Cities lead by example when it comes to transparent, participatory and accountable governance including budgets in order to build urban societies free from fear and free from want – this is how Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Nada Al-Nashif put it when opening the Expert meeting on enhancing capacity-building for local governments to incorporate human rights into all their work on 28 August 2023 in Geneva, Switzerland.
The distilled common message of the distinguished speakers in their interventions was that local authorities need human rights knowledge and skills, should base their governance on evidence and collect human rights relevant data, should apply a human rights-based approach to planning, and should use benchmarking within local Action Plans on Human Rights to translate international standards into good governance and local budgets.
At our next Academy “Human Rights Go Local – What Works”, we will bring together around hundred participants from local authorities, international organisations, academia, and civil society for an exchange on the elaboration, implementation, and evaluation of Local Human Rights Action Plans under the title “Action for Accountability”. Learn more
The new Toolkit on Equality Chapter on “Equality Data Collection” will present a number of methods and approaches to collect and analyze data as input for a human rights-based approach to local policies as well as an instrument for evaluating those policies with respect to their impact on rights-holders. Learn more
Both result-orientation and human rights budgeting were mentioned by the speakers at the Expert meeting on enhancing capacity-building for local governments several times. Our last Academy’s Outcome Document as well as the “Human Rights Go Local publication series” Volume 4 deal with such concepts and practices from all over the world under the title “Governing the City by Human Rights Objectives”.
People-centered policy-making at the local level means taking concrete action: Explore what sports can contribute to a cohesive society and to accelerate the inclusion and participation of formerly marginalized people in your community, and find out what sports can contribute to the accessibility and achievement of education. Learn more
