Britain could have breached its human rights obligations over the Grenfell Tower inferno, the United Nations’ housing investigator has suggested.
Leilani Farha, the UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, said safety standards in the tower were not met.
The blaze killed 71 people and left hundreds homeless last June. As a result, the Government might have failed to comply with its international human rights obligations over the disaster, she suggested.
Leilani Farha, the UN special rapporteur on the right to housing, said safety standards in Grenfell Tower were not met
Last week Miss Farha, who has worked as the UN’s unpaid housing investigator since 2014, was invited by human rights law academics and activists to meet with Grenfell survivors and local residents.
The Canadian, who is executive director of Ottawa-based NGO Canada Without Poverty, said she was alarmed by the survivors’ ‘feelings of not being heard, of feeling invisible, and not being treated like equal human beings’ during her London visit.
She told the Guardian: ‘I’m concerned when I have residents saying to me they feel they are not being heard and that they are not always being treated like human beings. Those are the fundamentals of human rights: voice, dignity, and participation in solutions to their own situations.’
Miss Farha said that the residents’ rights to safe and secure housing might have been breached because of safety standards in the tower, such as the cost-saving cladding and electrical circuits used. She said she was concerned that residents and survivors had been discriminated against because they had been living in social housing.
She said: ‘Residents told me they feel the Government’s position is that they should feel lucky that they are going to be rehoused and that they should feel lucky that they had social housing.
‘That doesn’t suggest residents feel the Government recognises them as rights holders.
‘The fact that so many residents have said to me they are not being treated as human beings is suggestive of a society that is structured in a way where those in social housing are viewed perhaps as counting less. And that is deeply troubling.’
Miss Farha said that the residents’ rights to safe and secure housing might have been breached because of safety standards in the tower, such as the cost-saving cladding and electrical circuits used
She has questioned whether it might have influenced the decision to fit Grenfell Tower with cheaper cladding.
‘If the population wasn’t viewed as somehow undeserving, as really lucky to receive the benevolence of state support for housing, if they were viewed as rights holders, I just wonder if that same decision would have been made.’
It is not the first time the UK has been criticised by UN rapporteurs.
In 2013, the UN’s special investigator on housing, Raquel Rolnik, said the Government should axe the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax’ because it breaches human rights.
However, she was staying at a four-star hotel, where the cheapest room available costs £300 a night, while preparing a report claiming the tax would result in people going hungry in order to pay their rent.
A Government spokesman said: ‘Grenfell was an awful tragedy that should never have happened and nothing like it should ever be allowed to happen again.
‘In the immediate aftermath of the fire we were clear that the council had failed the residents of Grenfell, and so we have committed to supporting everyone affected in the months and years ahead – including by rehousing residents and offering mental health support.
‘Had the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing approached the Government to discuss her concerns we would gladly have met her to discuss the work we are doing to support the Grenfell community.’