Hatred and discrimination against minority groups is a global human rights issue, and every country has been implementing a variety of measures to tackle this social phenomenon. In Korea, hate against women and was highlighted after the infamous Gangnam murder case in 2016, and refugee-phobia became an issue with the Yemeni refugees on Jeju Island in 2018. The discrimination against vulnerable groups and propagation of inequalities are motivated by hatred towards women, persons with disabilities, older people, migrants, and the LGBT community.

According to the Human Rights Attitudes Survey 2019 by the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, 64.2% of Koreans have been exposed to hate speech. Moreover, 78.4% of people expect that they will face more social conflicts and 62.8% believe minority groups’ freedom of expression will be endangered, whereas only 22.2% agree that hatred and discrimination will be abolished naturally. Respondents say that education and campaigning to improve public awareness (86.9%), more human rights education programs in the school curriculum (86.5%), and government countermeasures are required to address human rights issues.

Hatred and discrimination against social minority groups is spreading rapidly. Hate speech that attacks particularly vulnerable groups makes discrimination against them worse. Thus, local governments and other entities, groups, and institutions all together should take collective actions. Unveiling the community’s principles of not tolerating hatred and discrimination and declaring a joint response is paramount as a first step. Local governments playing a pivotal role in citizen human rights protection and promotion, diagnosing and exploring ways to respond to the recent deepening phenomenon of hatred and discrimination in our society, will serve as the basis for the realization of a human rights city of engagement and coexistence. The implementation of these responses will also be a force for our society to move toward an inclusive and sustainable human rights community. In WHRCF 2019, we hope that the wisdom and practice to overcome hatred and discrimination will be discussed, so that we can reimagine human rights cities.

Asia has experienced a rapid process of urbanization in the last decades. Take for instance the case of Korea, which over the last 50 years passed from a 33% or urban population to a current 81%. Countries like China, Indonesia or Bangladesh – which are among the world’s most populated ones too – have almost doubled their urban population over the last 20 years.

The development of Asian cities according to standards of social inclusion, spatial justice and sustainability becomes thus a key challenge for securing the collective welfare and fulfilment of the Right to the City of millions. Housing, of course, has been at the center of this struggle, becoming a catalyzer for social development or widened inequalities depending on the context.

Housing-related challenges have not only impacted cities in Asia due to its rapid urbanization process. Indeed, cities worldwide are suffering what is already known as the “global housing crisis”: A phenomenon caused by an accelerated process of real estate financialization and the poor or undeveloped regulatory capacities of governments. It is calculated that the housing crisis is currently reaching an estimate 15% of the world’s population – or 330 million households unable to find a decent or affordable home. Citizens from all walks of life are paying its consequences: From urban poor living in slums or sub-standard conditions to middle classes expelled from central city areas after being unable to pay increasing housing costs.

Local governments are already leading daring policy responses to the housing crisis. Through inclusive and participatory urban planning, they have devised cities for all that are compact, foster social mix and protect community life. In spite of limited regulatory and financial capacities, they have carried out sound social housing strategies and even raised their voice against speculators and global investment funds that consider cities only as commodities. Civil society and grassroots movements have also played an essential role in advancing this agenda through campaigning and innovation in community-led housing co-production.

Through the “Cities for Adequate Housing” Declaration, more than 40 local governments in the framework of UCLG have adopted a pioneer commitment to fight financialization and favor policies that advance the right to housing. The path towards the Declaration was initiated in 2016 after the launch of “The Shift”: A global campaign for the Right to Housing led by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing. Adopted in 2018, the Declaration proposes a roadmap for campaigning and action structured around five areas: More powers for cities to better regulate the real estate market; more funds to improve public housing stocks; more tools to co-produce community-driven housing; urban planning that combines adequate housing with quality, inclusive and sustainable neighborhoods; and enhanced municipal cooperation.

The 2019 WHRCF offers a perfect occasion for discussing the implications of the right to housing in Asia, exploring the approaches by which local governments can lead or are already leading policies harnessing the potential of housing as a social inclusion catalyzer.

This session will be a good occasion for raising awareness on the “Cities for Adequate Housing” Declaration and “The Shift” campaign (promoted by UCLG and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing), but also to listen to civil society-led initiatives, such as the innovative approaches led by of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights or the “Global Charter for Social Protection Rights” promoted by the Asian-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF).

The valuable contribution of UN Habitat will provide a meaningful global framework for developing renewed housing strategies that embrace the human rights-based approach.

Finally, and due to the diversity of approaches explored, this session will conclude with a “urban storytelling” exercise, allowing to take stock of all contributions made. By this exercise, new bridges between different stakeholders will be established, focusing on exploring the similarities between approaches by which they carry out their initiatives on housing and how can this translate into a consolidated roadmap for the Right to Housing in Asia.

The 2019 World Human Rights Cities Forum in Gwangju is an excellent opportunity for the AEPF and the IAI to involve the organisations and movements (especially the many Asian working on housing, public services, ecology) to take forward the agenda of Peoples Cities, Urbanisation and development, the Right to the City, which includes the urban commons, access to Public Services and the need for universal social protection in relation to the Global Charter for Universal Social Protection Rights.

The Asian-Europe People's Forum is a strategic civil society network of Asian and European social movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and campaign networks that are confronting poverty and inequality and working for social, economic and climate justice. Priority is to assure that processes and measures will lead to a just, equal and sustainable world based on respect for gender equality and the promotion and protection of human, economic and socio-cultural rights and environmental security.

The International Alliance of Inhabitants is a global network of associations and social movements of inhabitants, cooperatives, communities, tenants, house owners, homeless, slum dwellers, indigenous populations and people from working class neighborhoods. The objective is the construction of another possible world starting from the achievement of the housing and city rights.

Having listened to interventions by activists presenting the dynamics and the resistance of the inhabitants, and by experts and local authorities of alternative housing and urbanization policies, based on human rights instead of financial markets, we want to discuss policies that defend the right to housing (against evictions) based on strong housing policies as a public and social service. In that context, the social justice cluster of the Asia Europe People’s Forum has been working with a new Global Charter for Social Protection Rights, which it suggests to use as a leverage for new alliances and coalitions in the fight for strong public services and citizenship, in cooperation with local governments. In our view, citizens's access to Right to the City should be at the core of Urbanization discourse, and this should be the political priority of local governments.

The aim of this strategy meeting is to take a critical and open view of the Charter and of these viewpoints and to discuss practical and concrete ways for more coordination.

The Right to the City (R2C) has been an alternative and fruitful framework with which to respond to some of the most pressing challenges of our time: social injustice, inequality, exclusion, dispossession, spatial segregation, discrimination of all kinds, destruction and privatization of the commons and environmental degradation. By offering concrete solutions, with strong potential for the transformation of our societies, it has also been a way to reaffirm, update and defend human rights and the corresponding state obligations.

The Global Platform for the Right to the City (GPR2C) and the Committee of Social Inclusion, Participatory Democracy and Human Rights of UCLG (CISDPH) have been working together to engage a conversation on how civil society and local governments could create new alliances to achieve their shared goals regarding social well-being, economic inclusion, and the respect for individual and collective rights. They are supporting the initiatives of local governments and organized civil society to disseminate the debate about the R2C around the world.

The Right to the City is the right of all inhabitants, present and future, permanent and temporary, to inhabit, use, occupy, produce, govern and enjoy just, inclusive, safe and sustainable cities, villages and human settlements, defined as commons essential to a full and decent life.

This session entitled will examine the above description in the Asian context, while building on the knowledge and experience of the previous WHRCF. These meetings placed the R2C as the framework to talk about different topics currently affecting Asian cities and human settlements in which the R2C also offers solutions that are already being implemented, both in Asian and abroad, such as:

- Inclusive citizenship that does not criminalize people based on their social background, gender, or identity
- Inclusive economies that integrate rather than persecute the non-formal economy
- Enhanced political participation in the decision-making process, especially at the local level
- Sustainable urban development that ensures rural-urban linkages
- Cultural diversity and youth

The participants will talk about their own experience in relation to these topics, focusing on how to achieve just, inclusive, safe and sustainable cities, villages and human settlements,in Asian Region, and to propose solutions that can be implemented under the R2C, particularly at the local level.

Since October 2018, RWI has been conducting study to portray the development of cities that in some documents had been identified as human rights cities in a way they implement the SDGs. Five cities were selected for the study namely Nagpur-India, Gwangju-South Korea, Bucay-the Philippines, Lampung Timur-Indonesia, and Bandung-Indonesia. The study is also aimed to identify the challenges and opportunity at regional level in the context of human rights cities and SDGs’ achievement at local level. Some findings suggested different approaches to human rights cities applied by the cities either mainly based on the initiative civil societies, or the initiative of local authority, or the collaborative works between CSOs and local authority. When this approach was investigated further to the context of the localizing SDGs, the finding mapped out some different strategies from the city that managed directly the SDGs implementation at the human rights office to the city that completely distinguish human rights issues from SDGs.
At the regional level, promotion of the two streams, SDGs and human rights, also have its own strategy and forum though there is overlapping among involved actors. This open discussion will invite all actors that involved in the area of human rights city promotion and localizing SDGs.
Bring together actors who are working in the area of human rights cities and in localising SDGs and share knowledge and experiences. Specifically, the pen discussion will share the research result conducted by Raoul Wallenberg Institute and the experiences of Bucay and Nagpur in the area of human rights cities and SDGs.

This panel will try to join-up the different levels from the UN, the national level to the local level. How do the different actors support each other in the ultimate goal of strengthening the human rights protection of people living locally? Key words are participation and engagement. The OHCHR will present the important guidelines for States on the effective implementation of the right to participate in public affairs. These guidelines are important for local governments to fully realizing the potential of engaging its citizens. This presentation will be followed by two presentations from cities namely Mexico City and Nurnberg in Germany, addressing among other things their work and engagement of citizens in finding ways forward on key challenges. The panel will be closed by a presentation from the Indonesian Human Rights Commission addressing effective methods to foster cooperation between local government and local stakeholders for the promotion and protection of human rights including by raising awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals.
This session will focus on how to engage citizens in finding solutions to the human rights challenges that occurs in their neighborhood. The question raised is how the different institutions and organisations from the UN to national and local level can join-up their efforts in order to find ways forward.

In 2015, UN adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since then, Member States have developed country, region, and city SDGs, expanding its value and philosophical discussions about the SDGs.

By adopting the 2030 Agenda, Member States have committed to leave no one behind in their implementation of the SDGs.

In their development and implementation, the SDGs fully present the human rights principles (Universality, Indivisibility, and Interdependence). Each and every SDG is directly or indirectly related to the idea of human rights. Moreover, the 17 SDGs specifically state the human right standards, including Right to development, Human rights education, and UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

This session will 1) discuss how human rights discourses and commitments of the 2015 UN SDGs are internalized in international settings; and 2) analyze and assess the Local SDGs developed and implemented in localities, including Seoul, Chungnam, Gwangju, Suwon, and Damyang, from the human rights and social inclusion perspectives, so that we can set out the Local SDGs that we have to take in coming years.

Background
For the last 5 years, INFID and Komnas HAM have been working to promote the implementation of human rights cities in Indonesia. Some 50 regencies and districts out of the total of 514 cities and districts are in the process of implementing and institutionalizing human rights cities in different levels. The cities and districts put priorities based on the challenges they identified and capacity they have.

The concept of human rights cities has been acknowledged by President Joko Widodo since 2015 through his speech on the occasion of the International Human Rights Day. In doing so, INFID has published guidelines for a human rights cities updated every year. Komnas HAM has also developed Policy Paper and Training Module on Human Rights Cities in 2018 and 2019, in which they include the adoption of human rights approach by local government in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

INFID and Komnas HAM also conduct annual human rights cities training participated by local government officers and local human rights activists since three years ago. The latest training workshop is taking place conducted in Makassar from 20 – 22 August 2018 participated by 50 local government official and local CSO activists with the support by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute.

Since 2014, Komnas HAM with INFID and the Executive Office of the President also conduct Human Rights Cities Conference and Festival which now become a national event, in which the coming Festival will be in Jember, East Java from 19 – 21 November 2019.

Every year since 2014, INFID along with Komnas HAM also participated in the World Human Rights Cities Forum (WHRCF) in Gwangju, Republic of Korea. INFID participate in the Forum along with Komnas HAM and several Regent and Mayors interested in adopting human rights cities framework in Indonesia. The participation of INFID and other participants from Indonesia is for the purpose of learning and sharing as well as networking for the eventual advancement of human rights implementation in local level in Indonesia.

Objectives
1. Sharing experiences and strategies of initiatives and innovation of human rights cities in Indonesia by head of local government and other stakeholders
2. Building and expanding networks of global human rights cities movement
3. Providing supports to the carrying out of the WHRCF and other initiatives by the Gwangju Metropolitan City