Why are local and regional governments essential for promoting, fulfilling, and respecting human rights?
We are the first and most significant point of contact for people, being the level of government they turn to when facing obstacles such as lack of access to essential services, safety, and justice.
Through our daily work, local and regional governments have the capacity to drive meaningful change in our territories to guarantee the rights of all people, especially those who have been historically discriminated against or excluded.
In this sense, direct communication and close interaction with citizens are key pillars for strengthening participatory democracy. They allow the development of more relevant, fair, and transparent policies, as well as the orientation of public management toward the real needs of communities.
Local and regional governments have the opportunity to transform public policy—in all its areas—through a rights-based perspective, which has a concrete and positive impact on community life and promotes a new vision capable of shaping new human rights agendas at both the national and international levels.
Why are human rights relevant values and a useful framework for guiding local action?
The human rights approach constitutes the ethical and political framework of the Mexico City Mayor’s Office. From this framework, all public actions are built and sustained, placing human beings—both individually and collectively—at the center as rights-holders. This implies the need to create inclusive and equitable conditions without any form of distinction. This is reflected in the comprehensive and territorial focus of our policies, programs, and public actions, which aim for the effective, progressive, and sustainable exercise of rights. The rights-based approach sets the tone for a shift from sectoral to population-centered policies, which place the uniqueness of individuals and the indivisibility of their rights at the forefront. This is a significant innovation in public management and positions the Mexico City Mayor’s Office at the forefront in this regard. Policies centered on the uniqueness of individuals inherently require a comprehensive management strategy, demanding coordination between various levels of government, civil society, families, and communities.
Conviction, political will, and a popular mandate to move forward and guarantee a city with full rights for all its residents and visitors.
A firm belief that the exchange of knowledge and experiences, horizontal cooperation, solidarity, and strong collective action between governments and the people of cities and territories are essential forces in advancing toward and achieving the recognition, promotion, protection, and guarantee of all rights for all individuals.
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Bando 1: for a Habitable and Affordable City with Local Identity and Roots
This project comprises 14 measures to be implemented in Mexico City with the goal of ensuring the right to the city in the face of gentrification processes. Learn more here.
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Legislative and Public Policy Initiative for the Public Care System
Based on the recognition of the human right to care — to care, to be cared for, and self-care — and on the government’s shared responsibility in fulfilling this duty, the Public Care System of Mexico City brings together various social programs and territorial services.
Its purpose is to acknowledge, from a perspective of social and gender justice, the invisible care work performed by women, and to reduce and redistribute care work, in order to build a new social pact where the social organization of care is no longer defined by the existing sexual division of labor, and to establish a new paradigm. Learn more here, here, here and here.
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Territories of Peace and Equality
This program is grounded in an ethical commitment to transform the structural conditions that generate violence, inequality, and exclusion. It involves all the departments and agencies of the city government, focusing on neighborhoods with the most restricted access to rights and highest levels of violence. The program seeks to address the root causes that limit full access to rights and to guarantee security through a community-based safety strategy. Read more here.