Housing and Property Restitution for Refugees and Displaced Persons

The Pinheiro Principles provide restitution practitioners, as well as States and UN and others agencies, with a consolidated text relating to the legal, policy, procedural, institutional and technical implementation mechanisms for housing and property restitution. As such, the Principles provide specific policy guidance regarding how to ensure the right to housing and property restitution in practice and for the implementation of restitution laws, programmes and policies, based on existing international human rights, humanitarian, refugee and national standards. To this end the Principles reflect some of the most useful provisions from various national restitution policies, programmes and practices, including those developed for Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Burundi, Cambodia, Cyprus, Guatemala, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda, South Africa and Sudan.