The Future We Want: The City We Need Is A Human Rights City!
By People's Movement for Human Rights Learning
05 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Given that two billion people live in cities today and that four billion people will live in cities in 15 to 20 years, a new urban paradigm is needed to ensure that urban dwellers know and own the support systems to live with one another in ways that reflect their hopes expectations for economic and social justice and the moral values they share in today's fast changing world. The future we want is one in which women and men design, plan, build and manage their cities to make them sustainable and to contribute to harmonious development. This process of urban development will be enhanced immeasurably if it is guided and shaped by human rights, which provide both a holistic vision and a practical mission, enriching people’s daily lives. The mission we are proposing is for all urban dwellers—women and men, youth and children—to integrate learning human rights into their lives, to know and own human rights as a way of life. The systematic realization of this mission creates what is called a Human Rights City, in which all inhabitants join to assure a new reality: to belong in dignity in community with others, creating a new narrative for the future we want and the city they need. We have no other option!!
The Human Rights Cities Program: The Vision
living in a society where all citizens pledge to build a community based on equality and nondiscrimination; where all women and men actively participate in the decisions that affect their daily lives, guided by the human rights framework; where people work to overcome fear and impoverishment, a society that provides human security, access to food, clean water, housing, education, healthcare and work at livable wages, sharing these resources with all citizens—not as an act of charity, but as a realization of human rights. Such a city is a practical and viable model demonstrating that living in such a society is possible.
PDHRE, People's Movement for Human Rights Learning, works to develop, facilitate and implement the Human Rights Cities Program, facilitating the inhabitants’ efforts, along with local authorities, to use learning, dialogue and discussions as the basis for action. Human Rights Cities have developed around the world, based on the premise that all people wish and hope for social and economic justice, and on the belief that its achievement is a matter of dignity and rights rather than charity. It is time to reinvigorate the rich experience of the last 25 years of efforts to create and sustain such Human Rights Cities (http://www.pdhre.org/projects/hrcommun.html) and to affirm the effectiveness of internalizing the comprehensive human rights framework through an ongoing process of human rights learning. The global commitment to the concept of human rights learning is reflected, not only in the UN’s proclaiming a Decade of Human Rights Education (General Assembly resolution 49/184 of 23 December 1994), but more recent in three African-sponsored General Assembly resolutions adopted by consensus (resolution 62/171 of 2009, launching the “International Year of Human Rights Learning” and two resolution on the follow-up to the year, resolution 64/68 of 2011 and resolution 68/173 of 2013). In the latter resolution, the General Assembly encouraged Member States “to consider devoting the financial and human resources necessary to design and implement international, regional, national and local long-term human rights learning programmes of action aimed at broad-based and sustained human rights learning at all levels, in coordination with civil society, the media, the private sector, academia, parliamentarians and regional organizations, including the appropriate specialized agencies, funds and programmes of the United Nations system, and, where possible, to designate human rights cities.”
The Human Rights Cities Program: The Process
The process of establishing a Human Rights Cities begins with the creation of a steering committee representing all sectors of society, tasked with creating a new positive narrative about human rights as a way of life, and developing learning programs for various audiences.
The Steering Committee is responsible for drawing up a plan of action, which includes applying a gender perspective to a critical review of laws, policies, resource allocation and relationships that prevail in the city. Step by step, neighborhoods, schools, political, economic and social institutions, and NGOs, examine the human rights framework relating it to their traditional beliefs, collective memory and aspirations regarding environmental, economic and social justice issues. This process leads to the mapping and analysis of causes and symptoms of human rights deprivations, such poverty, and the designing of ways to achieve well being in their city. Appropriate conflict resolution is an inevitable consequence of the learning process as women and men work to secure the sustainability of their community as a viable, creative, caring society. As agents of change, people learn to mentor and monitor one another, and to identify, analyze, and document their needs. Among the most effective actions is developing an alternative participatory budget, reflecting a human rights perspective and as a means, inter alia, of implementing the Millennium Development Goals and the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda with a special focus on women, poverty alleviation, and the environment. Working with relevant constituencies, the steering committee designs and implements strategies and methodologies involving governing bodies, law enforcement agencies, public sector employees, religious groups, NGOs and community groups, as well as those working on issues of women, children, workers, indigenous peoples, poverty, education, food, water, housing, healthcare, environment and conflict resolution, and non-affiliated inhabitants. Human Rights Cities are thus a model for citizen's participation in urban development, with the distinctive feature of building the future of the city within a human rights framework.
Relation to Urban Renewal and National Urban Campaigns
To build the city in the 21st century, urban renewal programs will need to include explicit concern with human right norms and standards, so carefully articulated in the human rights framework of the United Nations. Urban renewal requires planning of socially and economically vibrant living spaces in an inclusive city, which is affordable and equitable. At its core, urban renewal is participatory and, to be effective, needs to apply human rights learning, building on the normative and empirical power of human rights as a tool in individual and collective efforts to address inequalities, injustices and abuses at home, in the work place, in the streets, prisons, courts, and more. Even in "democratic" societies, citizens and policy-makers must learn to understand human rights and the obligations and the responsibilities that they entail in a holistic and comprehensive way. They must learn to enforce human rights effectively and efficiently. This is the promise and responsibility their governments have undertaken when ratifying various human rights instruments.
A human rights framework for a new urban paradigm can be developed and experienced in Human Rights Cities all over the world. Urban planning anticipates not only calm moments of fair weather in cities but prepares for the storms. Similarly, human rights not only details the requirements for the flourishing of the human persons but also sets the boundaries of the unacceptable, in a sense, builds the banks of the river through which life can flow freely. And when floods come over the city, the people who own human rights strengthen the banks of the river to allow the inhabitants to continue to live in dignity, free from fear and want.
UN Habitat’s National Urban Campaign provides the approach to building equitable, prosperous and sustainable cities. Along with a safe and healthy city, a resilient city, a productive city, a planned city, and inclusive city, and a green city, the city we want is also a human rights city! The above-quoted language from GA resolution 68/173 provides a basis for discussing the ways to integrate human rights learning into this very unique, proactive, promising initiative of National Urban Campaigns.
For more information:
PDHRE - People's Movement for Human Rights Learning
526 West 111th Street, Suite 4E, New York, NY 10025 USA
Tel: 1-212-749-3156 * Cell 212-518-7505 *
[email protected] www.pdhre.org
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