On the occasion of the Meeting of the Americas on Climate Change, UCLG and the City of Bogota signed an agreement so the Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights of UCLG conduct along with the Department of Social Integration of Bogota the Human Rights Monitoring in this city. This agreement strengthens the commitment of this member government towards a more inclusive city, and intends to illustrate in a concrete way the local application of the principles of the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City.
Beyond implementing public policies that promote social welfare and guarantee the enjoyment of human rights in the city, it is necessary that local governments find mechanisms to evaluate and monitor the depth of the impact of such policies in their cities. For this purpose, the City of Bogotá has signed on September 23 an agreement with the CSIPDHR, which starts a pilot project of Human Rights Monitoring, in light of the policies implemented from 2012 to 2015, during the Government Project “Bogotá Humana”.
Through the integrated development plan "Bogota Humana", Bogota implemented public policies very focused in the fight against multidimensional poverty, placing people at the center of the government's concerns. Therefore, Bogotá, through its policies for Children, Elders and Street Dwellers - among others - has relied on a rights-based approach, as a way to renew public action with citizen participation, prioritizing the groups most in need.
In this project, Bogotá chose to focus the Monitoring in three important groups: (1) children, (2) the elderly and (3) Street Dwellers, as they represent emblematic focal points which reflect the scope of this social program and act as catalysts for social change for the territory as a whole.
Thus, the CSIPDHR and an advisory team from the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra and the Mexican Center COPEVI (both with long experience in the study of Human Rights) will conduct a participatory study to assess the impact of Bogotá Humana's policies through a methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative indicators, workshops and visits, and has as a base and main pillar, the principles of the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City.
The results of this work will be disseminated during an official Restitution Meeting for the population of Bogota, to be held on November 20, 2015.
This is the pilot implementation of a new program of the Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights, which aims to strengthen local governments for the design and implementation of public policies in these areas. This project allows the advance towards the collection of concrete practices that illustrate the contributions of the implementation of the Global Charter-Agenda for Human Rights in the City by local governments.