Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE)
Profile
| Country/Territory | Netherlands |
|---|---|
| Website | www.cohre.org/ |
| In their own words | “The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit human rights organization. COHRE is registered in the Netherlands, and coordinates its global activities from its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland…COHRE is the leading international human rights organization campaigning for the protection of housing rights and the prevention of forced evictions.” |
Key People
Scott Leckie
COHRE's Executive Director and Founder, Scott Leckie, is a former staff member at the PLO's Palestinian Negotiations Support Unit.Funding
- According to its website, “COHRE’s major donors include the Ford Foundation, the Swedish International Development Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, Cordaid [Holland], Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the European Union, Misereor, and German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). (COHRE in the past has partnered with The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung–FES, though it does not list this on its website.)
- This organization is non-transparent. It has not released any funding information since 2010.
Activities
- COHRE is an NGO in Special Consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC).
- According to its website, “COHRE’s work is carried out in part by eight regional and thematic programmes. Regional programmes currently exist in Africa, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. Thematic programmes focus on women and housing rights, housing and property restitution, housing rights litigation, the right to water and monitoring and preventing forced evictions.
- COHRE’s activities as related to the Israel-Arab conflict fall mainly under its Housing and Property Restitution Programme (HPRP).
- In contrast to some activities that are consistent with its mandate, in the Middle East, COHRE has worked together with the Palestinian NGO BADIL, which actively campaigns for the “right of return” (BADIL was a signatory to an August 2002 call to boycott Israel, including an endorsement of the NGO Program of Action conceived at the 2001 Durban conference.) In May 2005, COHRE and BADIL issued a joint report using the demonization rhetoric of the Durban 2001 NGO Forum, in which Israel is charged with “the calculated theft of Palestinian land…through military aggression…the imposition of apartheid-like laws…a cruel form of ethnic cleansing.”
- In January 2008, COHRE joined a number of international NGOs in politicized campaigning against Israel’s policy toward Gaza. COHRE issued a report – ‘Hostage to Politics: The impact of sanctions and the blockade on the human right to water and sanitation in Gaza’ (Jan. 23, 2008) – blaming Israel for “widespread denial of economic, social and cultural rights” and for “collective punishment” of the Palestinians.
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