World Human Rights Cities Forum 2017 Program

-Thematic Session(1)

Thematic Sessions in nine areas

The thematic sessions of the World Human Rights Cites Forum 2017(WHRCF 2017) will consist of nine areas, including gender, state violence, environment, social economy, migrants/refugees, disability, the elderly, child/youth, and village communities. Following the previous newsletter which covered gender, social economy, state violence and environment, this time we will give information on the rest of the areas.

The Elderly thematic session will discuss the meaning of an age-friendly city and the changes in local communities and the elderly through the question, "Gwangju as an Age-friendly city?." This session will be held at 1 p.m. on September 15.

In the morning of the last day of the forum the Child/Youth session will be offered under the theme, "School, space composition and democracy." Although schools are places where students spend most of their time in life, schools are still functionalistic and authoritarian structures designed for discipline, management and control. With this situation, this session will serve as a venue to discover the meaning and importance of school's space composition.

The Village session will take place at the same time as the Child/Youth session. This session will consider a "Village and grassroots-based citizen participation platform," focusing on village communities where the importance of the grassroots democracy can be achieved by expanding local autonomy and participation.

The Migrants/Refugees and Disability sessions will follow in the afternoon, with the themes, "Are We Living in Peace with Migrants and Refugees?" and "Please make it easily readable for our voting!", respectively. The Migrants/Refugees session will emphasize the necessity of the enactment of a migrants' human rights-related law by suggesting laws and systems for peaceful coexistence between migrants and indigenous people. In the Disability session, the reality of guaranteeing the right of access to information for voters with disabilities will be addressed through experiences of voters with disabilities during the 19th election. Moreover, the upcoming 2018 regional election will be discussed by primarily focusing on the right of access to information.

As mentioned above, fierce and in-depth discussion on promoting human rights in each of these areas will be discussed at the forum by local organizations in the nine areas.