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Ecuador

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In 2008, Ecuador approved its new Constitution. The text, agreed to in the Constitutional Assembly, is the first in the world to recognize the right to adequate and dignified housing under the explicit heading of the right to the city and a secure and healthy habitat. 

The new Constitution, echoing the demands of numerous social movements, is thus a pioneer in terms of constitutional recognition of the right to the city, a right that is related to democratic management of the urban area, to the full exercise of citizenship and to the social and environmental functions of both property and the city itself. 

Nevertheless, the full application of the Constitutional text will require the removal of enormous legal and material obstacles that have, in the last few decades, turned Ecuador’s cities and countryside into areas characterized by exclusion and injustice.