To explore the potential of cities, the Human Rights Cities Network (HRNC) and the Global Parliament of Mayors (GPM) organised a Human Rights City webinar on Enhancing Human Rights in Cities with the Right to Vote: the 2024 European Parliament Elections.
The event took place on the 6th of May 2024, in the framework of the Barcelona programme as the 1 st European Capital of Democracy (ECoD) and gathered representatives of local authorities, civil society, and academia.
The webinar raised awareness on how municipalities can guarantee the right to vote to their citizens and showed cases of local good practices on how to enhance a democratic participation in the 2024 European Parliament elections.
READ THE POLICY PAPER HERE:
HRCN Policy Paper – The role of cities in enhancing Voting Rights in European Parliament elections and beyond
This policy paper addresses the following:
- Analyses the challenges cities are facing when ensuring voting rights and
- Highlights the potential to enhance democratic participation in the wake of the 2024 EP elections and beyond.
Among them are practical challenges related to the organisation of elections, such as for example organising accessible and barrier-free polling stations, ensuring quality information adapted to the needs of different social groups or staffing of the polling stations with trained poll workers.
Alongside a discussion of good practices on local level, the paper also provides shortand long-term recommendations to local actors involved in electoral processes; in particular establish a local Human Rights Council to monitor the human rights situation in the city including electoral processes or create partnerships with civil society and academic institutions to conduct civic education activities.
