Abstract

As is well known, the 2008 Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights vested the homonym UN Committee with the competence of receiving and as-sessing the individual communications submitted against States parties to both the Covenant and its Optional Protocol. Notwithstanding the recent come-to-function of this procedure, the Commit-tee has already adopted a wealthy of views, mostly on the right to adequate housing under Art. 11 of the Covenant in context of forced evictions of occupants without legal title. The present paper aims at systematising the positions of the Committee in this regard. It provides an overview of the main content of the right to adequate housing, as well as of the procedural and substantive guaran-tees to protect people against forced evictions incompatible with the Covenant. Subsequently, the paper briefly analyses the recent views adopted by the Committee against in Italy and examines whether the specific norms of the Italian criminal code (currently in force or possibly to be intro-duced) are in conformity with the Committee’s interpretation of Art. 11 of the Covenant.