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The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and many other international human rights treaties state that the right to housing under international human rights law is the right to live in peace, security and dignity.

The violation of the right to housing is often experienced by marginalized and disadvantaged groups including indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, ethnic and religious minority communities, people of color, migrants and refugees, women, single mothers, and LGBTQ+ persons.

I spoke with Leilani Farha, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and Global Director of The Shift. Her organization works with parliaments, and civil society actors on the principle that housing is a social good. We also spoke of her work with the Norwegian Refugee Council, and the aggravated housing situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and even more so now, in the Gaza Strip.

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Seeking Common Ground in a World of Rivalry

The organization led by Justin Vaisse, historian and diplomat, is supported by the French government and private sector sponsors, including Microsoft.

There will be panels with AI companies and how they are engaging with governments, academics, and UN officials from Africa and Europe.

Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith will be speaking on using AI in the humanitarian field, and their multiple partnerships with UN agencies in the areas of advanced disaster monitoring systems, and education projects with UNICEF, including the Learning Passport, and other digital literacy programs.

The Learning Passport is a Cambridge University-designed initiative launched with Microsoft’s support to ensure forcibly displaced children and young people can continue their education in their native languages, and not miss the school year due to war or civil conflicts that might take years to resolve, as they will need to temporarily settle in the host countries.

Microsoft is also working with Least Developed Countries and supporting the achievement of the SDGs targets by partnering with the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).

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Watch my interview with Paris Peace Forum founder Justin Vaïsse, to find out more.

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I interviewed Bourhan Yassin, CEO of Rainforest Connection, a company that applies AI to acoustics for data insights to better inform conservation, preserve biodiversity, and protect the rainforests from illegal logging. They are currently working in 80 countries, including Brazil, where most of their work is happening.

RFCx works with audio to monitor species of wild birds for instance, to analyse the sounds of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest, and works with indigenous communities to help them identify illegal logging, and to catalogue species to protect biodiversity.

They use satellites developed by Swarm, that operates ultra-small satellites for IOT devices, a company that was acquired by SpaceX in 2021.

We spoke about their projects in Brazil and how they are funded, and how Google.org supports their work alongside other philanthropic organizations.

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