of United Nations treaty-monitoring bodies, help to translate these legal principles into appreciable guidance for governments and law-makers. Probably the most important explanatory documents in relation to housing rights and forced evictions are the General Comments of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights relative to the interpretation of article 11(1) of the ICESCR. While the precise legal status of these General Comments is somewhat unclear, they can and should at the very least operate to inform any decision-making relevant to States’ obligations under international human rights law and may also be resorted to by domestic courts in the course of interpreting such international obligations. General Comments 4 3 and 7, 4 on the right to adequate housing and forced evictions respectively, offer the most specific and practical guidance on the housing-related protections afforded to individuals under international law. Although centring on the obligations under the right to an adequate standard of living enshrined in article 11(1) of the ICESCR, these instruments effectively deal with the interpretation of a whole host of attendant obligations created by other rules of international human rights law, including some civil and political rights. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the UN human settlements agency (UN-HABITAT) have jointly published additional guidance on the topic in their Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-Based Evictions and Displacement.5 While not strictly legal documents per se, the Basic Principles provide further elaboration of some of the obligations incumbent upon government during eviction and resettlement, and will be utilised as a point of reference when explaining some of the principles established by international human rights law. Chapters 2 and 3 will summarise the key protections of international law and interpretative principles as explained by the General Comments and Basic Principles. This will elucidate some of the rules of international human rights law as stipulated above, and establish a framework of international standards relevant to the analysis of Philippine compliance with its obligations under international human rights law with respect to housing and evictions. The standards are not enumerated within international legal instruments, but are provided in this review for explanatory purposes to give clear expression to each separate component of the human rights protection framework established by international law. As per the two separate General Comments it is pertinent to separate these standards into two categories, the first of which will establish the conditions required for adequate housing generally, and the second of which will prescribe the protections afforded to individuals and families subject to involuntary resettlement. In practice, however, these two separate categories of standards will often be relevant to a single government programme or policy. For instance, where a government agency plans to forcibly relocate a community of informal settlers to implement a development project, it must ensure that that community receives appropriate protections during the course of the eviction and resettlement, and, essentially, that the accommodation to which 3 United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 4 on the Right to Adequate Housing, 1991. United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment 7 on the Right to Adequate Housing (Forced Evictions), 1997. 5 United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development-Based Evictions and Displacement, 2007. 4 6  Human Rights in the Rubble