PACO, ISSN: 2035-6609 - Copyright © 2023 - University of Salento, SIBA: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it PArtecipazione e COnflitto http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco ISSN: 1972-7623 (print version) ISSN: 2035-6609 (electronic version) PACO, Issue 16(1) 2022: 87-105 DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v16i1p87 Published 15 March, 2023 RESEARCH ARTICLE Irreparable damage: international housing rights and local housing struggles in Rome after 2020 Chiara Davoli University of Siena Stefano Portelli University of Leicester ABSTRACT: The recent interventions of the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) to suspend evictions of tenants in Rome, Italy, allows us to shed light into the forthcoming social catastrophe caused by Italian housing policies, and into the new advancements of social movements for housing. As two scholar-activists involved both in research on housing and in political actions to prevent evictions, we describe how housing movements in Rome are facing the contradictions between local and international discourses on the right to housing. KEYWORDS: evictions, housing policy, rental housing, rent strike, human rights, housing rights, activism, Italy CORRESPONDING AUTHOR(S): chiara.davoli@unisi.it / chiaradav@hotmail.it; stefanoportelli1976@gmail.com 1. Introduction In the spring of 2021, a migrant woman we will call Zenaida was risking eviction from her flat in a working-class neighborhood of the Eastern periphery of Rome. The threat of eviction was exacerbating a condition of extreme vulnerability due to both her precarious employment as a Work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non commercial- Share alike 3.0 Italian License