Founding Principles

I. PREAMBLE  
We, representatives of the inhabitants’ associations and social movements, communities, tenants, private house owners, homeless, people living in favelas and settlements, cooperatives, indigenous peoples and working class neighbourhoods of different world regions; 
Facing the permanent violations of the right to an adequate house and to a liveable city; 
In the context of a neo-liberal globalisation, which privatises public services and human rights, increases social segregation, debases and merchandises human relationships; 
1. Consider that, in order to protect our right to be cities’ builders and users, cannot confine ourselves to a mere local protection of our claims, while huge real estate investments, the urban infrastructures construction, the ever more public sector fading due to the foreign debt and to the monetary parameters, migrations, and conflicts which destroy the relational fabrics of the cities, jeopardize the security of billions of people and the very survival of the planet. 
2. In front of such situation and in order to build and strengthen solidarity relationships, which may both be effective and demonstrate that a different kind of human relationships is possible, have, henceforth, resolved to act in a coordinated manner on a horizontal ground and in mutual cooperation, from the local to the global level. 
3. Hence, we bear in mind and bring together previous times, dynamics and initiatives accordingly developed in various locations of the world, and which have produced declarations and formulated principles, which we make our own, and which had an important moment of synthesis and a meeting ground on the occasion of the First Inhabitants’ World Assembly held in Mexico City in the year 2000. 
4. We also take into account the principles declared in the International Treaty on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (art.11) and in the Human Rights Universal Declaration (art.25). 
II. WHO IS WHO  
1. 1.The Alliance we promote today is placed in this collective effort as well as in the processes, promoted by the Citizens’ World Assembly for a Responsible and Solidarity World and by the World Social Forum, while we adopt the motto “Another world is possible”. 
2. The Alliance originates as a network of inhabitants’ grassroots associations and territorial social movements: an intercultural movement, inclusive, autonomous, independent, self-governing, and available to coordinate with other similar associations pursuing the same goals. 
3. The Alliance is made of social organizations and indigenous populations, and underlines the importance of women in the social struggle, in development and in popular initiatives aimed to decrease poverty. 
4. Non governmental organizations and institutions of professionals which join the Alliance have the target to assist and give technical and promotional support to proposals and initiatives approved by the Alliance’s organizations and social movements, establishing a specialized technical team for this purpose. 
III. PRINCIPLES  
The founding principles, which drive the Alliance work and constitute the rules of conduct for all the members are:  
1. Equity and sustainable gender, social and ecological development carried out by inhabitants, their associations and movements, and by public powers from the specific urban setting. 
2. Social justice, active dedication and solidarity with the social movements struggle for proper housing and habitat. 
3. Promotion, protection of inhabitant’s global rights and struggle for social change and for power control at local, national and international level, as the result of a joint effort with other social sectors. 
4. Unity with other progressive social movements respecting social, cultural and political diversity recognized to be an enrichment. 
5. Tolerance, multiculturalism and respect of the inhabitants’ rhythms as practical option of daily life and collective work. 
6. Acknowledgement by local, national and international institutions of participative processes in the right to housing, to the city and to a suitable habitat, seen as an added value in the process of negotiation in the planning and development of public urban policies. 
7. Autonomy of the popular urban movement from political and institutional powers, being variously expressed by its struggle, demands and self-governance. 
IV.OBJECTIVES  
The Alliance delineates a short, medium and long-term programme to:  
1. Encourage inhabitants’ associations and movements, which internationally have “no-voice”, so that they may know one another, struggle and seize it. 
2. Coordinate and give visibility, strength and solidarity to national and international inhabitants’ activities and to their associations. 
3. Elaborate proposals of social change, which may imply substantial modifications of the housing and city situation in order to transform and make it sustainable.
4. Fight for the acknowledgement, application and protection of the right to housing, to the city and to a proper habitat in the whole. 
5. Fight for the boundless materialization of the economic, social, political and cultural rights of the inhabitants. 
6. Contribute to the search of development models being alternative to neo-liberalism and to its negative consequences for the world countries, on the grounds of a new leading role of the public sector in relation to the civil society. 
Madrid, 12 September 2003 
Promoting Group  
· Cesare Ottolini, President of the Unione Inquilini, Italy (Coordinator) 
· Giuseppe la Biunda, President of the Cooperativa Coralli, Italy 
· Jean-Baptiste Eyraud, Spoksman of the Droit au Logement, DAL, France 
· Guillermo Rodríguez Curiel, Coordinator of the Continental Front of Municipalities Organizations (FCOC), Mexico 
· Beatriz Granillo, Representative of the Independent Coordination Emiliano Zapata, Mexico 
· Pedro Franco, Representative of the Dominican Republic 
· Roger Muro, Segretary General of the Urban Initiatives Group (GIU), Peru 
· Edmundo Fontes, Representative of the National Conference of Inhabitants’ Associations (CONAM), Brazil 
· Sidiki Daff, President of the Popular Research Centre for City Action (CERPAC), Senegal 
Group of Technical Support  
· Lilia Santana, AITEC, France 
· Paul Maquet Makedonski, CENCA, Peru 
· Walter Heredia, PROCAM, Peru 
· Yves Cabannes, Coordinator PGU and UN-Habitat Latin America and Caribbean