This publication is the second report of the Advisory Group on Forced Evictions (AGFE) to the Executive Director of UN-Habitat. It contains follow-up information on eviction cases documented in the first report, 15 new cases, and a detailed analysis of the current global situation regarding forced evictions and successful counterstrategies, methodologies and tools to stop and prevent forced evictions.

The crisis that engulfed the Central African Republic (CAR) in the end of 2012 resulted in the perpetration of gross human rights violations, including the widespread looting and destruction of homes. As people fled the violence they left behind land which others occupied illegally. More than a year after the height of the crisis, approximately 440,000 Central Africans continue to be internally displaced. Almost half a million are refugees in neighbouring countries.

This report is a summary of the 2013 CSO Land Reform Monitoring papers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, and the  Philippines. It focuses on land conflicts including killings, harassments, land-related detainments, and evictions experienced in the seven countries. It also includes interventions and principles which ANGOC and LWA call for the government and institutions to adhere to in addressing such issues.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest and
longest suffering countries among members of the World Bank,
and has been ravaged by chronic conflict and political
instability. Afghanistan's infrastructure has been
destroyed or degraded; its human resource base severely
depleted; and its social capital eroded. Despite existing
public administration structures, the majority of state
institutions are only beginning to function effectively, and

Paralleling the increasing disparities
in income and wealth worldwide since the 1980s, cities in
developing countries have witnessed the emergence of a
growing divergence of lifestyles, particularly within the
middle classes, reinforced by the widening gap between the
quality of public and private educational and health care
institutions, spatial segregation, gated communities, and
exclusive semiprivate amenities. This erosion of social

When contracts are incomplete, relationship-specific investments may be underprovided due to the threat of opportunistic expropriation or holdup. The authors find evidence of such underinvestment on tenanted land in rural Pakistan. Using data from households cultivating multiple plots under different tenure arrangements, they show that land-specific investment is lower on leased plots. This result is robust to the possible effects of asymmetric information in the leasing market. Greater tenure security also increases land-specific investment on leased plots.

The first paper of this section
(Durand-Laserve) documents how increasing pressures on urban
land and the 'commodification' of shelter and
settlement has increased 'market evictions' of
families holding intermediate tide to property, although
international declarations and pressures have contributed to
reducing 'forced evictions.' The second paper
(Mooya and Cloete) uses the tools of the New Institutional

The first paper of this section
(Durand-Laserve) documents how increasing pressures on urban
land and the 'commodification' of shelter and
settlement has increased 'market evictions' of
families holding intermediate tide to property, although
international declarations and pressures have contributed to
reducing 'forced evictions.' The second paper
(Mooya and Cloete) uses the tools of the New Institutional

The term “inclusive cities” is
increasingly being used as a “catch-all” phrase to signify
intent but with little precision in its use. In this note we
use “inclusive cities” to mean cities in which we see a
commitment to an inclusive politics with the establishment
of institutionalized interactions between organized groups
of disadvantaged citizens and the state with local
government taking a primary role. They are also cities in

This paper estimates slum residents
willingness to pay for formalized land tenure in Pune,
India. In so doing, it offers evidence that the legal
assurance of slum residents occupancy of their lands could
benefit them. Previous studies have discussed legal and
non-legal factors that substantially influence the tenure
security of residents in informal settlements. However, it
remains unclear to what extent, and how, the assignment of

In 2012 Papua New Guinea undertook a
national Service Delivery Assessment of rural water, rural
sanitation, urban water and urban sanitation services to
identify coverage and targets, how well services are being
delivered and the financing shortfalls in these subsectors.
Immediately following this assessment, stakeholders, through
a national policy task force, have developed a draft of the
country s first National Water, Sanitation and Hygiene

Housing matters to the livability of
cities and to the productivity of their economies. The
failure of cities to accommodate the housing needs of
growing urban populations can be seen in the proliferation
of poorly serviced, high-density informal settlements. Such
settlements are not new in the history of rapidly growing
cities, their persistence results as much from policies as
from economics and demographic transition. Slums have