Cities are at the forefront of protecting human rights, promoting democratic participation, and translating EU values into concrete action at the local level. Across Europe, local governments and civil society organisations have increasingly recognised that ensuring effective human rights practices requires structured monitoring and reliable data. As a result, many human rights cities have invested significant effort in monitoring local initiatives, generating indicators, and reporting their findings. However, these cities often lack the tools to interpret the data effectively and use the evidence to inform local policymaking. Without a structured interpretation tool, monitoring risks becoming a reporting exercise rather than a learning process that drives adaptation, improvement, and meaningful change.
The “Boosting democratic participation in cities to recharge democracy in Europe” (DeCiDE) project, engaged eight (8) EU cities in a shared effort to address this challenge. Together, these cities have co-developed the Standardized Monitoring System (SMS) by co-designing human rights indicators, developing the standardized data collection tools, and adapting these tools to their local contexts. As a result, these cities have generated the baseline data for the pilot project. This webinar will highlight how cities can transition from collecting data and reporting to an evidence- and rights-based approach to governance. It will present the SMS data analysis tool which can support cities in understanding the outcomes of their local human rights initiatives.
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Overview:
The session will focus on:
- How cities can shift from only collecting data and reporting to analysis, learning and evidence based action.
- The experiences and lessons learned from DeCiDE Cities in implementing the SMS.
- Presenting the baseline data generated through the SMS and highlight key insights from the initial findings.
- Introducing and demonstrating the SMS data analysis tool and its practical application for interpreting monitoring data.
- How data analysis can inform policy adjustments, strengthen human rights initiatives and improve project performance.
Expected Outcome
The webinar aims to strengthen the capacity of cities and civil society organisations to turn monitoring data into actionable evidence. It will demonstrate how the SMS tools can support not only the measurement of human rights initiatives, but also a continuous process of learning, adaptation and improvement for policy making.
Who is invited to attend:
Local government officials, European Union representatives, anti-discrimination bodies, and civil society organizations are essential actors in addressing structural inequality and building inclusive cities. Their experience and insights are critical to shaping effective local monitoring systems and advancing collaborative, community-informed solutions.
Presentations by:
- Municipality of Padova
- Municipality of Benalmadena
- Municipality of Ghent
- Andrea Pozza: M&E Expert
- Marshall Wanimo: Human Rights Cities Network