A/HRC/31/54 number of homeless households is scarce in all regions. 62 Initiatives to count the number of homeless people have often emerged organically from local communities and address variable local conditions and challenges in different ways. Local governments, service providers, ombudspersons and human rights institutions can play important roles in ensuring that data are accurate and inclusive. This, however, makes it challenging to develop common measures across cities and internationally. 68. Some States have also been reluctant to collect and provide reliable data, perceiving it to be contrary to their interests, particularly if they are seeking to attract development or tourism or to host mega events. Data collected by governments need to be supplemented by information that may only be available to non-governmental organizations and communitybased organizations working directly with homeless populations. 69. The Institute of Global Homelessness has brought together researchers and civil society organizations working on homelessness from around the world to take up these challenges, urging a renewed commitment to achieving the most useful global measures through the adoption of a standard approach based on collaboration with governments. 63 The Special Rapporteur is hopeful that collaborative initiatives such as this will provide a foundation for significant advances in understanding global patterns and challenges in relation to homelessness and enhanced accountability to the obligation to eliminate it. 70. While improved statistical data will be important to guide public policy and to hold governments accountable, adjustments will need to be made for the inevitable limitations, omissions and possible distortions in available data. Challenges associated with measuring homelessness should not be allowed to encourage policies that respond only to the visible and more easily measured forms of homelessness. Homelessness among single men living on the streets or using emergency shelters is more easily measured. It is more difficult to measure homelessness among women, children and young people living temporarily with family or friends, or among those most marginalized and precariously housed within informal settlements, who may be altogether left out of census or data collection. It is equally difficult to identify and measure homelessness among indigenous households or communities displaced from ancestral lands. Members of ethnic minorities may not wish to be identified by authorities. In Kenya, for instance, many of the people who become homeless because of ethnic violence did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal. 64 Policy responses and assessments of progress in eliminating homelessness must make allowances for less visible dimensions of homelessness that may not have been measured. 71. It is also important to supplement data on services used by homeless people with estimates of those who are homeless but do not access services. When homelessness is assessed by counting the number of people sleeping in shelters or using services, improvements in those services may appear to increase the number of homeless, when in fact lower numbers simply reflect some improvements in meeting emergency needs. On the other hand, some cities have denied services as a punitive means of attempting to reduce the numbers of homeless in their jurisdiction. In those cases, lower numbers of people in homeless shelters is evidence of a serious violation of human rights. It is always important, therefore, to look behind numbers. Policies and accountability measures based exclusively on raw numbers are inadequate or incomplete from a human rights standpoint. Raw 62 63 64 See http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/techreport/hhchar.pdf, para. 68. See Institute of Global Homelessness, “A global framework for understanding and measuring homelessness” (2015), available from http://works.bepress.com/dennis_culhane/188. See V. Metcalfe et al., Sanctuary in the city? Urban displacement and vulnerability in Nairobi (London, 2011), available from www.rescue.org/sites/default/files/resource-file/ Sanctuary%20in%20the%20City.pdf. 17