Professor Padraic Kenna

By Susheela Math, Lead of the Open Society Justice Initiative’s work challenging the 'Ghetto Package'.  

The Complaint 

FEANTSA's collective complaint against the Czech Republic in 2020 highlighted a failure to respect the right of families to social, legal and economic protection (Article 16 of the Charter), which includes the right to housing and more specifically:

The criminalisation of homelessness is on the rise in Europe. Bans on begging, the 'cleansing' of public spaces or the installation of 'defensive' street furniture are just some of the practices increasingly used to restrict and deny the basic rights of some of society's most vulnerable citizens.

The UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty's new report on “Banning discrimination on grounds of socioeconomic status” was presented to the UN General Assembly in October 2022.

The report addresses the issue of discrimination on grounds of socio-economic disadvantage. Discrimination is part of the daily experience of people in poverty. It restricts access to employment, education, housing or social services, among others.

At its Forty-ninth session, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on Adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and the right to non-discrimination in this

In accordance with the European Social Charter reporting procedure, certain countries were exempted from reporting for the Conclusions 2021. These countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal, were instead invited to provide information on the follow-up given to the decisions of their respective collective complaints.