Why are local and regional governments essential for promoting, fulfilling, and respecting human rights?
The city, the territory, are the closest spaces to the citizenry, where we are born, live, play, study, work, coexist, relate and love. That is why the local level has a fundamental importance and potential in the definition, planning, and promotion of policies that improve the quality of life of neighbors. Thus, the municipality becomes a political and social space that brings decision-making closer to the citizens in an inclusive and equitable way, enhancing their involvement, participation, and co-responsibility in the collective city project.
València has always been a Mediterranean, open and welcoming city. In recent decades, there has been a broad process of openness and recognition of diversity and plurality in Valencian and Spanish societies. This situation has been influenced by socioeconomic changes, especially international migratory flows and new family models, which promote diverse and plural societies; as well as by international, European, state, regional, and local laws and public policies in defense of diversity and the recognition of rights.
Why are human rights relevant values and a useful framework for guiding local action?
Despite clear progress in the defense of human rights, some of our neighbors suffer hate crimes and discriminatory acts that violate their social, political, and economic rights.
Guaranteeing a dignified experience of the city is a right of the citizenry and a duty of public governments. For this reason, political and social actors must promote social, economic, political, cultural, environmental, and universally accessible conditions that ensure the rights and duties of the people living in the city, valuing those elements of coexistence based on what we constructively share, on the feeling of belonging, of collective and public space, and of equality in diversity.
The local community shares a space and a sense of belonging, as well as relationships of solidarity and mutual support among its members. For communities to be inclusive, the social and cultural heterogeneity and diversity of today’s societies must be integrated into their construction and daily life. And in this process, conflicts arise related to multiple identities, which sometimes become discrimination, assaults, and hate crimes, that undermine community coexistence and therefore social cohesion and peace.
In this regard, incorporating the cross-cutting nature of diversity is essential to improve public policies in this area of action. Therefore, the perspective of diversity must become a cross-cutting axis of local policies, to address multiple inequalities. This means identifying the various positions, intersections, and mechanisms of these inequalities and addressing them from the scale of structures and institutions. Ultimately, it means fighting against sexism, racism, class exploitation, homophobia, age discrimination, etc., to ensure an inclusive and equitable society.
In recent years, the government of València has made a determined commitment for València to be a city of rights, promoting committed and bold policies in a cross-cutting and cooperative way with the participation of Valencian civil society. In this political and institutional context, the development of the COMVA Plan is framed, which aims for human rights to become the reference framework for the concept and practice of local democracy and autonomy.
The COMVA Plan is the fundamental instrument for structuring and developing local human rights and anti-discrimination policy, ensuring and protecting the right to the city and the dignity of all its inhabitants. This document outlines the objectives and actions for the next four years, as well as the organizational design of the Office of Non-Discrimination (hereinafter ONDIS)) and the Municipal Observatory Against Discrimination and Hate.
Likewise, the “Framework Agreement for the Recovery and Reconstruction of the City of València in the post-Covid-19 context” is structured around three fundamental lines of action, which are:
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Axis 1: Healthy and Sustainable City
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Axis 2: Economic Reactivation
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Axis 3: Equity and Social Rights
In AXIS 3 EQUITY AND SOCIAL RIGHTS, the three priority actions linked to the COMVA Plan are included, specifically in Line 6: Strengthening Alliances and Social Movements. That is why we place great importance on the municipality’s active participation in local, national, and international organizations working for the defense of human rights. These alliances can only provide us with tools and opportunities to achieve our goal of making València a city in favor of human rights and thus become part of the first hundred municipalities to join the global campaign “10, 100, 1000 Human Rights Cities and Territories by 2030.”
- Opening of the Non-Discrimination Office (ONDIS) of València
- Municipal Coexistence Plan against discrimination and hate speech
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City anti-rumors network