The launching of the Human Rights Cities Latinoamerican Network
The launching of the Human Rights Cities Latinoamerican Network
In Rosario, on May 11 and 12 we realized the first meeting of human rights cities in order to form a latinoamerican network.
Until now there were two cities adhered to the Human Rights Cities Program; the first was Rosario (Argentina) in 1997 and later, Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2005.
The participation in the Human Rights International Seminar organized in Rosario in 2004, encouraged some attendants to improve the experiencie in their countries and they have been working in their cities in order to make alliances, with the purpose of promoting the program.
The objetives of this first meeting was to exchange experiencies and to explore the possibilities to set up the Program in other countries.
Participans were Susana Chiarotti, the director of Insgenar; Emiliano Casal, the linkage person in the Network; Viviana Della Siega, the coordinator of Steering Committee of Rosario; Carlos Silveira, representative of Porto Alegre; Veronica Matus from Chile; Marina Lòpez Sepúlveda from Barranquilla, Colombia and Leonardo Tamburini from Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.
Verònica Matus is a women's human rights activist and she decided to clone the program in Temuco and Valparaiso; López Sepúlveda is a member of Rights Voices of Barranquilla and she has been appointed, -hours before coming to Rosario- as the coordinator of the Reconciliation and Reparation Commission in her city. -there are 5 in Colombia- and now is in charge of the reparation to victims of the armed conflict. She promoted the idea in her city and will be ready to launch officially the HRC this year
Leonardo Tamburini is the director of CEJIS. Recently he found echo in other organizations with the idea to promote Santa Cruz de la Sierra as a human right city. Now, in the middle of a very severe political conflict, and racial tension, they organized a human rights coordinating commission, with 6 organizations, that will be the responsible for launching the HRC.
In the meeting the participants agreed:
a) Sharing efforts to strenghten the existing human rights cities and to create new human rights cities in Chile, Bolivia and Colombia.
b) Having a common translation for the acronym PDHRE LA. It will be the one used in Porto Alegre because it is the same for spanish and portuguese. MOPADH, Movement of the People for HR Learning. In spanish: Movimiento de los Pueblos para el Aprendizaje en los Derechos Humanos. In portuguese: Movimento dos Povos pra Aprendizajem dos Direitos Humanos.
c) Having a common logo for the program of the Human Rights Cities.
d) The responsibility of nurturing the web page of the latin american network, with periodic up dates of the activities and the development of the program.
It was a very important step in order to strenght the Human rights City Program