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How to make human rights part of everyone’s daily life – a guide for local authorities

group of people walk on across the pedestrian concrete landscape in the city street
A new guide from the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) offers support to local authorities in incorporating human rights into the lives of people they serve.

The guide underlines the added value to all of being a human rights city. It provides practical assistance for local authorities that want to drive respect for human rights. They can use it to design and implement their own step-by-step policies and strategies across a wide range of areas and daily activities from planning, to budgeting to procurement, training and more.

It contains a set of foundations, structures and tools that help cities commit to human rights, integrate human rights into their work and support their human rights efforts.

Each element is explained with practical advice on how to achieve it. It also gives examples from existing human rights cities as well as promising practices from other cities and regions. In addition, it lists key resources that can give further help.

The guide draws on the promising practices and experiences of cities, regions, experts, international organisations and networks.

It builds on FRA’s ‘Human rights cities in the EU: A framework for reinforcing rights locally’ report.

The publication coincides with the EU’s ceremony for the first European Capitals for Inclusion and Diversity Award.

The guide will soon be available in French and German. Other EU languages will then follow.