Human rights law guarantee everyone the Human Right to Adequate Housing


"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood...."
--Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25

"The States Parties ... recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions...."
--International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 11

"States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in rural areas ... to ensure ... the right ... to enjoy adequate living conditions, particularly in relation to housing, sanitation, electricity and water supply, transport and communications...."
--Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, Article 14


Reuters
Rescuers say today is probably the last hope of finding more survivors from Iran's devastating earthquake as officials warn the death toll could reach 30,000 and that disease is now a threat.

The stench of death filled the flattened ancient Silk Road city of Bam as the world united in relief efforts and U.S. airmen worked alongside soldiers from the Islamic Republic that President George W. Bush once branded an "axis of evil" state.

As searches went into a fourth day, rescuers said they were no longer finding survivors -- only the mangled remains of people killed when the world's most lethal earthquake in at least 10 years levelled much of Bam.

"(Rescue operations) will continue at least for one more day (until midnight on Monday) when an assessment will be made to continue or not," Alain Pasche, a representative of a U.N. rescue coordination team, told Reuters.

Round-the-clock relief efforts were complicated by piles of bodies in the streets, overflowing cemeteries, bitterly cold nights, rain, aftershocks, confusion, some looting and the crash of an army helicopter that left the two people on board missing.

"I believe the (death) toll will reach 30,000," said a government official in Kerman province, where the quake struck before dawn on Friday while most people were still sleeping and destroyed about 70 percent of Bam's mostly mud-brick buildings.

DISEASE WARNING

Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari said some 20,000 bodies had been recovered, but the death toll was likely to be much higher.

Warning disease was a threat, he said: "We have instructed various bodies to immediately start cleaning up. If we don't bring hygiene back to the city we will have major problems."

Some 30,000 people were injured in the quake, which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale.

Aid workers estimated more than 100,000 people might have been left homeless in the Bam area, some 1,000 km (600 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran.

Aid poured in from around the world to help deal with a disaster that President Mohammad Khatami said his oil-producing country could not cope with on its own.

Some young men armed with pistols and Kalashnikov assault rifles drove into Bam in vans and stole Red Crescent tents. Others on motorbikes chased aid trucks, picking up blankets thrown out by soldiers.

As cemeteries battled to cope, mullahs in shirt-sleeves rather than their usual robes and wearing face masks against the dust and smell tore sheeting to shroud corpses.

There was no time to wash the bodies according to Islamic rituals.

Bodies were brought in blankets, sprayed with disinfectant to guard against disease and tipped into trenches hollowed out by mechanical diggers.

Parisa Hafezi, Reuters