Geneva Academy
11 May 2020
In an online conference co-organized by the Geneva Human Rights Platform, UN-Habitat, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Geneva Cities Hub, around 60 experts – local activists, academics as well as representatives from local authorities, civil society, international organizations and the private sector – exchanged around best practices to ground the development of cities in a human rights framework.
‘Participants in the meeting stressed the importance of local governments to promote and protect human rights at the local level. While cities and local government are currently not represented in international fora like the UN, their voice could be brought via other actors like UN-Habitat or the Geneva Cities Hub‘ explains Kamelia Kemileva, Director a.i. of the Geneva Cities Hub.
The meeting also discussed categories of vulnerability at the city level such as elderly people and people with disabilities but also people living with HIV/AIDS, migrants and LGBTQI people.
‘For some of these groups, their very own ‘illegality’ or ‘criminality’ is a primary barrier to inclusion in cities, housing rights frameworks, and to their access to basic services and rights. The COVID-19 crisis only exacerbates these inequalities, pushing members of these groups to find informal solutions, which at the end of the day are counterproductive to their intentions and needs’ explains Kamelia Kemileva.
Participants also reiterated that human rights are not aspirations, or social objectives but legal standards that can and must be built into the legal architecture of different systems – housing, public health, transport, etc. They stressed that rights can only be fully respected and enforced if they are embedded into legal norms, notably at the local level.
This meeting is the first of a longer series that aims at developing operational documents for local governments, city-level practitioners and decision-makers, as well as national governments interested in the local governance issues.
These documents will provide guidance on how to translate human rights standards at the city level, notably in relation to gender; inclusion of children and youth; inclusion of older persons and persons with disabilities; as well as the inclusion of groups at risk of marginalization like refugees or indigenous peoples, but also within city contexts groups that are less-mentioned but also vulnerable like sex-workers and drugs-users.
‘This expert group meeting is the first of a series on inclusive cities. Of course, we have a selfish motive: we want to pick the brains of the best human rights thinkers, practitioners and get them to tell us how we can mainstream a human rights-based approach across our work through these domains of change and the outcome areas of our Strategic Plan. The engagement doesn't end here, it just begins here. We also want to bring this group together as a wider community of practice to work with us as we go about developing some of the ideas further into guiding principles, key indicators, tools, methodology, etc., implementing them over the next three years’ stresses Shipra Narang Suri, Chief, Urban Practices Branch, UN-HABITAT.
‘It is key to ensure that the international human rights framework and decisions taken by Geneva-based human rights bodies are implemented at the local level. We are therefore thrilled to be involved in this project as it represents a new dimension for us that includes local governments. This can help bridging discussions between Geneva and the field’ explains Felix Kirchmeier, Executive Director of the Geneva Human Rights Platform.
‘The Geneva Cities Hub fosters this dialogue and facilitates relations between organizations in Geneva and local governments’ underlines Kamelia Kemileva.
News
Domenico Zipoli
From 7 to 9 December 2021, the Geneva Human Rights Platform conducted in Sierra Leone and in collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat a pilot of a United Nations (UN) treaty bodies (TBs) focused review – i.e. a review carried out between the reporting cycles at the national level and designed to discuss how countries implement specific recommendations issued by UN TBs.
News
UN Photo/Violaine Martin
Olivier de Frouville, Professor of Public Law at the University of Paris 2 and Director of the Paris Human Rights Center, joined the Geneva Human Rights Platform Advisory Board.
Event
UN Photo / Violaine Martin
This Human Rights Conversation aims at sensitising Western-centric stakeholders – both academics and practitioners active in multilateral fora – to legitimate criticism coming from the Global South through the so-called TWAIL movement.
Event
L'édition 2022 de la triolgie ‘Exhumer la violence politique: 3 films, 3 débats’ débute avec la projection du film Nuestras Madres de de César Díaz.
Short Course
ICRC
This short course, which can be followed in Geneva or online, discusses the extent to which states may limit and/or derogate from their international human rights obligations in order to prevent and counter-terrorism and thus protect persons under their jurisdiction.
Training
UN Photo / Jean-Marc Ferré
This training course will explore the origin and evolution of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) and its functioning in Geneva and will focus on the nature of implementation of the UPR recommendations at the national level.
Project
ICRC
After having provided academic support to the negotiation of the UN Declaration for ten years, this research project focuses on the implementation of the UN Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas.
Project
The Geneva Human Rights Platform contributes to this review process by providing expert input via different avenues, by facilitating dialogue on the review among various stakeholders, as well as by accompanying the development of a follow-up resolution to 68/268 in New York and in Geneva.
Publication
Geneva Academy