Housing and Land Rights Network
Habitat International Coalition
Postconflict Mission to Lebanon
15 September 2006
Introduction
This report outlines efforts of Habitat International Coalition’s Housing and Land Rights Network (HIC-HLRN) to assists in essential steps toward remedy and restitution of housing rights and land deprivation in Lebanon as a result of the July–August 2006 war that arose from Israel’s aggressive response to Hizbullah’s capture of soldiers of the Israeli army, which still occupies portions of their country. This HIC-HLRN activity applies the framework of the human right to adequate housing (HRAH), as developed in the international human rights law regime with a purpose (1) to ensure as complete as possible a record of the war’s consequences and (2) to guide as wholesome as possible a restoration of adequate living conditions for those affected by the destruction. Part of that task involves also a reliable assessment of the material and other costs and losses that the civilian population has endured as a result of Israel’s invasion and continuing occupation.
The Cairo-based coordination function of the HIC Housing and Land Rights Network, composed of its members, together with other like-minded civil society organizations in the region local Lebanese communities, have amassed considerable experience in anticipating and/or responding to conflict and disaster situations that have devastated local habitat. They share an objective of ensuring that remedy, reparation, return and reconstruction coincide with the human rights and other public international law criteria that guarantee justice and seek to “build back better” so as to deter and prevent disastrous recurrences.
Certain efforts at reconstruction and immediate relief and some compensation (in the form of ex gratia disbursement, not from the legal duty holders) already have begun and are well underway. However, the activity begun here is additional and complementary to, and coincident with the longer process of physical reconstruction. In applying international public law criteria, the HIC-HLRN efforts also focus on the liability of the party(ies) responsible for the deprivation that is the subject of this Postconflict Mission Report. Just reparations are undeniably part of the reconstruction, recovery and future deterrence package that must endure if civilization is to replace barbary. Therein lies the hopeful premise of this report: the transformation of a human-made tragedy by way of remedial and correctional measures.
The practical application of the human right to adequate housing as a development framework is practically possible largely due to the developed specificity, jurisprudence and local experience at applying human rights in practice. Applying that framework also is demonstrably needed to improve on existing charity, relief and welfare models. For example, HLRN-recorded lessons from trial and error have demonstrated benefits of implementing the human rights framework to address human needs in post-disaster responses.[1]
Principal Goals:
The HIC-HLRN approach, as summarized above, is intended to offer its expertise in monitoring and documentation to support the current local efforts at reconstruction and recovery of losses resulting from the July–August War. The present mission and the longer-term activity have three primary goals:
1. Bringing practical regional and international solidarity to the people of Lebanon in the form of tools and techniques for assessing violations and losses;
2. Strengthening local civil actors’ capacity to carry out their role more effectively as agents in the Lebanese people’s own remedy and recovery;
3. Advising on the development of common national data-collection methods and tools for documenting facts of housing and land rights violations with the framework of international public law;
4. Reporting reliable factual and analytical information to the relevant international publics, including HIC members and juridical bodies, about the nature and extent of such losses and recovery efforts;
5. Contributing these assets toward the pursuit of reparation for the victims of housing and land rights violations that constitute wrongful acts under public international law.
Primary assumptions and intentions
Undoubtedly, the local population is sufficiently capable and motivated to rebuild their communities in the physical sense. This assumption is grounded in the pattern of postconflict reconstruction carried out in Lebanon since the Israeli occupation forces began retreating from Lebanon in earnest, from 1988 to 2000. However, there is still a need for civil and governmental bodies to engage collectively in the present reconstruction. As urgently as providing shelter and restoring livelihoods, efforts should not waste the chance to develop and apply their capabilities in the quantification of costs and losses arising from wrongful acts that have violated HRAH.
This mission has sought to introduce housing rights violation-monitoring techniques for local organizations and communities to use now, in order to ensure the most reliable record of material losses and other quantifiable damages to civilians. Those are requirements of any pursuit of reparations for wrongful acts. However, they are also methods needed in vulnerable communities everywhere. Developing them in the current case of Lebanon ensures verifiable knowledge as to the extent of damages and losses, the probable cost of restoration, the extent to which the violations deepen poverty, and the extent of the liability to the duty holders. Also important is the engagement of the affected people in a bonding activity that contributes to their own remedy.
By applying the international human rights law framework, with its specificity on the measurable elements of adequate housing, Lebanese across the country will be able to use common criteria for documenting the individual and collective costs of Israel’s destructive actions, and establishing an information base for reparations and reconstruction. In doing so, they also will become more aware of their human right to adequate housing, consequently contributing to the human rights culture in those affected communities and the region.
Longer-term objectives
The collected data on this generation of housing and land rights deprivation will converge to provide a comprehensive picture of the destruction and its consequences, which otherwise likely would go unrecorded or insufficiently documented. The compilation of these loss data would be entered into an easy-to-use database that would serve several purposes. The assessment methodology and nature of the data provide the tools for determining both material and nonmaterial values lost, using a “Loss Matrix.” Consequently, the composite of data will provide a basis for compensation and relief/restitution assessments, objective evidence for insurance and/or tort claims, social mapping for reconstruction, coordination with the expanded UNIFIL presence, local and national policy formulation, and other prioritizing purposes.
Since the longer-term projected activity is not to be controlled by outsiders, except insofar as they would fulfill a data-verification purpose, local communities would play a self-determined constructive role in their own restitution process. They would be able to verify and access all relevant information about their claims, whether as individual or part of collective claims. With sufficient and reliable data about costs and losses, the Lebanese people and its authorities would be better equipped to self-determine their options for recourse. The grassroots production of specialized HRAH-violation data also will serve external parties, such as UN agencies, short-term assessors, donors and development agencies to determine their own possible interventions. Moreover, the UN Human Rights Council special session resolution [A/HRC/S-2/1] has called for a Commission of Inquiry into the military conduct and conditions in Lebanon, and any such short-term commission, perforce, would rely on local sources for quantitative assessments and other statistical data.
Meeting the data challenge
The scale of the ultimate task could be comprehensive and immense, or it could cover some representative local samples.
HLRN has received reliable reports of the gross violations of civilians’ rights that have occurred and continue in Lebanon as a result of the Israeli incursions and aerial and naval bombardments. Still, it is abundantly clear that the objective tracking of these violations and the collection of evidence urgent requires reliable data that ground the post-conflict advocacy efforts.
Israel’s use of certain weapons, the disproportional and arbitrary nature of its military conduct, and its well-calculated and lethal aggression on patently civilian and neutral targets leave little doubt that the State of Israel is answerable for war crimes. Nonetheless, the onus remains on the Lebanese victims to validate that assumption.
At the international level, much verifiable information is still needed. For example, during the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination’s 69th (August) session on Lebanon, which coincided with the Israeli invasion, Committee experts affirmed that Israel’s obligations as a State party to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination continued to apply where the State party exercised effective control. However, evidence of the consequences of the State’s actions was lacking at the time, and the Committee did not respond sufficiently.
The UN Human Rights Council’s special Lebanon session resolution S-2/1, paragraph 7, further established the indispensability of evidence collection and appraisal in the current situation in Lebanon. As such, the resolution decided urgently to establish a high-level inquiry to: (a) investigate the systematic targeting and killings of civilians by Israel in Lebanon; (b) examine the types of weapons used by Israel and their conformity with international law; and (c) assess the extent and deadly impact of Israeli attacks on human life, property, critical infrastructure and the environment. Other initiatives had sought Security Council action to dispatch its own inquiry commission,[2] but they soon subsided. As of this writing, five UN Special Rapporteurs have completed their missions to the war zone, including four to the Galilee, and are preparing their reports to the UN Human Rights Council.
Because mandates at the international—including UN—level are limited in scope and constrained in time, it becomes the indispensable responsibility of Lebanon’s government and civil society institutions to develop and apply effective, indigenous systems of monitoring that will continue between and beyond those international mandates. Experience also has shown that the assigned UN bodies and personnel on such missions simply do not have the means or applicable methodologies for conducting the needed material-loss assessments in the field, but rely alternatively on the efforts of others, in particular, other international agencies working locally, regardless of other methodologies, field relations or expertise of those agencies and personnel.[3]
While it is recognized that specialized international agencies may be equipped to apply their services to international emergencies as they arise in distant locations, that does not suggest that their monitoring functions or capacities are intrinsically superior to that of local actors. For various reasons, some large and well-placed international organizations with a humanitarian mandate do not collect or reveal the information that is essential for verification of claims and loss/cost assessments.[4] Functional neutrality, for example, may preclude an organization from testifying openly or revealing important details in their possession. With full respect to their role and necessary discretion, such organizations are not the only or most likely actors needed to arrive at truth, justice and reparations for victims.
It has been witnessed repeatedly that UN and other international approaches to fact finding sideline, dismiss, otherwise underutilized and/or may not acknowledge or promote civilian capabilities. This activity envisioned in the conclusions to this report seek, as a matter of principle, to meet the data-collection challenge through the engagement of the most likely, proximate and knowledgeable local parties to assess and record their own experience.
Advantages of local monitoring and documentation methods
The indispensable fact-gathering contribution of local communities and civil organizations would assist central authorities in their related duties in addressing the deprivation of the state’s civilian inhabitants. The formulation of policy, including disaster preparedness and postconflict policy, is one central government responsibility. In the case of Lebanon, however, its central government is famously constrained and/or otherwise disengaged from deploying its institutions, personnel and resources to all parts of the state’s jurisdiction. Especially in this case, proper coordination of the type of local fact gathering proposed here could and should variously complement efforts and serve objectives of the Lebanese people’s own public institutions. Moreover, a people’s postconflict documentation project would serve national objectives in a number of ways, including but not limited to ensuring that:
§ “Affected persons” participate in their own remedy;
§ “Affected persons” and witnesses participate in national remedial process;
§ The victims and the deceased are suitably honored;
§ Facts and evidence are accurate and specific (for multiple purposes, especially media, public information and adjudication);
§ Costs and lost values are fully recorded;
§ The information collected demonstrates the gravity of violations, including those constituting crimes;
§ The affected communities have the opportunity for training and learning about human rights and humanitarian norms;
§ Data-collection efforts are coordinated across the country;
§ Data are complete and have continuity and integrity of data, avoiding contradiction and duplication;
§ Data is sufficient to be admissible in legal cases in various jurisdictions.
Quality of information
Fact gathering for human rights-defense purposes generally required that the information be as timely, as close to the affected party (victim or eye-witness testimony), and as corroborated by other sources as possible. No information is more authentic than the testimony of the affected person(s). The credibility of that information is enhanced by its reaffirmation by other independent sources of the same proximity to the violation concerned. A methodological dilemma for the fact gatherer lies in the timeliness of the data. The passage of time naturally affects the quality of data, owing to the lapse of memory for details. In the rapid clearance of rubble and the dash for reconstruction, physical evidence can be irreparably lost. Hence, the passage of time after the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hizbullah may negatively affect the quality and specificity of information collected; however, the removal of debris and other consequences of the assault on Lebanon make all the more urgent the victims’ and eye witnesses’ recollection of facts for the record.
Empowering local civil society
In addition to the objective reasons for taking postconflict local testimony as soon and as thoroughly as possible in the interest of data reliability, it is also desirable uphold the social value of fostering local participation in the damage-and-loss-assessment process. In all cases, local people as “victims” also can and should be respected and treated as potential agents in their own remedy and rehabilitation. Without empowering the local people with the necessary monitoring tools, that self-determination opportunity could be lost or severely depleted. While the State bears the legal obligation to ensure the self-determination of its people(s), that over-riding human rights obligation and implementation principle also can serve to ensure optimum outcomes in the reconstruction process. Otherwise, the local facts and locally appropriate solutions arising from that process risk being arbitrarily filtered, diluted or squandered under the above-mentioned methodological or institutional shortcomings of dominant external agents. (The durability of locally determined solutions has been affirmed repeatedly in the global and regional experiences of communities engaged in the “social production of habitat.”[5]) Just as the local people and communities typically possess tremendous untapped social capital and obviously sustain the requisite local presence, self-motivation and native capacity to devise reconstruction solutions, they also possess the unique capabilities to reconstruct the facts of their deprivation and to determine their restitution and reconstruction priorities.