Building Bridges between Local Governments and the Scientific Community to Promote Human Rights

Summary

ABSTRACT

The Academy and Conference ‘Human Rights Go Local – What Works: Field-proven Research Methods on Human Rights’, held in February 2021, was the opening of an event series aiming to mobilise knowledge, moderate exchange and build bridges between all governance levels, disciplines and regions, with a focus on human rights at the local level. The event brought together human rights experts from local governments, international and regional organisations and the research community to discuss research methods that have proven successful to generate reliable human rights data for evidence-based policy-making at the local level. The practices, findings and proposals reported and discussed at the academy were synthesised into an Outcome Document, which was officially launched at the conference by high-level politicians, policy-makers and 200 human rights experts and international guests. This contribution presents the main challenges and solutions discussed by the participants of the academy and the Outcome Document's 14 ‘Encouragements’ to local governments on how to reinforce their policies through evidence that is based on human rights research.

RESEARCH ON HUMAN RIGHTS AT THE LOCAL LEVEL: WHAT WORKS ?

What research methods have proven successful to generate reliable human rights data for evidence-based policy-making at the local level? In February 2021, the Academy and Conference ‘Human Rights Go Local – What Works: Field-proven Research Methods on Human Rights’ brought together human rights experts from local governments, international and regional organisations and the research community to discuss exactly this question. During five intensive academy days, over 40 experts from all over the globe met at eye level in ten interactive workshops and eight plenary sessions to exchange their expertise. As a kick-offevent, a young researchers day gave next generation human rights experts the opportunity to present their research projects and receive feedback from participating experts and peers.

The online academy provided a unique platform for expert exchange and dissemination of proven methods to generate reliable human rights data for evidence-based urban policy making. The practices, findings and proposals reported and discussed at this event were synthesised into the ‘Outcome Document and Explanatory Remarks on Building Bridges between Local Governments and the Scientific Community to Promote Human Rights’.