ABSTRACT
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 25) states that everyone has the right to a standard of living that is adequate for their health and wellbeing, including access to food, clothing, housing, and medical care. However, nearly seven decades since the international community declared housing as a universal right, the lack of adequate shelter affects the lives of hundreds of millions across the globe. There is a diverse range of experiences of homelessness and an equally varied array of responses to homelessness from state systems around the world. This book features critical accounts of lived experiences and state responses to homelessness in selected countries in the Asia Pacific. It is intended for practitioners, students, educators, and researchers engaged with the issue of homelessness. Our aim is to enable readers to gain a broad understanding of what it means to be homeless in this corner of the globe. While the readers of this book will be unlikely to ever really ‘know’ and experience homelessness, we hope that this book will give them a general understanding of what it means to be homeless and how homelessness is regarded in these different countries in the region. The chapters in the book transport readers from one country to another, illustrating the sometimes subtle but more often stark differences in the definitions and lived experiences of homelessness.
