European Social Forum. Athens may 2006
Let's build on the momentum of the ESF Urban Space together
ESF in Athens, May 2006.
Enthusiastic and qualified participation in various initiatives on the urban/housing issue organized by a number of networks during the ESF in Athens was a very positive occasion that presented these issues to the attention of the European new global movement including associations, movements, individual activists and supportive public administrators for the first time.
The role of the city in an alternative Europe: moving towards the right to housing and a habitat
The seminar concluded with a calendar of the next steps which calls for the efforts of all involved to take the next steps together.
Coordinated by Sylvie Lacroux, ex director of UN-Habitat Europe and Teresa Hoskyns of the London Social Forum, the seminar held during the ESF involved over one hundred participants from the European Union, the Russian Federation and Turkey.
The result of the unification of the proposal by the International Alliance of Inhabitants and that of the London Social Forum, the seminar was enlivened with many interventions and thought provoking ideas deriving from the variety of approaches and subjects intervening. For this reason everyone agreed that it was the most important seminar on urban issues organized by the ESF.
Europe: towards a common space for housing rights movements
Over 150 participants from 15 European countries attended the presentations on the violations of housing rights on the old continent.
We watched the slide presentation of the barricades against the demolitions ordered by the Turkish government, in the popular quarters of Istanbul, with the aim of relocating, hundreds of miles away, the Kurdish refugees who in the last decades had built their homes and their livelihoods there.
The IAI at the European Social Forum in Athens
Development of a European mobilisation against the violations of housing rights & The Role of the City in an Alternative Europe: Towards Housing and Habitat Rights
SEMINAR EUROPEAN SOCIAL FORUM 2006
Development of a European mobilisation against the violations of housing rights
Thursday, May 4 2006
h. 14:30 – 17:30
Athens, Room: F 04
An Urban Tent at the 2006 European Social Forum
Athens, May 4-7 2006
With only a few months remaining before the ESF, various proposals have been put forth for seminars, working groups and conferences on the housing and urban issue by organizations and individuals in various countries, at times drawn from diverse backgrounds: tenants’ associations, housing cooperatives, lobby groups, urban planners, volunteer organizations, NGO’s, local authorities.