30 HOUSING RIGHTS programmes affecting them; and also to enjoy autonomy in matters relating to their own internal and local affairs, including housing. Such protection at the international level is generally not found in respect of regional treaties,5 with the exception of Article 31 of the revised European Social Charter. However, given that it has been successfully argued that the rights to a home and private and family life and to property (as protected by Article 8, and Article 1 of Protocol 1, respectively, of the ECHR) effectively encompasses a right to housing, (albeit in relation to negative violations such as forced evictions and house demolition - see case study) the case can also be made that similar protection should be offered under the corresponding provisions of the ACHR.6 At the domestic level, the right to housing is contained in over 50 constitutions,7 of which perhaps the best known (at least in the common law system) are those of South Africa and India. Examples of successful challenges brought under the former include Alexkor v. The Richtersveld Community & Ors,8 where the South African Constitutional Court found that an indigenous community had been unlawfully dispossessed of their land and mineral rights due to racially discriminatory policies. Also Modderklip 9 in the Supreme Court of Appeal concerned the failure of the state to meet its constitutional obligations to secure the housing and land rights of squatters faced with eviction. In the case of India, the Supreme Court has demonstrated a long standing commitment to economic, social and cultural rights, largely through a creative interpretation of the right to life as underpinning such rights. The protection of slum dwellers from forced eviction in Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation10 is one of the most well known decisions.11 The commitment at the international level to housing rights is evidenced by the fact that they were the subject of the two earliest substantive General Comments by the CESCR,12 together with the establishment of one of the first UN Special Rapporteur economic and social rights mandates. In addition, the UN housing rights agency, Habitat, organized two major international conferences in Vancouver in 1976 and Istanbul in 1996, as well as devising a Global Shelter Strategy with the aim of securing basic shelter for all by the year 2000. The Strategy has clearly failed to realize its ambitious goal, but it is to be hoped that Target 11 of the Millennium Development Goals – to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 – will enjoy more success. In practice, the right to housing means there is a basic obligation on the state and its agents: (1) to respect people’s own housing and land resources by, for example, not carrying out or condoning forced or arbitrary evictions (2) to promote housing and land rights through appropriate legislation and policies (3) to protect against violations by other non-state actors, e.g. landlords, property developers and multinationals