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This series of three blogs shows numbers and trends about the awarded projects over the last 35 years. Find the first blog (who wins?) here, and the second one (historic trends) here.
Sharing knowledge and practices
In 2022, housing challenges are still diverse and affect people all over the world. No government on earth can pretend to have solved all housing issues or claim there are no breaches to the human right to adequate housing in its country:
- The lack of adequate social housing and affordable funding for informal and low-income workers prevents the sustained reduction of people living in inadequate housing.
- The lack of control over speculative real estate and land markets generates an affordability crisis and a commodification or housing in cities and touristic areas all over the world, leading to forced evictions, homelessness and an increasing accumulation of land and wealth by a select few of the world’s population.
- War, persecution, human trafficking poverty, desertification, climatic disasters, among other factors, generate forced displacements of millions of people who need shelter, permanent housing solutions as well as services and opportunities in either their own countries or the host countries they are forced to flee to.
- We are experiencing a global emergency necessitating us to develop more resilient built environments and caring societies for the present and future generations to face the consequences of global warming, the destruction of biodiversity, as well as epidemics.
Each year, we are happy to discover new projects from all the regions of the world, breaking the status quo and proposing creative solutions to solve some of the problems above in often difficult contexts. This way, for 35 years, the World Habitat Awards have promoted the most innovative and sustainable approaches led by all type of actors involved in the field of housing, from grassroots organisations to national governments.
The incredible work of the World Habitat Awards finalists and Gold winners has been documented and communicated by World Habitat and UN-Habitat to inspire new initiatives and public policies around the word.
Some organisations have applied several times to the awards, and we are pleased to see them improve from one application to another, to be more inclusive, show more impact and transferability of the solutions they come up with. We welcome any organisation to apply or reapply to the awards in coming years.
It should be noted that 20 organisations reached two, three or even four times the final stage of the competition! In some cases, an organisation was first finalist in one edition and then Gold Winner in a further year. [i]
All past and future finalists and winner integrate the WHA Network that aims for best practice exchange and networking between the organisations that where recognized by the competition since 1986.
Beyond the awards, World Habitat seeks to help the emergence of transforming practices and policies to solve housing issues. We directly help the consolidation of Community-Led Housing projects and a network of cities to end homelessness, and participate in the production of knowledge on Climate Action in housing. Find out more about our work at: www.world-habitat.org
[i] Organisation who reached the final stage several times are:
Association La Voûte Nubienne (AVN), Burkina Faso (2009 and 2016); Belarussian Division of International Academy of Ecology, Belarus (2000 and 2006); Centro Experimental de la Vivienda Económica (CEVE), Argentina (2004 and 2009); Development Network France, with projects in Niger (1991), Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger (1999), and Vietnam (2008); Federación Uruguaya de Cooperativas de Vivienda por Ayuda Mutua (FUCVAM), Uruguay (1999 and 2012); the Fundación Salvadoreña de Desarrollo y Vivienda Mínima (FUNDASAL), El Salvador (1999, 2004, 2014 and 2017); Global Communities in Poland (1995) and South Africa (2001); Groupe Energies Renouvelables Environnement et Solidarités (GERES) with projects in India (2011) and Afghanistan (2016); Green Building Research Centre (GBRC) Xi’an University, China (2006 and 2011); Grupo Sofonias in Guatemala (2002) and El Salvador (2017); Habitat for Humanity International in the USA (1996) and Armenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and North Macedonia (2017); Heritage Foundation of Pakistan (2014 and 2018); the Housing and Development Board of Singapore (1992 and 2004); Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDC) with projects in India (1993 and 1997) and Jordan (2000); Practical Action in Peru (1993), Kenya (2004) and Sri Lanka (2008); Praxis in Greece (1995) and the UK (2018); Rod Hackney Associates in the UK (1987 and 1996); SERVIVIENDA, Colombia (1997 and 2001); Tarayana Foundation, Bhutan (2015 and 2021); TECHO, Chile (2010 and 2015).
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