wouldst it just faces attack lungs the hunger the poor the secret shame how bored we are divine is the temple of truth in can be bought out every secret of four bodies so we see that these attacks normally conduct but to create disharmony among the. various groups so we have been weaker from these things and actually we managed to face the situations because people have been acting. with restraint so this incident i see as a very unfortunate thing and i believe that tor country will come together to warn and also prove we saw that same move happen again against anyone after school second is happening on this very holy day for the catholics and christie of the

traitorous conservative clowns and also if you look at the pattern that the attacks in colombo strip lead me to what they are so. and then a lot of the very thick. of worship being caught she had a church in a gun movie i believe. the attack happened like to be from my or. the locality that you have the catholics and you have the bodies and also they will simply repulsed by force a potential heart but also in light but equal we see the muslims and dallas live side by side. so we. have done this we don't know yet and the government is actually looking at very feet if we can do for them but i believe that this has created it has done to create

harmony among the fifty. well let's bring in j. hunt pereira the executive director of the national peace council of sri lanka who joins us now from bangkok via skype jan we've been hearing from people on the ground in sri lanka a huge shock this morning. on the unexpected. because the last. people. saw. the end of all along all that you know. all and now all this very broke or in a. series of attacks has really. made us wonder what behind as you say no one's necessarily came and responsibility yet and people are wondering who is behind it but there has been

what have they have been attacks in the past on minority groups in sri lanka. yes it has hit the links i think more. than ever a lot of. them a massive stock of. this city is really just. this is this is how the phones harlot. it's kind of in a little to me i know that there has been mentioned as the really just really not hungry there has been some local and you chris and you have you know i'm very small as you know well and then you. just set up somewhere you might find the people who look as if you expect. them to do that and you christians and it's almost. corny.

largest you know but not on this this is absolutely the bait and synchronized and so cruel and devastating it is actually unbelievable i believe it is something planned randi i don't know them each year and that's to one man you know what i really don't know when you're a member of the civil society community in sri lanka what has been the atmosphere like there when it comes to security and on the ground there and is the government doing enough to make people feel safe. legal thinking repairing created missteps. lady the government's mistake was it much for granted. or the not very good at. least three people going through. it just the rumors well. i don't i think in this modern era have you noticed the apparatus running.

and there has been a big breach of security here but of course on the man hours and all the rest. on the ground. zero that highly don't know what the motive here is is there a concern that the security situation there might deteriorate. yes that is because that i mean that you know an argument being made that this government has been too lax your security deep even too much freedom is sort of her have harrison hounding the military by you know going into it not cost or. listening. as a result has weakened this nuclear destruction of the model is the military that all human being married i do not agree with i think it's possible to have

a cough. and to have good security back in the parts you have promised. pereira the executive director of the national peace council of sri lanka thank you for being with us on out to sara. well still ahead a large as they are the run off motel like to new leader begins in ukraine with president head trip or shankar we will have a live update. hello there we're seeing a lot of wet weather over space in at the moment and that system is now spreading you can see the cloud working its way through parts of france and switzerland and also covering many of us in italy as well to the north of that though it's still very warm and sunny so paris all the way up at twenty five london at twenty two at

twenty one head far enough east that we need you benchley come to this little weather feature head that's giving some of us some heavy rain and it's just sinking a little bit further south there as we head into monday say for some of us in hungry hungry heart all the way down towards be correct we can expect to see some wet weather at times that system towards the southwest that will still be swirling away the heaviest rains over parts of spain and stretching across into italy and it's also affecting the other side of the mediterranean as well we're seeing that cloud over parts of morocco algeria and tunisia amfa some of us pretty dusty at the moment cloudy and we're seeing some fairly heavy rain the heaviest of that during the course of sunday is going to be over parts of morocco and that will gradually edge its way eastward so it'll be out geria that sees the wettest of the weather as we head into monday towards the south there's plenty of violent thunderstorms here you see the really get going on the latest satellite picture will gradually march their way westwards and there's plenty more still to come as we head into monday.

it was sponsored by qatar and. they want to adequately. adequate. housing is not just about four walls and a roof it's about living in a place where you have peace security and most importantly dignity un special rapporteur. to our. new yorkers are very receptive to al-jazeera because it is such an international city they're very interested in that global perspective that al-jazeera provides. hello again i'm. reminded of the news this hour bomb attacks in sri lanka are

reported to have killed at least one hundred fifty six people and injured over four hundred more several churches and hotels were targeted in three cities. police say the attacks were coordinated and the prime minister calls for an imagined through security council meeting on the scene at hospitals in the capital as increasingly frantic as casualties arrive and family and friends seek more information you're a betting man lee has more on the story. one block food five and it ripped through the roof of this church in the heart of the capital. the floor covered remains of the roof would blunt. sometimes these charges popular with mocha was born taurus off the explosion shock and disbelief. at another church

there's been a call on social media for people to help the survivors as. three separate churches bombed on easter sunday one of the major celebrations in the christian calendar and one witness says the blast was so powerful it shook the surrounding buildings but it wasn't just christians targeted it seems to be a much wider operation bombs also ripped through five star hotels just got some information there's been explosions as well three hundred and something people. stay home during travel you know in churches it's unfortunate that it's happening but just really stay home in the heart of the capital and all close together at the shangri-la cinnamon grande and kingsbury hotels and the st anthony's shrine church . since about since churches in the gumbo and zion church in batticaloa were also targeted. this is the largest coordinated string of attacks in sri

lanka and this year and so far no one has claimed responsibility. for it now ambulance crews rushed to treat hundreds of injured people and with many people dead and widespread damage the extent of the devastation is being assessed you're about an hour to see off. to other news now and voting has begun in the runoff election in ukraine between incumbent president petro poroshenko and the political novice comedian rather me as a lenski the latest opinion polls suggest selenski is leading poroshenko by almost forty five percent the election is a decisive one for the country a forty four million people but the landscape proposing direct talks with russia to resolve the conflict in eastern ukraine while our robin foster walker joins us live from a polling station in the capital kiev robin it's been quite the election campaign are voters looking enthusiastic there this morning.

is picking up their zero zero ten or eleven o'clock local time this is going to be an election really like any other i think in ukraine because of this presidential candidate a lot of years and it is. kind of a unlike any other as you mentioned he's an actor and a stand up comedian and i think the reason why he is so incredibly popular here is because of the political system where ukrainians feel that corruption continues to govern things very much in this country but also because of his television series which very much explores those issues in which plays a fictitious a fictional president and an honest president a wise president who's just an ordinary. guy a humble historian who takes on that all they've got and i think that there are many ukrainians who feel they've got nothing to lose by electing about who has no political experience but who they are

hoping will somehow transform into reality somehow all three is fictional president it's really quite an extraordinary concept to take on for what you have to consider at the same time that nobody really knows exactly what motivates a lot of these events he's been incredibly quiet throughout the campaign he's not really thought to campaign in any traditional way which has made it very difficult for his incumbent petro poroshenko to take him on mr poroshenko claims that selenski is actually not an ordinary joe he's actually backed by a corrupt oligarchy who has all the billions of dollars of ukrainian money and he is no person to run the country when it's still very much all with russia and with russian backed separatists in the east but some help or string co's messages fail to resonate with ukrainian votes it is and if those polls of the believe they will

to have a stunning victory to this political odd unknown fights are what the new zealand promised the breakup ukraine's political system question is is he going to be able to rule. the presidency used to be president of ukraine in reality like his character al-jazeera is rather stable to keeping on basing for us and cast thank you robin. well people living in libya's capital have reported hearing airstrikes and explosions overnight as ward cleaver have to tries to take control of tripoli the city's only functioning airport has now been reopened after a nearby fighting force to to shut down fifteen have to fighters were killed on saturday along with thirteen soldiers from the tripoli government side after it began an offensive to retake the capital three weeks ago he's fighting against the un recognized government who is based there out of there as head has more from the

capital. under cover of forces to libya as you know is the government advance and whether it will be so east of the capital. they're trying to push forces lhuillier towards unfair have to out over aims are unable. civil military units joined together in a number of flash points to form a defense called on freezing have to his forces of tripoli government to warplanes targeted have to his forces locations near the syrian city around eighty kilometers south of tripoli that. your forces providing fire support to our ground operations you know me is trying to flank our forces from the beck but they have failed in the face of the strength of our fighters and the experience of our fighters it has become a war of attrition so the sicht as good as controlled by the. military sources with the u.n.

recognized the government say they're preparing to launch an offensive in the next few days to retake the former international airport they want to push to discuss has been a shared a strategic supply point for have to his forces involved in the fighting southeast of the capital some analysts believe forces loyal to the tripoli government have an advantage as they try to hold off have to advance the strengths. our inability to understand the area national gini backed forces on the stand tripoli southern parts of tripoli the western parts of tripoli where the clashes are taking place they understand. the local the local roads the local deserts the backyards off of the battlefield and as we've seen there hasn't been. any long or stable. advance by the on those locations

since. you and recognized the government is accusing after the forces of committing war crimes by targeting residential areas with heavy weapons. two weeks of fighting has forced thousands of civilians to leave their homes. the military general prosecutor in tripoli issued arrest warrant against hefted and other military officers there accused of targeting grizz eventually areas including an airport the only operational airport in the city the latest move on tripoli by have to his forces has derailed a peace conference that was due to be held this month in the city over the dermis libya has two competing administrations since twenty fourteen and violence has followed among their raver armed groups many libyans now fear that the next few months could bring even more interest to billet in. tripoli.

several senior members of sudan's former ruling party have reportedly been arrested thousands of demonstrators are keeping up the pressure on the ruling transitional military council they want inquiries into alleged abuses carried out by the former regime. well it's the second day of voting in egypt's controversial referendum which could extend president a bill for sale cc's term until twenty thirty the poll is happening over three days but rights groups say the referendum won't be free or fair voters are also deciding on whether to allow the president to appoint top judges and to expand the role of the military security has been increased across egypt. hello i'm the star in doha with the headlines on al-jazeera bomb attacks in sri lanka are reported to have killed at least one hundred fifty six people and injured

over four hundred more several churches and hotels were targeted in three cities sri lankan police say the attacks were coordinated and the prime minister has called for an emergency security council meeting and the scene at hospitals in the capital is increasingly frantic as casualties arrive and family and friends seek more information or voting has begun in the runoff election in ukraine between incumbent president petro poroshenko and the political novice comedian rajan is a lenski the latest opinion poll suggests zelinsky is well ahead of poroshenko the election is a decisive one for the country of forty four million people with a lenski proposing direct talks with russia to resolve the conflict in eastern ukraine. people living in libya's capital have reported hearing airstrikes and explosions overnight as warlord khalifa haftar tries to take control of tripoli the city's only functioning airport has now been reopened after

a nearby fighting forced it to shut down clear for half the began an offensive to retake the capital three weeks ago he's fighting against the united nations recognized government that's based there several senior members of saddam's former ruling party have reportedly been arrested thousands of demonstrators are keeping up the pressure on the ruling transitional military council they want inquiries into alleged abuses carried out by the former regime the public prosecutor says x. president al bashir is being investigated for money laundering. and it's the second day of voting in egypt's controversial referendum which could extend president i will first cc's term until twenty thirty the poll is happening over three days but rights groups say the referendum won't be free or fair voters are also deciding on whether to allow the president to appoint top judges and to expand the role of the military security has been increased across egypt well those are the headlines join

me for more news here after talked to al jazeera. al jazeera. and. every. only. you can. see. it's the one riddle that seems almost impossible to solve look at any major city regardless of political or economic system and the chances are it's not solve the basic issue for its citizens how to strike a balance between supply and demand for housing and in that dilemma lies

a real human rights problem at least according to the un special rapporteur to adequate housing leylandii for how she was appointed in twenty fourteen and the pictures she's painting of this difficult situation isn't pretty given how persistent and pervasive it is around the world a natural question to ask is is there any solution and any particular or easily identifiable calls. we discussed this real and complex question with. on talk to al-jazeera and. special rockets on the right to adequate housing thank you for talking to al-jazeera we'll have a discussion about the global housing and homelessness problem but first let me ask you about that title special report. explain to us what that means what you

do and who you report to sure i wasn't. pointed by the un human rights council which is pretty much the highest human rights body within the u.n. system and i am appointed as a kind of global watchdog at least that's how the media presents me and my job is to monitor and assess how people are doing with respect to their right to housing in countries around the world so it's a global mandate and i look at things like homelessness the adequacy of housing the affordability of housing forced evictions those sorts of things my job is also to kind of develop the right to housing to some degree to right thematic reports to help states understand what does the right to housing actually mean and how can it be implemented in a practical way. i also try to hold states accountable to their human rights obligations not an easy task but certainly

a really important one and in this day and age let's start with the basics you talk about the right to housing where is it written down that everyone has a right to housing yet so it's in the universal declaration of human rights for example article twenty six everyone has the right to an adequate standard of living including adequate housing it's in a document celebrates his seventieth birthday right now that's right exactly so you know if that is the main articulation and i like that articulation because it sits there amidst all of the human rights you know and that's the way i view housing it has tentacles into every other human right practically think about the right to life and security of the person but it's in a whole host of treaties the most recent recent treaty took to come into being the one on persons with disabilities it includes the right to adequate housing it's in an articulation of economic social and cultural rights a treaty of both those rights it's articulated there it's actually one of the most articulated economic and social rights out there so there has been

a lot. of writing in activism on the right to housing the right to adequate housing difficult words no what is adequate who decides what is adequate yeah so it's funny because it's so obvious what might be adequate housing what we say is that under international human rights law and there is a un committee that has talked about this through what they call a general comment that housing is not just about four walls and a roof it is about four walls and a roof but it's not just about that it's about living in a place where you have peace security and most importantly dignity and once you start playing with the idea of dignity well you can imagine what that means it means living in a place with proper sanitation and basic services toilets running water it means living in a place that's close to employment so that you can actually generate an income for

your for your family your house all of it means living close to health care services child care services it means having security of tenure and that's a cornerstone cornerstone of the right to housing in other words you should not be fearful that you're going to lose your home like that. those are that you know the basic tenets it means living in a place without experiencing discrimination having access to housing without discrimination so adequacy is actually fairly well defined and in this you know right now affordability is a key component of adequate housing and the way affordability is defined is based on what a household income is so it has housing has to be affordable to people based on their actual income not based on what the market can bear you to find it very clearly let's now talk about how many people in the world do not have that now i preparing to talk to you been trying to read all the statistics you're an expert on this i've been trying to get up to speed it seems to me the last time

a really big global survey. it was done was a long time ago two thousand and five when they came up with the use of one hundred million homeless worldwide and one point six billion people lacked laughing adequate housing that's some time ago over a decade ago yes as the situation got worse or better yes i mean i suspect the situation has only got worse if i look at my daily reality in my email inbox i can only say that there are so many troubling issues on in the area of housing right now so i think those figures are probably outdated and things have probably got worse we do know for example that approximately nine hundred million people that's a quarter of the world's population are living in informal settlements informal settlements slums that is without all of those elements of adequacy that i was talking about with often without basic services certainly without security of tenure so i mean it's a it's

a huge percentage of the world's population right this is a very very urgent and serious matter if you have whatever figures of homelessness and how you define homelessness even if you just look at street homelessness tell me a city you've been to where you haven't seen street homelessness right you talk about these informal settlement. shantytowns those are some call him call him because some of the people there see that this is a community and they don't actually want to move from those places to that that's exactly right and one of the things that i find fascinating about informal settlements is the dual nature on the one hand. people are experiencing extreme violations of human rights in those informal settlements or slums right no no toilets and no sanitation i mean the horror of that we can all imagine no showers crumbling structures of fear of the vixen all the time so that's on the one hand the reality on the other hand i've visited many informal settlements the vibrancy.

in those places the sense of community the way they will even though they don't have a paved road they will name their streets they will give each house a number they will ensure there's a community center where people can meet and talk and discuss there is a vibrancy there and people do want to remain in their homes of course some people have lived in informal settlements for decades and generations so of course they don't want to leave and in fact under international human rights law that's the standard upgrading should happen in an ensuite two or as we say on site way in other words don't remove people from their homes unless there is absolutely no other option i've been looking at some of the figures or trying to find some of the figures for some of the key countries and obviously the problem is going to be worst in the places where there are more people particularly more people living in urban areas and it's difficult to get the real figures nigeria i've seen estimates

of twenty four point four homeless people estimates in india an official figure of one point seven seven million but then the mess to much of seventy eight million the figures vary widely even here where we are right now where in new york in the u.s. official figures much smaller than the rest much of up to three point five million homeless do you believe this problem is seriously under reported and if so. you can decide that homeless population is people living rough on the streets and then you're going to get one figure you're going to go around and do a count on a single night how many people do you count on your street that's going to be a small figure you could then say no my definition is on the streets and in shelters so then you're going to get a slightly bigger figure but what about all of those people who are couch surfing living with family friends or relatives etc because they have no other place to go that's

a population that is almost impossible to measure we know. no that that in every country that there is that population out there we know that and so the estimates are going to vary widely based on definition i don't think that homelessness has been viewed as the human rights issue that it is the i don't think it's been given the sort of urgency of of political will of social policy that it deserves and so i think that's also part of the problem let's talk about the life of someone who's homeless and while your definition whether it's in an informal settlements rushy living on the streets how does it affect someone's life not just not having somewhere to live what other ways to save affect them for example the hells. this is a population that is deeply traumatized you can imagine. a day on the street it would be completely traumatizing for us in light of you know where where how we're

positioned it might imagine a week on the street imagine a year imagine five years it is a completely traumatizing experience and what we find is that the that experience can actually trigger psychosocial disability people are always like oh the people who are homeless or they're all crazy they're all going to have some you know psychological problems many many people who hit the streets are completely of sound mind it's the trauma of being on the street that can trigger psycho social disability the trauma of living on the street is what often leads people to do things like drugs right it's to numb the experience i've talked to many people in the united states in particular i was out in california and just saw some harrowing situations people with gainful employment working in hospitals working in animation studios living on the streets and telling me that the trauma of that has

led them to under. activities they never thought that they would be doing you mentioned life in expectancy one figure i saw came from the u.k. from the national health service in the u.k. the average homeless person has a life expectancy of forty seven years now if you go back to the wider population in the u.k. you'd have to go back about one hundred years for that to be the average life expectancy this is shameful isn't it i think it's shameful and you know you gave figures of homeless rates in different countries and you said you know what of course in the bigger countries there's going to be more people who are homeless but the way in which we deal with that sort of an analysis of homelessness is not so much based on population size and ratio but we look at the wealth and resources of a country and then we look at housing and home inadequate housing and homelessness because of course there's there should be a correlation wealthy nation.