The NGO Working Group to End Homelessness (WGEH) at the United Nations seeks the alleviation and eventual end of homelessness, in collaboration with like-minded organizations, and academic centers.

Summary

The WGEH will build on the foundation of the previous experience, expertise, learning and research on homelessness, working in integrated and intersecting ways with other organizations and groups. An essential aspect of the WGEH is our inclusion of the voice of people who have experienced homelessness and housing insecurity. We ensure that the challenges faced by people who are homeless are addressed by highlighting effective policies as well as best practices and bringing a particular focus on women and girls, on mental health and trauma. The core goal of our collective advocacy is to build political will to make preventing, assessing, measuring and systemically ending homelessness a global priority. We advocate for homelessness to be addressed through the human rights framework, particularly the principles of human dignity and non-discrimination and the right to adequate housing. We support the UN’s description of homelessness as “a condition where a person or household lacks safe habitable space, which may compromise their ability to enjoy social relations, and includes people living on the streets, in other open spaces or in buildings not intended for human habitation, people living in temporary accommodation or shelters for people experiencing homelessness, and, in accordance with national legislation, may include, among others, people living in severely inadequate accommodation without security of tenure and access to basic services” and advocate for its inclusion in other UN documents and resolutions and the overall adoption of this description as a global definition of homelessness. We advocate for local and national governments and NGOs to collect better homeless data that aligns with the UN description of homelessness. We continue to raise the visibility of homelessness through advocacy, events, panels and presentations, and observance days such as World Homeless Day.