Human Rights Cities
Leadership Summit
We believe that cities can lead the way to a more people-centered politics that will generate lasting solutions to deep-seated problems of structural racism, housing and food insecurity, gender discrimination, climate change, and other injustices.
We invite community activists, municipal leaders, policy practitioners, and others ready to help make our cities places where everyone can thrive to join us in Atlanta.
FILM SCREENING: Push - Using human rights to take on corporate landlords & reclaim our cities
Online screening available May 13 & May 27, 2023
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People around the world are struggling with housing insecurity, and growing numbers face chronic housing insecurity. Yet, corporate landlords and global finance are making record profits profiting handsomely while fueling urban displacement, evictions, and houselessness. As part of our Human Rights Cities Leadership Summit taking place in Atlanta May 18-21, we invite you to view the documentary film, Push, which tells the story of how global banks and investment firms are turning our communities into sources of private profit, taking control of residential housing around the world and pushing out low-income residents. The film tells another story too: residents and city officials are coming together to demand that housing be protected as a human right. Watch the film online between May 13 & May 27 (Free).
About the Summit
Cities around the world are struggling to address increasingly urgent challenges related to climate change, affordable housing, increased racial polarization, and police brutality. More city leaders are finding that the human rights framework can improve local governance by centering the needs of people and communities and mobilizing global networks and legal resources.
We believe that cities can lead the way to a more people-centered politics that will generate lasting solutions to deep-seated problems of structural racism, housing and food insecurity, gender discrimination, climate change, and other injustices. We invite community activists, municipal leaders, policy practitioners, and others ready to help make our cities places where everyone can thrive to join us in Atlanta.
Plenary sessions will offer examples and resources for bringing human rights tools into local advocacy and governance around housing rights, community safety and anti-racism, and environmental and reparatory justice. Breakout sessions will introduce leaders from diverse cities to explore how work across cities and how engagement with international human rights laws and agencies can bring new kinds of solutions to difficult urban challenges.
The Human Rights Cities Leadership Summit will take place in downtown Atlanta Georgia from May 18-21. Following the city’s recent passage of a resolution naming Atlanta the newest U.S. Human Rights City, Atlanta civil society and partners, along with supportive City Council members invite community activists, policy practitioners, legal experts, youth, and municipal leaders to come together to share ideas, lessons, and tools for promoting human rights in cities and communities. Now more than ever, cities need innovative ideas and strategies to address problems of affordable housing, community safety, climate change, racial and gender inequities, and reparatory justice. Learn how cities around the world are using international human rights law and institutions to shape local policies, with powerful impacts at the local level. Plenaries and breakout sessions will provide opportunities to learn, exchange and network.
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The summit is co-hosted by the Human Rights Cities Alliance, Southern Center for Human Rights, Southern Poverty Law Center, Organization for Human Rights and Democracy, American Friends Service Committee-South Region, in cooperation with Atlanta civil society and supportive members of Atlanta City Council; Ronald J. Freeman Chapter of the Black Law Students Association at Georgia State University College of Law.
The Summit is sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh’s Global Studies Center through its Kabak Endowment.