Why are local and regional governments essential for promoting, fulfilling, and respecting human rights?
In accordance with constitutional regulations and those derived from international human rights treaties, all organs of the State Administration are under the imperative to respect and promote, within the scope of their respective competences, the human rights of the people living in the country.
Article 5 of the Constitution states: “It is the duty of State organs to respect and promote the essential rights that stem from human nature, guaranteed by the Constitution, as well as by the international treaties ratified by Chile and currently in force.”
The Organic Constitutional Law of Municipalities 18.695 defines Municipalities as “autonomous public law corporations, with legal personality and their own assets, whose purpose is to meet the needs of the local community and ensure its participation in the economic, social and cultural progress of the respective communes” (Article 1).
To this end, it holds legal functions related to social assistance, health, environment, housing, education, public safety, urban development, among other common interest matters that are directly linked to the protection of individual and community-specific rights.
This duty does not end with its normative enshrinement, but rather requires concrete actions and policies for the realization of citizens' rights, in line with the State's international obligations.
Why are human rights relevant values and a useful framework for guiding local action?
Human rights are a tool for social transformation and the development of territories that generate conditions for Buen Vivir (Good Living). While individual in origin, they become collective in practice when these individualities are articulated for their struggle and achievement; thus, they hold mobilizing, critical and political potential for the redistribution of power to and from the territories, in addition to linking social demands, central to achieving the transformations needed by the majority.
Municipalities, due to their competencies in different dimensions of life, their territorial nature, and legal autonomy, play a fundamental role as potential promoters of human development. Therefore, the human rights-based approach serves to open and enrich scenarios for the definition of public policies between local government and organized civil society, guaranteeing the essential content of human rights.
The social and economic crisis in Chile, crystallized in the Social Outburst of October 18, 2019, and the Pandemic, deepened the existing problems in our territory. The municipality of Valparaíso has 44% of its population in Bracket 40 of the Social Household Registry (RSH), meaning 129,271 people live in households with lower income or greater socioeconomic vulnerability, with women, girls, boys and adolescents, older adults, and other groups under special protection being the most affected. This data forces us to recognize that we are facing a human rights crisis. As local governments — the state institutions closest to the territory and its people — we have both the obligation and the responsibility to ensure that our governance is firmly committed to the unconditional defense of these rights, which guarantee the minimum conditions for a dignified life.
We believe that coordination among various territories committed to human rights will allow us to strengthen our actions, share practices, and exchange experiences and knowledge in order to make progress on the challenges we have set for ourselves — to become a 21st-century city moving toward "Buen Vivir", leaving no one behind.
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Communal Development Plan 2020–2030.
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Department for the Emancipation of People and its Offices for Indigenous Peoples, Migrants, Sexual Diversities, Women, Children, Adolescents, Older Adults, and Homeless people.
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Municipal Observatory of Human Rights and Buen Vivir: It is a participatory body between the municipality and civil society, created in the context of the discussion on new spaces for territorial participation and co-management in Valparaíso, whose objective is to strengthen coordination between the municipality and civil society actors in the municipality, in actions for the observation, monitoring, education, and promotion of human rights and Buen Vivir in the territories, generating guidelines and orientations for the municipality and other public bodies, with an intersectional, multicultural approach and intersectoral scope.