Legal aid program:

Through its legal aid unit, ECHR provides free legal aid and consultations to the victims of adequate housing right violations. In the defense for housing rights the legal aid unit depends on the national laws, the international housing rights instruments, the international standards of housing rights and the Egyptian legislations as its cardinal basics of work. Each case is studied individually to identify the points of strength and weakness to use the most appropriate tools in solving it. Usually, ECHR prefers to solve the cases amicably, using several simple steps like: communiqués, interviewing officials, negotiations, etc. Litigation is the last resort due to the long time this kind of cases usually takes.
It is important to mention that ECHR is adopting collective cases only and it adopts individual cases if such cases are reflecting a general problem in the Egyptian society. Also ECHR is adopting all women's cases regardless it is collective or individual cases.

Field work and community empowerment program
The mission of this unit is to promptly deal with the different cases and complaints it receives, and to make the respective violations known through publicizing them in the different media outlets. The staff of the unit moves to the scene of the case/violation in order to document it; meet the victims; write down their detailed complaints about the violations they have been through and gather the documents they have. Once the compliant is verified, the staff starts to work on organizing the affected community and offering legal consultations, training to the community leaders. This unit submits its reports to the legal aid unit, and maintains its connection with the affected community to follow up the case till it is solved and their right to adequate housing is fulfilled.

Temporary Relief program:
In the past, ECHR was defending housing rights by adopting only the rights approach, this was due to the lack of finances and because it believed that the urgent relief is the state's responsibility, and the civil agencies should work to obligate the state to carry its responsibility. Later, and through the field work with the victims of housing rights violations, ECHR has noticed that in many cases the affected community looses their chance to win their cases because of their being scattered and a way from the land or the houses they claim, due to the lack of minimal facilities to survive in the same place. Therefore, ECHR adopted the temporary relief strategy. In such cases ECHR provides tents, blankets and other facilities that insure for the affected community the minimal privacy and security and give the community and ECHR the chance to go into negotiations with the officials, with the affirmation that these facilities do not, in any case, constitute the alternative for the adequate housing that the affected community should obtain, and that this assistance is temporarily and is not for ever.


Training courses:
In conformity with ECHR's main objective to disseminate the culture of human rights in general and the right to adequate housing in particular, ECHR works on training different categories of citizens through holding training sessions on the rights to adequate housing in relation to the other different types of human rights. Each training session targets different category of trainees, such as lawyers, human rights advocates, university students, etc. the center also holds specialized training sessions for the community leaders of housing rights violations on how to deal with the different cases rising in their own communities and how to link their own advocacy activities with the ECHR's different activities.

Studies and research program:
The mission of the research unit is to link the center's practical experience resulting from its activities with the theoretical experience through the various researches and studies that tackle the housing problems in Egypt, and the different elements of the adequate housing such as water, drainage, services, environment, etc. Researches, studies and reports help greatly in identifying the focus of the center's activities in certain periods, for instance, the center has handled numerous water pollution cases in areas like Damas and Saft Al-Laban depending on the findings of several researches which proved that the water pollution in these areas threats with genuine disaster.
In addition, this unit is preparing empirical studies on some certain areas that suffer from sever housing rights violations, and try with the victims participation to adopt developmental plans for these areas, and the ways to apply such plans.

Data Base and documentation program:
Due to the difficulty of access to information about different housing cases, ECHR has built a data base that contains all the press material related to the civil work in Egypt in general and the housing issues in particular; this material is collected from both the daily and the weekly newspapers along with other various resources, the material contains newsletters, news, reports and special stories. The data base aims at providing the researchers, and those who are interested in the field of civil sector with the needed information through the ECHR's information program which was designed to suit the researchers' needs. In addition this unit uses visual documentation (photography, video) for violations, workshops, trainings, or any other events. ECHR have a professional video camera and a hand came.

Experience exchanging program:
Considering the lack of experience in the Arab countries in the housing rights field, ECHR seeks for the various experiences in this field from different countries that would have similar circumstances (politically, economically, socially…etc) of Egypt. ECHR visited some countries in cooperation with some organizations from these countries such as India, Thailand, Cambodia, Nigeria and Kenya. These visits allowed us to recognize the most important experiences in these countries and its working organizations on housing rights, as well as their strategies and tactics in working on such right. Such experiences expanded the center's strategy vision for working on this right and adopting the suitable tactics for working in the different circumstances of the Egyptian reality. ECHR is planning for visiting some other countries that have a great experience in housing right field such as South Africa.
In a later stage ECHR will plan to transfer his experience to some other organizations in the Arab countries.

Monitoring and observation:
The Egyptian Center for housing right monitor the governmental performance concerning of the right to adequate housing, and monitor the different trends of the Egyptian government in this concern. Later the Egyptian center prepared a criticism's report for the elections programs of the presidential candidates in the year 2005 from the perspective of the right to adequate housing, thus the center was the only one who has issued a criticism report for the elections programs before the election date. Also the center monitored the parliamentary member performance with regard to housing issue during the previous parliamentary term (5 years). Thereby the center has been monitoring the governmental projects which related to the housing rights, and introduce a critique vision about how much these projects would be violate the right to adequate housing.
ECHR is monitoring the performance of President Mubarak comparing with the promises he made during the election.

Urgent Action:
ECHR has various interventions in the cases of housing rights violation, one of its most important interventions is the call for urgent action, used particularly in the critical urgent cases. The call for urgent action depends on gaining the support of as many national and international human rights organizations and networks as possible, such human rights organizations and networks from all over the world are requested to participate in solving the problem. There are certain criteria to use the urgent action intervention, most importantly is that the affected party should be large number of families, the urgent action should be taken after making sure that all the other national and local ways have failed, and without the urgent action the affected community would be at great risk. ECHR has called for urgent action several times like the case of forced eviction in al-Doweqa and Manshyet Naser, Zerzara case in Port Said governorate. ECHR has succeeded in solving a number of cases by calling for urgent action.

United nation level and international relations
ECHR is using the UN mechanisms to raise the housing rights violations or to address the housing problem in Egypt. ECHR introduced a report on housing parallel to the Egyptian government report to the UN Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights in the year 2000, the Committee raised many observations against the Egyptian government depending on ECHR's report especially on forced eviction policy. Also ECHR introduced a report on the policy of forced eviction and housing demolition in Egypt with the cooperation of the World Organization against Torture in the year 2002 considering that forced eviction and housing demolition is inhuman, cruel and degrading treatment under the article no. 16 of the UN Convention against Torture.
Yet, ECHR is using the mechanisms of the special rapporteur on housing rights to raise some cases.
In addition, ECHR is a very active member of a number of international networks or work closely with some others as International Network on ESCR, HIC, and International Alliance for Inhabitants, etc.

Port Said branch:
It is worthy to mentioned that according to the gross housing violations in Port Said city (this city faced three wars), ECHR has established a branch their to work on such violations not only in Port Said but also all over Suez Canal cities. This branch is working as a part of the legal aid program of the Center.