Local and regional leaders and housing policy experts will meet in Barcelona to reaffirm their commitment to the Make the Shift initiative and explore concrete steps to guarantee the right to housing for all.
From 2 to 3 November, UCLG Co-President and Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau will host a global meeting on housing in cooperation with the UCLG Committee on Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights (CISDP).
Entitled “Cities and regions for the right to housing”, the event aims to strengthen alliances, political commitment and policy proposals to make the right to housing a reality in cities and territories around the world. It will be addressed by UCLG President, Parks Tau, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, Leilani Farha, and Lorena Zarate of Habitat International Coalition.
“Cities for the right to housing” is being held in the framework of UCLG’s “wave of action” on housing for 2017-2018, and will kick off on 2 November with a meeting of housing policy experts. At the meeting, experts from every continent will explore housing trends and local policy responses, with a particular focus on multi-level governance, territorial inclusion and financing.
The results of the expert meeting will serve as inputs to UCLG’s Fifth Global Report on Local Democracy and Decentralization (GOLD V) which will contribute to UCLG’s reporting on SDG 11 to the High Level Political Forum in July 2018.
On 3 November, coinciding with the celebrations of World Cities Day in Barcelona, local and regional leaders of UCLG will reaffirm their commitment to the “Make the Shift” campaign, which brings together UN human rights bodies, local and regional governments, UN Member States and civil society organizations. The campaign calls for housing to be treated as a human right and a social good, rather than as a commodity. It defends housing as a driver of equality and community, rather than inequality and segregation. It condemns forced evictions and evictions without alternative housing provision. It rejects the criminalization of homelessness and supports the social function of land and the city.
These meetings in Barcelona will serve to highlight UCLG’s commitment to the agenda of Make the Shift and to allow local and regional leaders to contribute to a roadmap of the next stages of the initiative.
Join us to celebrate World Cities Day and Urban October and support the Twitter campaign using #MaketheShift and #CitiesDay hashtags on social media.
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