by Vidish Parikh – BLOG 2 – 2022/08/29
The end of my internship this August brings about mixed feelings. I noted a couple of months ago how the relationship between policy and law is often underappreciated – how human rights (as an academic discipline) does not belong to the law or any one discipline.
Today, I sit here (remotely zooming into my last work meeting, noticing how humbled I am to have begun on a journey of studying human rights. I am completing this internship remotely because of the lasting effects of COVID 19. COVID has now only impacted how we work, it has brought new purpose to the idea and the way we work. More concretely, for me, it has impacted my notion of housing rights in substantive ways (and the definition of housing rights, while already amorphous, has also transformed during the pandemic). In short: The future is uncertain.
And yet, amid uncertainty there are signs of hope for the progression of housing rights. More and more, housing rights are being recognized as constitutional in nature. Perhaps just as importantly, we are recognize that housing rights are systemic, so while listening to people’s individual stories is important, it is also essential to fund and seek ways to create transformational change on a provincial, national, and global scale.