The Municipality of Terrassa has been working for years toward giving centrality to human rights in municipal public policies. It has been a signatory city of the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City since the year 2000, so its commitment and vision as a human rights city has a long history.
Taking as a reference Article 1 of the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City: “The city is a collective space that belongs to all its inhabitants, who have the right to find the conditions for their political, social and ecological fulfilment, assuming duties of solidarity,” we see how the management of public life in cities is a key element for the promotion and guarantee of human rights, as well as for the prevention of their violation.
The Municipality understands that human rights are the framework that should underpin public policies, as they are the essential condition for the development and well-being of people’s lives. For this reason, any public policy carried out by the local administration must be aligned with these principles.
The centrality of human rights in proximity public policies must be fostered by respect, protection, and guarantee of human rights as a way to reduce inequalities and improve the well-being of the city's residents. Municipalities must exercise their competences in relation to these rights.
If we understand that public policies must correct inequalities and redistribute resources and opportunities among citizens, we interpret inequalities as a violation of rights, which directly concerns the administration, not as a moral responsibility, but as a legal obligation.
The principle of equality and non-discrimination is one of the pillars of any democratic system and one of the fundamental bases of the human rights protection system. People are not neutral; they have different starting points. Inequality axes are divisions along which socially valued resources are unequally distributed. Thus, people, depending on the social groups they are categorized into, will have more or less access to certain resources (money, prestige, contacts, information, etc.).
This principle obliges administrations to work to move beyond a sectoral vision of public policies in favor of a more integral and intersectional one, understanding citizens as subjects and holders of rights, and not as objects or recipients of policies or public services. Social problems or needs must be analyzed as structural causes of inequality and participation must be incorporated as a citizenship right.
Cities are increasingly playing a more relevant role among international actors, as they have the capacity to mobilize resources and enjoy autonomy in exercising their competences. The municipality, as the administration closest to the reality and to people, is in a privileged position to detect the needs of its inhabitants in relation to human rights.
In this context, international networks between cities become necessary, as shared workspaces that make it possible to raise locally detected needs to the international level.
Terrassa has a long history of commitment to international municipalism. This strategy has provided it with visibility, positioning, and recognition due to its presence at the European and international levels. It has been a member of UCLG since 2004 and participates in various forums and working groups within this organization.
The proposal to join the “10, 100, 1000 Human Rights Cities and Territories by 2030” campaign connects with the city’s international trajectory, as well as with its commitment to placing human rights at the center of municipal public policies, toward the construction of a city of rights.
Participation in this campaign will allow the municipality to actively engage in experience exchange networks, build stable contact networks, exchange best practices among cities, and participate in innovation actions around the human rights approach in municipal public policies. Likewise, this experience must also have an internal impact on the process of adopting and recognizing human rights as a guide for municipal action.
Among the various mechanisms and programs carried out by the Municipality in relation to human rights, we highlight that since 2017 it has had a Human Rights Program within the municipal structure, with the aim of advancing in the guarantee and protection of the exercise of freedoms, rights, and duties of citizenship.
This program is part of the strategic axes of the 2019-2023 Municipal Government Program and establishes its priorities in the following objectives:
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Work to incorporate the centrality of human rights in the implementation of its public policies and Government Program, to advance in the guarantee and protection of the exercise of freedoms, rights, and duties of citizenship.
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Offer training to municipal technical teams on human rights, to provide them with management tools for guaranteeing and promoting human rights at the municipal level.
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Collaborate with human rights advocacy organizations and platforms in the city, carry out awareness and education activities aimed at citizens to raise awareness about the importance of human rights in exercising their freedoms, rights, and duties, and promote dissemination of the European Charter for the Safeguarding of Human Rights in the City.
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Implement a strategy to prevent and address hate speech and movements contrary to democratic values, such as fascism.
We consider it relevant to highlight the IGUALTATS CONNECTADES project, Intersectionality in local policies, a project based on human rights. It is a pioneering project that explores how to apply the intersectional approach in local equality public policies. This project aimed to deepen the possibilities and limits of intersectionality, an analytical perspective that, despite having broad recognition and support among the academic community, had rarely been applied in the field of municipal public policies.
The initiative began on January 1, 2018, and ended in June 2019, and was co-financed by the European Commission’s Justice, Rights, Equality and Citizenship Program, led by Terrassa Municipality and implemented jointly with the University of Vic – Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) and CEPS Social Projects.
The main objective was to develop a process of training, awareness, and reflection to assess the possibilities of applying intersectionality in the context of a local administration—in this case, the Terrassa Municipality—and always in dialogue with civil society.