WORLD HUMAN RIGHTS CITIES FORUM 2016

SUMMARY

CONCEPT NOTE

Background

1. The 6th World Human Rights Cities Forum (WHRCF) will be held in Gwangju, Republic of Korea from 21 to 24 July 2016 under the theme of Building Human Habitat Friendly Cities: Urban Development, Housing and Environment.
2. This year’s venue, the Asia Culture Center, is significant by itself. It was built as the biggest cultural complex in modern Korea at the historical site of the former provincial hall in memory of the May 18 Democratization Movement.
3. The WHRCF is an annual gathering of key actors and stakeholders engaged in building a human rights city as a follow-up to five previous forums held since 2011 in order to implement the vision of a human rights city as articulated in the Gwangju Declaration on Human Rights Cities adopted on 17 May 2011 at the first WHRCF.
4. We are pleased to observe that for over 16 years, human rights have been increasingly inscribed in the agendas of local authorities all over the globe, from the European Charter of Human Rights in the City (2000) signed by more than 350 European towns and cities to those of Montreal (2006), Mexico (2010), Gwangju (2012) and Vienna (2012) to the adoption of the Global Charter-Agenda of Human Rights in the City (2011) adopted by UCLG.
5. However, further progress is still needed to make human rights a reality in our cities. According to the Gwangju Declaration on Human Rights City of 2011, human rights mainstreaming emphasizes the human rights-based approach where all inhabitants, regardless of race, gender, colour, nationality, ethnic background and social status in particular minorities and any other groups who are socially vulnerable and marginalized can participate fully in the decision-making, policy-implementation and monitoring processes that affect their lives in accordance with human rights principles such as non-discrimination, rule of law, participation, empowerment, transparency and accountability.
6. This year, the WHRCF will take place in the particular context of preparing a new agenda at the UN Habitat III conference to be launched by the UN States, local governments and civil societies in Quito (Ecuador) from 15 to 17 October 2016. As the third conference of the United Nations, after Habitat I (Vancouver, 1976) and Habitat II (Istanbul, 1996), Habitat III aims to set a new sustainable global urban agenda, in a world where 55% of the population live in cities and where urban dwellers will represent more than 66% of the world population in 2050. As a result, international community is expecting Habitat III conference to set the basis to address the challenges of a sustainable urbanization of the planet. To that end, the New Global Urban Agenda should concretize and fulfill the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2015 and the COP21 Agreement of Paris in December 2015.
7. Thus, this urban reality tackles crucial questions for the future of the majority of the world population: a) How to build cities for everyone without excluding millions of the people marginalized and disadvantaged in social and spatial borders, b) How to build cities to be spaces for good living, providing opportunities for all the inhabitants, c) How to include new migrants, d) What measures to take to allow local governments to guarantee rights to education, healthcare, healthy environment, employment, participation, culture, security among others, e) How to guarantee access to public services and to improve urban mobility, f) How to face climate change that mostly affect the poorest, and g) How to promote intercultural and intergenerational cities without discrimination, where different worlds can participate in.

Building Human Habitat Friendly Cities, a common approach for Habitat III Agenda

1. Under the theme of Building Human Habitat Friendly Cities, the Forum aims to address the key issues of a human-rights based approach to this agenda, relating the crucial challenges of Urban Development, Housing, and Environment to the internationally recognized human rights norms and following the Gwangju Guiding Principles for Human Rights Cities.
2. The WHRCF 2016 will be held just before the last preparatory committee of Habitat III takes place in Surabaya (Indonesia) from 25 to 27 July, 2016, where it would be crucial to attend with the outcomes and commitments of human rights cities network to show to the international community that human rights cities are possible and necessary.
3. Since its first edition in 2011, the WHRCF has given a common definition of a ‘human rights city’, strengthening human rights cities movement all around the world and contributing to the diffusion of the Gwangju Guiding Principles for Human Rights Cities among civil society, local governments, national and international institutions.
4. As defined in WHRCF 2011, a Human Rights City is ‘both a local community and a socio-political process in the local context where human rights play a key role as the fundamental values and guiding principles’. Indeed, human rights cities respond to a “human rights governance in the local context where local governments, local parliaments, civil society, private sector organizations and other stakeholders work together to improve the quality of life for all inhabitants in the spirit of partnership based on human rights standards and norms.”
5. In September 2015, the United Nations Humans Rights Council Advisory Committee presented its report on the Role of Local Government in the promotion and protection of Human Rights (A/HRC/30/49). It acknowledges that local governments are responsible together with the states for the respect, promotion and protection human rights. At the same time, this report shows that local governments are crucial actors for the promotion and protection of human rights such as education, health, housing, environment, law and order, and the right to water because of their proximity with citizens in performing their functions of providing public services. Besides, they are often the ones that prevent discrimination against minorities.
6. The WHRCF in Gwangju has played a very important role in the adoption of this report, through its 4th and 5th editions where two experts workshops took place to feed that report. This year, we should go further, creating the links between the great work of knowledge, exchanges of practices and generation of ideas done so far in the framework of the network of Human Rights Cities and Habitat III process.
7. The concept of Human Habitat Friendly Cities refers to People Friendly Cities that puts the human beings at the center of attention so that cities can be a place of collective well-being, based on the full exercise of rights for all. City life is supposed to offer diverse functions to people. Cities are a) a place of habitat, b) a place of connections with others through practices such as citizenship, work, culture, leisure, and c) a place of production and consumption. In a few words, as Leilani Farha, UN Special Reporter for Housing Right, wrote in her latest report, cities should convey various urban rights. Although Habitat II acknowledged the centrality of Human Rights, the last decades have seen the emergence of competitive cities as a main pattern for urban development. This approach has not been able to convey equity, but by various policies designed to attract more investments, it has contributed to the financialization of cities resulting in speculative process. Hence, today, cities are not spaces of fulfilling their first function for people. It is being increasingly difficult in every part of the world to live well in cities and to meet all the needs due to the limited access to housing, jobs, markets, qualitative public spaces and leisure. At the same time, places of exclusion and segregation in cities are growing. One of the alternatives should consist in putting people at the center of the processes of the city, through a human rights based approach.
8. In that way, the 6th WHRCF will focus on three main issues in order to rethink the way we build cities, putting people at the core of the urban fabric: Urban Development, Housing, and Environment. There are three crucial questions to build People Friendly Cities: a) The issue of Urban Development will make a critical analysis on the main paradigm of competitive cities and its consequences in the last decade that are reflected at the spatial level of a city through urban inequalities, privatization of public spaces and services, growing economic development programs based on infrastructures projects that in some cases are exclusion-generators; b) Through the issue of housing, this Forum will address the issue of the growing limitations for people to access to housing in cities due to the increase of prices, development of inadequate housing and slums as poverty gaps grow in cities and their periphery and surroundings. The issue of housing will be also related to the urban rights that people should own while living in cities. Alternative policies and practices to guarantee housing rights such as social production of habitat, collective housing and public housing will be presented; c) Finally, through the issue of environment, the forum will address the big impact of cities in climate change, and its consequences in terms of social inequalities, and it will also insist on the need of recognizing environmental rights for urban dwellers based on more balanced urban-rural linkages, urban ecology and new ecological process, and mobility policies.

Objectives

The main goals of the Forum are: a) To expand the human rights cities’ movement worldwide in order to promote solidarity and mutual cooperation among them. It is believed that human rights mainstreaming through the human rights-based approach if rightly and fully implemented at all stages of a human rights city including budgeting, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, can and must be a key to successful innovation to make a city a common space for solidarity for all beyond local and national boundaries. b) To make concrete proposals to contribute to human rights based approach at the Habitat III conference. The programs and the final declaration would be conceived as input to the process of definition of the new habitat agenda. After the forum a delegation of cities, in alliance with the Indonesian Human Rights cities movement will take the proposals to the Surabaya Preparatory Committee. c) To exchange concrete experiences related to Human Rights mainstreaming in local administration and Human Rights implementation mechanisms at local level. d) To develop knowledge on human rights and particularly in new fields such as environmental rights where local governments can play an important role. d) To strengthen the cooperation between local governments, civil society organizations, national institutions and international and regional protection of Human Rights bodies.

Organizers and attendance

1. The Forum is hosted by the Metropolitan City of Gwangju as a co-president of UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy(CISDP) and the Gwangju Metropolitan Office of Education, and organized by the Gwangju International Center and UCLG-CISDP in collaboration with Korea Human Rights Foundation (KHRF) and other local civil society organizations, under the guidance of the WHRCF Promotion Committee composed of experts from various sectors and organizations with the support of co-sponsors such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the Ministry of Justice(MOJ), the Ministry of Education(MOE), National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK), the Korean National Commission for UNESCO(KNCU) and the Asia Pacific Center for Education for International Understanding (APCEIU).
2. In the framework of its co-presidency of UCLG-CISDP, the Gwangju City Hall will welcome the last preparatory meeting for the Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights, during the WHRCF.
3. About 1000 participants both from Korea and abroad, mainly representatives from ‘human rights cities’, human rights NGOs, grassroots community-based organizations, local parliamentarians, academics as well as UN human rights experts are expected to take part in the meeting.

Agenda and Program Structure

1. The meeting will have several types of sessions and activities: Opening and closing ceremonies, a plenary round-table session, thematic workshops, special sessions and human rights tours. Simultaneous interpretation in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese, and Korean will be provided for a plenary session, respective thematic sessions and some special sessions.
2. The plenary session immediately before the opening ceremony will offer high level representatives from cities, international organisations, civil society and academia from different regions of the world to present on Building Human Habitat Friendly Cities. The presenters will form a round-table to further share their perspectives and experiences among themselves and audiences.
3. There will also be seven special sessions including a) Expert Workshop on Local Government and Human Rights Guidelines, b) Local Government Human Rights Commission Workshop, c) Human Rights Cities Networking, d) Human Rights Education for Public Officials, e) UCLG-CISDP Annual Meeting, f) NGO’s Evaluation on Human Rights Policies, and g) Human Rights Paper Presentation
4. Eight thematic sessions will be respectively organized by relevant civic organizations in Gwangju in cooperation with Gwangju International Center. Simultaneous translations in English and Korean will be provided while the following themes are addressed: a) City and Environment, b) City and Gender, c) Disability and Human Rights, d) Social Economy and Urban Regeneration, e) The Elderly and Housing, f) City and Child/Youth, g) Education Policy and School’s Autonomy, and h) Migrants/Refugees and Human Rights
5. The World Human Rights Cities Forum 2016 is a sign of continued commitment of the people and the municipal government of Gwangju as well as an invitation to all like-minded local government officials and human rights advocates to the vision of a Human Rights City for promoting solidarity and cooperation towards a universal culture of human rights beyond national and city boundaries among all urban residents and inhabitants. Gwangju is firmly committed to this vision as it is consistent with the Spirit of Gwangju for the 21st century.

PROGRAMS

PROGRAM BOOK

You can download the program book by clicking the attached file below.