP in improving informal settlements and housing. So 10.5% economic growth would be a significant return. So next we look at health and the model estimates that life expectancy could increase up to 4% for countries around the world, adding 2.4 years of life on average. Or in other words, more than 730,000 preventable death could be avoided annually, a number that is higher than eradicating malaria globally. And the figure shows that countries will of course considerably reduce morbidity and mortality as a result of progressive social, as a result of progressive policy in housing. And so finally on education in general, we see that the expected years of schooling in some countries would increase by as much as 28%. Or in other words, as many as 41.6 million additional children and youth people could be enrolled in primary and secondary education. And this is to put it in context, this is equivalent to 16.1% of the total number of children and youth people currently missing education globally. And so this is what the model is telling the impact would be. And so next slide please. We then look at the joint effect of the three human development dimension to estimate the overall effect. And in a nutshell, the model shows that providing access to adequate housing could lead to a job of up to 18 places in the HCI country rank. And a change in the human development level from low to medium or from high to very high. Let's see an example of what this means. Consider the case of a country similar to Uganda represented here by the red dot in our graph. If access to adequate housing in informal settlement is provided. It would overtake others like Rwanda, Nigeria, Kodiwa or Mauritania reaching level closer to Sambia, Kenya and Cameroon that you see at the top of the graph. Next, it would jump certain places in the ranking. But what is more important next, what is more important is that it would move from low to medium human development. That's the magnitude for the improvement that we'll see. And these are of course all impressive game, but we are only measuring the direct effect. In addition, there is a whole set of what we call spillover effect, which now Camilla will discuss in some more detail. Thank you, Jose. And very briefly just to drop up and give the floor to our panelists. We understand that of course these three variables are not, don't cover the full spectrum of impacts. And we have a whole section on the report about how the impact on political systems on care systems and environmental systems is inevitably something that also will be affected by increasing housing. Improving housing. And that in turn, those also sustain human development index for human development for everyone, not just for those who live in informal settlements. Just to go very briefly through what the recommendations of the report are. And I think this is for us, what's very important in the development of the report and we had a kind of as a piece of workshops with other actors from the civil society from the academia that helped us shape a little bit what those recommendations are. And so, is that it's not just about building housing but how it's also very important. So in a nutshell, the recommendations are around four main areas. So why one is understanding that housing is an infrastructure of equitable urban development. And I think the idea of housing as an enabler and in the context of this discussion of SDG 11 as an enabler of development more widely is something that we need to reinforce. One is the idea that housing solution must be integrated and comprehensive to generate human development returns so it's not just about building housing but also the how making it in ways that actually involve civil society that recognize the current efforts of different groups to actually produce the habitat in which they live and that's also very, very important and central part of the recommendations. The third one is about how we bring this conversation to the international development discussion and how we understand informal housing, informal informal settlements upgrading and access to adequate housing as lever for international development and that should be something that hopefully we will pick up in the conversation. And last but not least, it's also about prioritized knowledge and data on housing and the impacts on housing that it's by about on for informal settlement communities. The reason why we have to do many of these kind of assumptions and building this kind of model that maybe it's not so accurate for specific context but it's more about making the case about the methodology is because data is the big, big, big gap still in many places and not only because that data may not exist but also because data may not be recognized and may not be recognized in the efforts that people on the ground are mobilizing today to map and document the realities, the aspirations and the needs in informal settlements. And I will stop now and give it back to Alex. Thank you, Camilla. Thank you for going through those those inputs. And yeah, please. All of those here in the call, share your thoughts and questions in the comments and the key and a box and we will try to pick them up as we move forward. Thank you very much, Raquel, into into this conversation and Raquel you, you are based at Habitat for Humanity in Brazil. And you are, I know you're, you're, you and your organizations involved in a series of advocacy activities trying to influence the, let's say the policy formulations and this can return for more progressive policymaking in Brazil. How has this evidence or evidence like these ones contributes to the work that you're doing in Brazil so tell us a little bit more about those activities. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Alex. And thank you and congratulations to all, all of you involved really in developing this research. This is a powerful piece of evidence that really contributes to the broader advocacy environment really I think, not only for civil society organizations but I think there is a powerful information also to those engage in the, in this but also in community and implementing public policies looking towards housing justice and more equitable urban environment so I said I am involved in the advocacy efforts of Habitat for Humanity in Brazil. So just to, just to give you a little bit, a little bit of background, we at Habitat for Humanity in Brazil, we are, we're very strongly with what we call evidence based approach. So we nurture, nurture our partnerships and our work on the ground. And the way is we do that is through providing, can you hear me all right? It's, yeah, okay so I'll move on. Sorry about that. So one of the ways we work together with partners is into developing and putting together, collecting data and shaping some evidence to support our evidence based advocacy efforts. So one example, a quick example of what we've done in the past that has led to very important outcomes was under the Zero Evictions Campaign. What is called, some of you might have heard of, it's basically a national coalition that had different working groups and Habitat for Humanity was engaged in several of those working groups but one very important one was what we call the mapping working group. So we basically developed a national database to show where evictions and threats of horse evictions were happening and occurring. And that was a very powerful tool to basically provide not only to those involved in street demonstrations and into more general claims but also how can this be an input to those shaping public policies. So for instance the Supreme Court used our data, used data that we provided as Habitat for Humanity under this Zero Evictions Campaign to provide basically national decisions to stop horse evictions. So one of the efforts, some of the ways that we use our data and the data that we collect collaboratively to support our advocacy efforts. So just to give you a very quick example. So now jumping to this report that we just saw a quick introduction to it. So I think this is a very, very powerful piece of information and very powerful advocacy tools really. One of the things that I would highlight is that it really shows the connections as Camilla is an enabler of the Human Development Index. So I think this is something that we knew, but we didn't have the data we didn't have the evidence to back up. I think showing this connection between housing and health and income and education, those human development index, I think this is super strong and a very powerful way to really put the case that housing is an enabler of human development. Another way that I think this can be very useful is that it really shows that it shows the need for intersectoral policies. So if we do improve housing, we could have outcomes and positive outcomes and impact in other aspects of social and human development. I think this is a very strong case also, but and here are some concerns that I would like to bring into how can we take this more general a more general findings and bring those and ground those into a country level or a country context. And especially thinking of the country of the size of Brazil when with the histories and with the background really of civil society and how can civil society bring those evidence into policy dialogues and so on. One aspect that I would like to highlight is that the very the even though the term informal settlements is very consolidated in the international debate, the we in Brazil, the civil society sector, we're trying to avoid the word informal, because it really emphasizes the aspects of informality that can lead in some cases in some context to some level of hostility and some level of criminalization of the social movements and those engaged in defending human rights and housing rights and so on. So this one aspect and what the reason I'm bringing this into this discussion is is really to call attention that we need to be very how do we translate those not only when we talk in terms of the the findings itself, but also the terminology that we use I think that we need to be very cautious and how do we translate that. Another thing is that when we move from this more general findings into really contributing to a specific legislation or policy that's being developed that is being drafted, I think. Two questions, maybe three will arise eventually so the one question is the how, how does improving housing, or in housing conditions and informal settlements, how does that improve the other aspects of life that we've been doing so one of the things that I was thinking of course we do, we do have some examples but it would be really powerful to have examples or maybe some findings on pilot or demonstration projects through which this has been explored so let's say improving housing has led to health outcomes or to positive improvements in health outcomes or educational outcomes so I think that would be very interesting to have further information on demonstration or pilot projects that shows that and the reason I'm saying that is that sometimes if we improve only housing but let other aspects of the the human development really a drop so let's say other aspects of the living conditions really in those settlements drop so we would require we would be improving housing but other aspects would need to hold still or to be improved on a similar on a similar rate so it would be interesting really to see examples on where that has been explored and that has actually led to some positive impact as we've seen. So the question of how that that was my question around the how the other question would be at what costs, so I noticed that in some, at some point in the, in the report, the report mentions that the costs of improving of having massive large scale improvements in informal settlements would be actually lower than the benefits of it, and there's actually a figure around six, six trillion US dollar or something around that, but then this is really not enough if we're talking about it, not enough information if we're talking about improvements and the cost or the resources that needed to do, or to have that large scale massive scale in a country of the size of Brazil, and with the complexities and with the complexities really is that we find in Brazil so I think that would be the what costs. And the other one would be where to start what's next and I think the recommendations that Camila just provided I think this is the first step to really think on, because if we're talking about improving informal settlements there are so many aspects that we could do, and there's really, it's really difficult to imagine a thing that would happen all at once so I think it would be interesting to think of phases of those improvements and how and where to start and so on, so I think those are some of my initial thoughts just to start the conversation. Yeah, so I think over to you, Alex. Wow. I think you have outlined the whole research agenda for for us in the community for the next 10 years so thank you very much I think we have a job cut out now. Fantastic. Thank you so much. Just a quick reaction to the last point and a few conversations that I've had with colleagues like January based in Kenya and Diana Meathlin they often tell they often say that the place to start is with basic services that that's a movie and that we need to and then Sheila Patel often said let's not wait for security of Kenya let's get things moving and because we need to get things improving just a few reflections from conversations ongoing, and I think we can come back to do some of this Diana, let's bring you into this conversation and I know from your work that we that that evidence and numbers on themselves are not enough right I mean we need a few extra bits into the equation to make sure that we have that kind of impact and we actually change sets and policies and practices on the ground it requires a few other components into the mix, and I wonder if you can, you can tell us a little bit more from your experience. What are your thoughts in relation to this debate. Thank you, Lorena. Gracias Alex. I'm going to make my contribution now in Spanish. So thank you so much for the invitation, Alex Camila, and to be part of this panel today it's so good to be able to share with you, your colleagues and having all what's in these years as well. And as you mentioned, we are almost 10 years being part of for the global platform for right to the city. And, and there is a campaign that we launched for the International Coalition and have that that's part of this group. And the International Alliance as well for habitats, and there are many many networks that work together on urban issues, focusing on the groups and individuals and traditionally that are marginalized and excluded from society. And it imposes a very important look over the dwellers of these communities that's why that I would like to highlight some things that we have already been mentioned here Rachel has already talked about the language and the categories as well. And for many decades, we have been working on our groups, and we have been questioning these etiquette for the dwellers of these communities, these titles these labels that they receive. And they don't want to put their responsibility over the private and public entities and in fact they should treat them normally. And they use this labeling just to choose to get my ties and criminalize these informal settlements. And this is why that from we work on production and public management of habitats. This is why to have the habitat as a category, and it's not housing, but it would be the housing described as a human right that you have established very well in the report and components in terms of location access infrastructure that brings habitat and the right to the city. Therefore, one of the critical points over here is the following. The improving housing programs together with a program of improvement for the district or the neighborhood. And this is not done but that should, it should be a very important recommendation in terms of how we should add value to improve the neighborhood as a whole. And then we also have to think about management management social management of habitat. It has to do with how as Rachel mentioned let's say that we are successful with this report, and then it can have investments in terms of financial resources in order to improve our neighborhoods, but how it should be performed. How should we invest and how are we going to demonstrate who is going to control and how is the governance going to take place and what kind of return over investment do you expect. It's very important, because very easily we can have other problems that previously we have we could see many countries of great investments in housing, theoretically, socially speaking, but people don't have access to that because they are located in very inadequate areas. And also the production of this housing is only done by the private sector. So there is a great economic contribution in the neighborhood in the social grid of the community of the neighborhood that's why I could say it's critical. And that should be a great follow up of this research and the report is so good so solid. What do we know, we know it's very difficult to have all this data, not only having them and being able to analyze them and as Joseph was saying, we have to create a modeling of these scenarios. Of course, it's difficult to expensive and usually the organizations are not capable of doing so. And everything should be done with the specific approach with the right to housing. And we all can see that in the report linked to the other aspects of HDI. Never before we had had such a thing. It's very valuable. But how could we complement to that. We have to think about where these resources go to. And then we should complete that with something that we were thinking about through a rick that is to study the social processes of social management of habitats including resources. Not only economic resources but also the contributions of the neighborhoods. We would have this look in terms of what is missing. And I believe that we want to complete this look with what we already have what is already presence in terms of skills capabilities in these neighborhoods. And even though that even those that are in this very precarious settlements that they have capabilities to do to do things. And we have to see other social actors that would participate that is coming from outside the neighborhood, but to look at the neighborhood in what they already have in their hands. But of course, we have to measure things in terms of become micro and macro economic impact of the social production of habitats. In the local level of national have original having Mexico form for over a decade we did that and it presupposes a very important contribution for the country's GDP. So these are very strong arguments. So that these, I think could happen as a compliment and being managed by the community and strengthening this social grid. And this is central for the right to the city because it has to do with diverse economies, equitable, inclusive economies that would strengthen the solidarity popular economy. And, of course, we want to talk to you and have a specific meeting with the geocollegies from habitat for humanity with the platforms and networks and organizations, and even with some governmental local networks to see how we can use this report and complement it. We can also link it to two different initiatives, we have a lot to do, but of course it, but it is in the local national international agenda and we have to start articulating initiatives. That's one matter to avoid duplicate. Thank you so much, and we don't only have an agenda that's coming up from from a Kevin, you have a few other suggestions but a call for a meeting to articulate collective engagement into this so I guess we are we are developing action plan I wasn't expecting this in this call but that's fair enough I think that's that's what we need. In the light of this, I think you have a quite a few, you know, you have some shoes to fill in now because the device getting high and high as we're moving forward. And what are your thoughts, given that I think the shift have done something so amazing, like exposing the, the impact of financialization of housing and really bringing some, some killer numbers to demonstrate the type of violations of housing rights that exists through the accumulation of wealth in real development. And, and I guess this this report shows a little bit kind of the other side of the equation in terms of what, what the kind of returns that they can can generate by by group I really wanted to get your thoughts on on how on on the use of evidence of this type of research in advancing the right to to adequate housing. Yeah, thank you Alex and and thank you live in every time I listen to you I always feel like my mind is blown. It's true that you have such a clear way of speaking so really appreciate that. First I wanted to just start by congratulating as everyone else is the ID team this is such an amazing report and I think what you've done here has been really valuable. So, I just kind of wanted to highlight some of the ways as Alex mentioned which this report has the potential to make a global impact, particularly and selfishly for our work at the shift. But in order to do that, I'm just going to tell you a little bit about our work and then what we find ourselves what we're trying to fight against globally in order to move forward the rate to housing. And then we can see, I think where this report clearly fits in in order to do that. So just a little bit of a warning. I'm going to go off on a bit of a tangent on financialization and then I'm going to bring it back to the record. So just to start the shift is a human rights organization dedicated to moving forward the right to housing. And as a result we work with a variety of stakeholders, municipal governments local governments grassroots groups, people experiencing violations of the right to housing and really anyone in between who wants to work with us and wants to speak with us. And we're really working kind of at the intersection of housing finance and climate change. But a major issue of focus as Alex said for us has been what's known as the financialization of housing, which we define as the recent structural changes in housing and financial markets where housing is used as a financial instrument to park, grow, leverage and or hide capital. Housing as a result of the financialization of housing has become the most valuable asset on earth, worth almost four times the global GDP, and more than 20 times all of the gold that has ever been mined in human history. I don't know if that puts it in perspective. We're constantly trying to figure out what that means but you know it's, it's my mind boggling the value of residential real estate. But of course, the business practices that underpin financialization often target low income and affordable housing, impacting the most marginalized in our communities, and making it truly impossible for the realization of the right to housing globally. What's critical to understand is that financialization is based on a globally dominant neoliberal paradigm, which diminishes the role of communities grassroots groups but also governments as housing providers and drivers of housing systems. And it prioritizes of course the role of private actors as the true drivers and the people that actually have the know how on how to create efficient housing systems. So this is true. This is really underpinned by an erroneous belief that the market through simple economic theories like supply and demand will take care of housing need and create prosperity and equality. And of course we know that this isn't true when housing systems are left largely unregulated and unchecked time and time again private interest failed to address the housing needs of low income and marginalized groups. And it's abject failures which we can see across the world but in particular within the housing crises that are being experienced in the global north where financialization is most dominant. The financialization of housing is being sold to and bought by governments across the world as the solution to the housing crisis, and the key and the central point for economic development. And this includes those countries that are tasked with upgrading of informal settlements in the global south. So, many developing economies, as well as international and regional financial institutions, continue to actively promote policies that push financialization as the dominant strategy for addressing the critical need for housing, as well as economic development, despite evidence that such policies are often fueling socioeconomic inequality are fueling people moving into informal settlements are fueling homelessness inadequate housing, and are just truly not capable of realizing the right to housing particularly for the most vulnerable. I think it's important to know as well that not only do these policies not work they actually also often rely on international actors who come in exploit housing systems on the basis that it's going to support housing systems, and then walk away with the profits, leaving very little financial gain for countries who liberalize their housing markets to these international actors. So, I think to bring it back to the report and what I really love about this report is that it's the basis for potentially very powerful counter narrative to the one that we're seeing on financialization. That's being sold to developing economies across the world. So, the findings of this report we can better argue that true economic prosperity and human well being will not be found through typical strategies of financialization, which are often things like developing mortgage markets allowing private developers to build enough so that it trickles down to everyone exploiting land and housing for profit with the vague promise that in so doing, we will all be able to share in the wealth and have a piece of the pie. I think through this report we understand that what we actually need is for governments for if eyes and for all development stakeholders to understand that the way in which we can ensure sustainable development, equity and prosperity is by understanding housing as a fundamental right and necessary infrastructure that must be carried out with urgency and through using a human rights approach. I think the way that you have employed the seven characteristics of adequacy in the report is brilliant and we're definitely going to be using that to show a sense that truly what we've been saying through international human rights law, housing is far more than just four walls in a route. Housing understanding this holistic approach to housing through the seven characteristics of adequacy is more than just a moral imperative it has benefits. It's going to create the approaches that you want to see in your most marginalized communities. I think with this help of the findings of the report we can also build a global narrative that affirms that the upgrading of informal settlements and the realization of the right to housing for marginalized groups is the best policy option for governments, because it's the only way in which we will not only embed sustainable development and human well being, but also achieve economic prosperity, hopefully within our planetary boundaries of course. And you've done a really great job at kind of entrenching obviously climate justice, the GBA plus lens on all of the work so yeah, again, it's going to be a really important report for when we're talking to governments, and when we are trying to build out that global narrative that counter narrative to what we're seeing around the world. I think the only thing that I would add to the report and I think that we will be adding as we do this work on the global stage is that we need to include both because it's a human right but also because it's essential to the right to housing, the idea of access to justice. I mean, access to justice is crucial in realizing rights without access to justice if we can't claim our human rights then our human rights are illusory. So we need proper mechanisms of access to justice in order to really bring the right to housing, really realize the right to housing. Oftentimes governments and international development stakeholders are really afraid of access to justice when we talk to governments about developing playing mechanisms for access to justice. They feel that it's a stick that we're going to beat them over the head with. And what they don't understand is that, you know, if governments are really serious about taking on this report and taking on the recommendations of this report. It's going to make mistakes. It's going to happen. This is in these are innovative approaches that haven't yet been applied in other places. But if you alongside innovating create very thorough and robust mechanisms for access to justice, then you can use those claims as a means to actually improve the policies before you get too far down the road. I think oftentimes government really fail to understand this value of access to justice. And that's something that maybe we could think about highlighting in future in future projects. But I also understand I mean you talk about a data gap in the report and I think there isn't more of a data gap than when we look at how access to justice improves public policies we just don't have that information and so it's really hard therefore to make that claim. But maybe that's something I mean you've done such a brilliant job with with this modeling that maybe that's something we could think about in the future but I know it's a little bit out of out of left field. But yeah, I think I'll stop it there and throw it back to you Alex. Brilliant. So, but I think there's so much and I, I, you know, it's really interesting and inspiring this, this idea of access to justice as a means to keep innovation and in terms of the course course correcting and then, and, and keeping the impacts and balances and really ensuring that the principles that are embedded in to those recommendations that's as, as Lenino was saying the how prioritizing the how to make sure that those returns are guaranteed and, and pushing also the reflections of, of our, our report into a much broader conversation around models of economic development that's really this is situated within a broader discussion, you know, in terms of prioritizing well being human development, rather than purely profits and growth and economic growth per se. So, so yeah, fantastic. Thank you so much for for pushing us in that direction and very interesting and I would like to bring now Manzi into into into this chat. And yeah, I mean, those are, I know you, you have been thinking with your team around taking this work forward about doing more research and, and translating this into impactful influence influencing in terms of different advocacy work that you're doing at local and global spheres. So tell us more about this and how, how you see these, these, these advocacy activities taking place and what's your next steps. Awesome. Thanks, Alex. And thank you everyone for your remarks. It's been so great to hear from Lorena, Raquel, Julieta, obviously Camila and Jose to which we've discussed the outcomes of the report so many times that I always love seeing it presented really helpful to hear everyone's perspectives and the value that they see in the report and how it applies to their own work in their own spaces so it's really just, I've really enjoyed the discussion so far so I hope I can contribute to that. I just kind of wanted to take a step back and just explain like habitat for humanity. You know, Raquel spoke to Habitat for Humanity in Brazil. But we're a global housing organization, we've been in this space since the 1970s, functioning in about 70 countries around the world we have a few of our peers from different places I saw for I from Habitat Zambia in the chat there. And we deal with housing in totally different ways in each of those places where we function. And there was a question from James from IED about, you know, what is it, what is it upgrading and how much does it cost and James, it depends. And that's the point. It's going to look different in each place depending on the need, the context, both like political policy environment and also in terms of like, is it on a slope, is it a dry environment. These incremental approaches is what we're trying to really enable as a means of upgrading and improving at the household level. So that can look like adding a bathroom, improving a roof, painting a roof white so that it reflects the sun so it reduces temperature within the household on a day to day basis in these kind of extreme temperature times. But the campaign, we is a means of advocacy is a means of achieving what we want to see throughout our network and the home equals campaign is the reason we commissioned this report and the reason we started engaging with IED, which has been very fun. I'll put the link to the campaign in the chat for everyone's reference, because we realized, we have realized for a long time as a global housing organization engaged in advocacy that it's hard to make the case sometimes I think qualitatively everyone understands that a house is important. But when you can't make the quantitative statements that clear of how it connects with all the other things that you, a government or a community are investing in, that if you don't address housing adequacy. While trying to invest in education or basic services or women's rights that you're actually not going to get as far as you want to. It's been a really hard case to make. So, this is the piece of research that we've been wanting for a very long time. And, and also wanted it to be global, because there's a global story to tell here, but the impact is always going to be local housing is a local issue. And that when we're engaging with, because we do as a global organization engage with multilateral organizations, or donor governments in the global north. They're not looking at housing as a main entry point for achieving their development gains or development interests. So, thinking through how to make that case, not just qualitatively but quantitatively was really the reason for sharing this report. I was asked about our ambitions. Alex, we have as an organization and interest in ensuring local stories of lived experience are positioned to influence global stages. So the work that is occurring at Habitat Brazil or Habitat Zambia is really the bread and butter of what we want to be sharing with the world. To be able to take this really important piece of global research, demonstrate that this is having an impact or the work to that aligns with this research on the ground is having an impact locally and making sure that international actors, national governments are seeing that impact, both qualitative and qualitatively and quantitatively. So Habitat organizes its campaigns as a collection of campaigns. So it's one way of doing advocacy, a campaign includes communications assets research assets, but there's also an important component of bilateral engagement in these things of actually speaking with governments directly locally nationally and internationally to make the case. So for being quite ambitious and one of the campaigns within the home equals campaign will be what Habitat International is engaging in and seeking to influence the G7. They comprise about 60% 70% of overseas development assistance for the world, and they don't think about housing, they don't really think about rapid urbanization, they don't really think about the needs of people in informal settlements that are growing right informal settlements we know are are densifying and expanding. So, really thinking about, if you're providing 60 70% of overseas development assistance focused on all the things that are highlighted in the report. GDP, livelihoods, education, lifespan and health, then you really need to think about housing and incrementally, not four walls in a roof. So that's one thing that we say often is a house is so much more than that. And we have to be able to demonstrate that so the hope is to have a line of advocacy work to share this at the global on global stages to ultimately get the attention that international development is has a missing component. And that should also have an impact so while there's application of the research at the local level in the places where we are operating on the ground. There's also this ambition to share the the messaging internationally. And that's, we're definitely going to be using the report as a means of leveraging that message where the hope really is to have impact for people. This is, this is really about improving people's lives. And so that's why this idea of local and global is really important to us. The impact should be felt by individuals on the ground so that's really how we're hoping that the report has an impact in that way to it's about awareness raising, but also about changing policies and systems that actually affect people's lives and enable them to improve their housing more affordably in a safe context and also achieve their rights, which sometimes are not enshrined and not accessible unless policy since just systems change in order to do so. I think I'll leave it there I think I made my time. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mandy. Thank you so much. And yeah, it's been wonderful to work with with the Habitat for Humanity team and real pleasure throughout the process and very inspiring as well. I'm going to bring Julia back in the chairs the result of the poll so we have for question one in terms of income. We have only 50% of our well some 30s. Well, the 50% got a right and point 5% and some of you more optimistic. We have around 18.2%. And if we go to the question number two in terms of health. We, yeah, I think the numbers. 39% of you got a right to 730,000 and 45 of you were more optimistic probably you are right. It's just that we didn't have the numbers to. We also consider the spillover effects as as Jose was mentioning, we're probably going to get into the closer to the, to the numbers that you have indicated here. And in terms of the how many out of school children will be back at the location is one every six out of school children. So, so again, we, I think 42% of you were more optimistic and, and one every four. That would be great to, but again, maybe, I think we just, yeah, maybe we are right on the respect. I would like to bring Mary, Mary's questions for me is very important, and I'd like maybe for us to have a think about it as well. And slum informal settlements upgrading has been promoted mainly by NGOs, at least for at least 60 years. So why do we think a government institutions have refused to be slow in recognizing the priorities as you mentioned so so is, is it, we, you know, a lack of evidence for that. What are the, you know, we are we in the climate debate we have seen how for example we have a plenty of evidence demonstrating how Earth is warming up due to our is man made our emissions, and that hasn't necessarily translated real policy change or change on the, on the ground. So this is a very important question to us in terms of the why haven't governments really changed directions and, and maybe that's a, let's, let's put that to the panel. And what are your thoughts on that in terms of why have governments refused to, to take into account the priorities and needs of those living in informal settlements in that scale. Anybody would like to have a go on that on that question. We have an extra hour. Yeah, exactly. So it was a conversation I was at the World Bank affordable housing conference last month, and it was a discussion actually there by some experts in the field regarding the investment in the 70s and 80s regarding sites and services which is a means of it was a means of and still is a a means of improving informal settlements, upgrading them, and that the after action reviews in hindsight were too short that the impact, and the benefit of a sites and services approach after five years. It was as much success as had been hoped. So it was scrapped as an idea and looked at as unsuccessful, but more recently individuals at the bank have gone back and taken a look and said okay 1020 years after those sites and services efforts. And then communities that was the intention it just took longer than initially thought so my understanding my hope is that there might be a shift in thinking through the idea of upgrading at this point in time you know these ideas are cyclical. But that impacts are not immediately seen. And we have to be patient. So I think a really interesting learning that I recently came across that I can share as a part of the answer. Lorena can I bring you in. Yes, I knew you were going to put your hand up gone. Yeah, all friends. It's a very, very important question as you said I'm very, very difficult to answer to and of course that will depend on different context but I will say that for me, a couple of keywords in that. Of course generalizing. But I think one is fragmentation so it's not the lack of action necessarily or the lack of convincing. Even in many cases is not the lack of funding, lack of resources, or even institutional capacities. But I will say it's more like fragmentation and lack of continuity. Basically, you do have different programs you do have different initiatives but for example, you will have some national level programs, they're not necessarily connected with the local level programs or vice versa, like local level municipal level policies or programs that are not very well connected with national level policies. So, in terms of fragmentation in terms of, we usually think that solving, and even with this report in the sense that solving the housing issue is kind of tasks for housing ministries, only, and the housing policy only. So I'm going to write to the city approach and even taking this, this approach from the report but like entering from the different way, and vice versa. You will say that improving health education access to water and sanitation etc in the settlements with an access to jobs and that will actually improve housing conditions to right. I think that fragmentation is the problem so not necessarily the lack of action but fragmentation and the other one is that the lack of continuity so we do have programs. And in many cases very successful. And then they stop because we have a change in governments, we have elections changing government so we do need, and that's also a mandate from a human rights approach. There are state policies and not just government policies right so an approach that will provide continuity for these investments and, and the last piece of course is who controls that and who is who's benefiting from those investments right and how that actually gets into the communities into the neighborhoods and in the integration of those neighborhoods to the to the city as a whole. So, that will be my reflection on that very important question. Thank you Lorena, I would like to bring it, I mean there's another question I have one question that we have the time is running out so I have one question that I'm going to be asking Raquel to come in with an admin at Julieta I think the. Raquel there is a question around whose responsibility should it be it's from Priscilla to improve housing in informal segments particularly if government policy states that the housing development is the responsibility of the citizens. So, how do we engage into meaningful participation without devolving and responsibility to those that are most vulnerable and increasing the burdens on them so you know meaningful participation but without like this unfair distribution of responsibilities how you know what's your thoughts on that. Yeah, that's a great question actually and there is actually a term and again language and terminology can be tricky in the sense that anytime we talk about self or the social management of investments and the social function, anything that has to do with the public participation, we may fall into the risks of putting the burden on to those who are the who have the least to do massive and large scale improvements that are required so I think. Although I think and I think we there is a consensus that we need multiple multiple stakeholders really in when dealing with such complex issues. I think, especially in context where inequalities are so deep such as in the global south in general like in Latin America and in Africa and Asia and so on. I think there is a major responsibility of state and of the government in addressing the root causes of those inequalities, first of all. But, but again, as Lorena said, brightly, I think there is a there is a huge relevance into engaging other stakeholders and Julieta also mentioned the brought into the conversation the role of the judicial system in general how can we move towards access to justice and to say this is a basic human right that it's not being fulfilled housing basically more general but also the habitat, more broadly, as in the approach of the right to the city so I think, I think it's a matter of of making mainly responsibility of the government but engaging and allowing and enabling basically participation and input and management and basically a participatory decision making when it comes to broader and massive large scale development as housing improvements and improvement of human settlements and informal settlements as we as we have it in the in this meeting today. Fantastic. And in a couple of minutes. How do you do housing finance without housing fashion, financialization. I think that you have a question here from from Farai around how, you know, holistic slowing form of settlement upgrading inevitably requires to table financing. Is there any good case studies or financing model, especially that bring together government private sector. So how do we do what your thoughts around the distinction how do we make this distinction between making sure we have access to finance and without financial financializing the housing market. And that's a great question. I will say just very quickly I put in the in the chat a report that Lailani wrote which is the special rapporteur on informal settlements upgrading using a human rights based approach, which really cleared clearly lays out what obligations governments have with respect to community engagement and it might be of interest. As far as the financing question what we need is very robust human rights outcomes so anytime any government is engaging with a private actor. They need to ensure that any type of contracts written are are human rights are embedded in those contracts to mandate human rights outcomes, which is something that we fail to do oftentimes what governments say is we need private sector to come in and therefore we will bow down to them and give them everything they need in order for them to bring their capital and will allow them to do whatever they want. And that's something that we can't afford to do anymore we can't afford to do it for many reasons. So ensuring that the government have policies that are human that are based in human rights for contracting private actors for guiding the actions of the private market is absolutely key to ensuring that private actors can come in and should come in because they don't have human rights responsibilities, but that they can do so in a way that secures human rights outcomes for communities living in informal settlements. Wonderful. What a great way of putting that to the center I guess this has a lot to do with also the key, the recent report launched by Marina Mazucato and Leilani on a mission oriented approach to housing, housing rights to advance housing rights I think that it's a lot of things that we can draw from from that paper as well. Camila and my colleagues in a few seconds each any final thoughts from you before we close. This is difficult. Thank you very much for this really amazing to have like such an amazing panel engaging with the discussions that we have been having we all have been having for so long. Maybe just one thing that I would like to say about like why this, this kind of collective will of keep working on this and many of the comments that have come through I think. Remind us that building a counter narrative and building a narrative for action always needs a constant kind of reflection about the risks that those narratives bring and if many of you have brought to the effort from some of those risks and we try to address some of those in the report as well about like, how do we for instance, when we're in forms calls for investing in housing, and we not consider the assets that informal settlements already have. And what Marina was saying about like how that they are already contributing to the society and we shouldn't ignore that when we are making this call, or the call for investment that may call for expanding any form of conversation or the unintended consequences in particular groups particularly women or those who are in the intersection of different identities I think having this open conversation about those what are the risks on the building of content narratives on the building of arguments particularly those are more quantitative that for me personally are a bit more slippery. I think it's really really important and thank you everyone for the, for the inputs in that direction. Yeah, well I want to thank you everyone for all the amazing comments and really insightful discussion. And I would just stress or highlight how mind blowing it was to review all the evidence that exists around improving housing habitat as well the whole context where informal settlement base, and, and the impact that that has in people's life, and then the impact that I have beyond people who live there and beyond the city and the And, yeah, sometimes, you know, sometimes it's about packaging those a little bit, you know, hard science research into something that can be more communicable something that can be shared and can sometimes even connect with imagination to get people who should be supporting these to connect and to act upon so just just how much we enjoy doing it and, and, and that's it. Thank you. Right. Thank you, I totally agree with the words of my, my colleagues, just to thank you all of you, participating the panel thank you for the questions for engaging and listening and yeah we are really looking forward to the continued conversations and also concrete actions on the ground, because at the time is now and we really need to seize those, those opportunities at the moment to, to make it count. So, when we close campaign, as it comes in a, you know, it's, it's urgent to to spread that to to make that as well as connecting to other ongoing campaigns in this area, and what we hope is to build the synergies to make change happen so thank you for all of you, and, and we'll, we'll continue in touch. Thank you everybody. Bye bye. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.