Does the international right to housing prevent people from being evicted?

The EVICT project wants to understand if it does, and how.

Explore the pillars of our research:

In Europe, 700,000 people had to leave their home involuntarily, with devastating effects on wellbeing and society.

EVICTIONS

Having a place to call home is a fundamental human right, but every year hundred thousands of people are evicted from their home. They lose their home involuntary. The EVICT project analyses all kinds of eviction cases, and aims to see whether the international right to housing helps people that face an eviction.

Housing is an international human right, but states often don’t comply.

International law

National governments and courts need to comply with international human rights law, such as the right to housing. Yet, we know that they often do not comply with international law. The right to housing, as laid down in international and European law, often demands more protection of the power- and propertyless than national laws prescribe.

The EVICT project explores the complex relationship between international and national law to study to what extent the international human right to housing has an impact in an eviction case.

Recent crises led to an enormous number of national case law. Thousands of court judgements will be analysed using data science.

Data science

It would be impossible to manually analyse the thousands of court judgements on eviction. Therefore, the EVICT project adopts a unique data-driven approach.

We combine traditional legal methods with data science techniques, such as network analysis and machine learning to conceptualise the right to housing and to find and explain predictors for court decisions.

Stay tuned for more!