The UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights and the city council of Madrid, are organizing a meeting of cities for Human Rights and the Right to the City, next 18 April, in the framework of the UCLG Executive Bureau and the World Forum on Urban Violence and Education for Coexistence and Peace. This meeting will be held in the Patio de Cristales, in Plaza de la Villa, 5, from 11 to 13:30.
Debating global strategies for cities and territories of Rights
Besides a global pushback on the guarantee of human rights during the last years, numerous local governments from all over the world, along with their citizens, committed themselves to be places of human rights. Therefore, local governments such as the city council of Madrid, which has just adopted a Strategic Plan for Human Rights, seek to apply the human-rights based approach in their public action as a way to guarantee the right to the city for all, without discrimination.
Given the challenges and opportunities of undertaking this approach, next 18 April session will raise different issues: How to strengthen the common voice of local government for human rights and the right to the city? What articulation with civil society from the local level to the global one? What mechanisms of coordinated advocacy for human rights, local democracy and their defenders?
Local leaders and representatives from the civil society will attend the meeting
Michel Forst, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights defenders will attend the session, as well as representatives from the active local governments of the Committee. Human Rights organizations will also take part to the meeting. After the debate session, the Committee’s 2016 activities report and Action Plan for 2017 will be presented.