The States Parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realization of this right, recognizing to this effect the essential importance of international cooperation based on free consent. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, which was adopted in 1979, draws attention to the housing needs of rural women. The special needs of children are addressed in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was adopted in 1989. As of 1 December 1995, the Convention has been ratified by 185 countries. They believe that to do so would place too great a demand on the resources of States, opening them to third-party adjudication and possibly sanctions if found guilty of not upholding the right.
Adequate shelter is proposed as an alternative, explicit goal for the international community.
These countries believe that international energies are better spent defending clearly established rights. The May 1995 meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Settlements in Nairobi was marked by much discussion of this very point. The head of the United States delegation to the conference, David Hales, insisted that while there was no substantive disagreement on the goal of adequate shelter for all, the USA was concerned by the international legal implications of an explicit right to housing. In the United States, we have legally established rights. If at an international level we agree to housing as a right, this implies that a third party could be called in to adjudicate and intervene if such rights are being violated.