This document discusses Eugene, Oregon's Human Rights City Project. It provides background on the project, including that in 2006 the Eugene City Council approved including it in their biannual work plan. The project aims to filter all city programs through international human rights standards to strengthen community relationships and ensure all citizens are engaged. It also discusses how the project differs from and goes beyond the existing Human Rights Ordinance by taking a more proactive approach to preventing discrimination. The document outlines some of the human rights addressed by existing city programs and goals and provides ideas for how the city could further adopt a human rights framework, such as through a youth contest on human rights and addressing health care discrimination faced by women of color.

1. HUMAN RIGHTS CITIES
Porto Alegre
Taiwan
Nagpiur
Ithaca
San Francisco
Eugene

2. 2006: Eugene City Council approves the
Human Rights Commission putting the
Human Rights City Project on its bi-annual,
2006 – 2008, work plan.

3. Human Rights
Standards and
Principles
A Human Rights City filters all city programs through
international human rights standards and principals
• Brings all levels of the community together
• Strengthens relationships between individuals and organizations
• Ensures all citizens are engaged, informed, active and part of an
ongoing dialog about how to obtain universal human rights.

4. .
December 10th, 1948:
United Nations
adopted and
proclaimed the
Universal Declaration
of Human Rights

5. We are all free and equal
The right to rest and leisure
No slavery
The right to marriage and family
The right to freedom of
thought and expression.
The right to take part in government
The right to work and equal pay
Fair treatment by the courts
The right to asylum
The right to education
The right to a fair standard of living –
housing, health care, food, clothing
No torture
The right to participate in
cultural life

6. How is the Eugene Human Rights
City Project Different than the Eugene
Human Rights Ordinance?

7. Human Rights Ordinance:
• “Reactive” - Responding and reacting to discrimination
when it occurs.
• Primarily talks of Civil Rights.
Human Rights City Project:
• “Proactive” – taking initiative to prevent discrimination
and ensure human rights for all.
• Encompasses civil, political, cultural, social and economic
rights, akin to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• Addresses unintentional or inadvertent discrimination.

8.
What’s unintentional discrimination?
If an elephant steps on your foot, it hurts whether the elephant meant
it or not. Discrimination may not be intentional, such as segregation
laws were, but it is still discrimination.

9. What are Some Benefits of the
Human Rights City Project?
• Makes government more accountable.
• More fully address the needs of all our citizens.
• Improves the quality of life for all.
• Changes the lens in which we view what we need to do as a
community.

10. Changing the Lens on
Homelessness
From: Helping “those” people who are different from us.
To: The Human Right to a fair standard of living with
housing, food, health care, and clothing for all.

11. What are Some Challenges of the
Human Rights City Project?
Despite our best intentions:
• We don’t have the economic means to house and feed all who are in need.
•We can’t prevent all conflict.
•A human rights framework on a city level may seem intangible, abstract,
too all encompassing or too difficult to accomplish realistically.

12. “It is not incumbent upon you to
finish the task, but neither are you
free to absolve yourself from it.”
- Talmud

13. How is Eugene already working
on being a Human Rights City?

14. City of Eugene Adaptive
Recreation’s Arts for All Program
Art tools are available so people with limited movement or lack of or
impaired fine motor skills can paint, draw, print and have artistic
expression for their creative selves.

15. Human Rights
Making art tools accessible for all people means no
matter what abilities or dis/abilities you have, you
have the right to freedom of thought and expression
and the right to participate in cultural life.

16. City of Eugene Manufactured Home
Ordinance
When manufactured home parks close, the people who live there are
vulnerable to losing their homes. The ordinance protects those people and
provides compensation.

17. Human Rights
Looking at this through a human rights lens, we see
that this helps provide people the right to a fair
standard of living – including housing.

18. Eugene City Council 2007 – 2008 Goal
Enhance understanding of race issues, working towards a plan to
“…ensure a respectful workplace for all City employees and to
ensure equitable service delivery to all members of the community.”

19. Human Rights
City goals such as this have broad human rights
implications – such as the right to dignity, the right to
be free from discrimination and the right to work
and equal pay.

20.
These programs and goals address
unintentional discrimination.
For instance, lack of accessible tools for all people to be able to have
artistic expression does not intentionally discriminate against people
with disabilities. It is unintentional discrimination that still interferes
with a human right to free expression and full participation in a cultural
life.

21. Human
Rights
These programs and goals have a proactive approach.
Creating a plan where there is a respectful workplace can prevent
incidents of discrimination from happening, as well as
addressing discrimination when it occurs.
Having a plan in place to address possible future issues of loss of
homes, can help prevent an increase in homelessness.

22. What are some other ideas of how
Eugene could adopt a Human
Rights City framework?

23. Citywide Youth Contest:
Design a Human Rights Web Page
• Eugene children will be encouraged to explore one of the 30 articles of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and how it relates specifically to
Eugene.
• Participants can do interviews, take photographs, do research, draw
pictures, write poetry, etc. that would be included on a web page.
• Participants will not be expected to actualize the web page, so no particular
technical skills or equipment is needed.
• Contest winners will be announced at the annual Human Rights celebration
event on December 10.
• Contest winners will get to work with a professional web designer to
actualize their web page.
• The “final product” will be added to the Human Rights section of the city
web page.

24. Citywide Youth Contest:
Design a Human Rights Web Page
Eugene children will have the opportunity to:
• Explore how human rights are being applied or not in Eugene and learn what a
Human Rights City means.
• Meet with citizens and gain a deeper understanding of their community.
• Develop leadership skills.
• Explore career possibilities in technology; creative pursuits of writing, art and
photography; and learn local history and culture.
• Gain self-esteem through the affirmation of their work and ideas.
A Preventive Approach:
• Youth of today will be future Eugene and Universal Human
Rights activists and citizens of tomorrow.

25. Health Care and Women of Color
Racism has a pervasive negative impact of the health of women of color:
• Health care services are not presented in culturally appropriate ways.
• Environmental racism and sexism puts them at greater risk.
• Lack of focus by medical researchers means prevention and cures are less
feasible and specific issues such as maternity or aging are not explored.

26. Approaches the Eugene Human Rights
City Project Could Take
 Providing information and culturally competent support
to women of color in dealing with health care issues,
health care workers, and the health care industry,
including insurance companies.
 Providing training opportunities for health care workers
on cultural competency generally and specifically on
health care issues.
 Making accessible information such as the report Women of
Color Health Data Book: Adolescents to Seniors or web pages
such as Scorecard: The Pollution Information Site that
evaluates environmental burdens in specific localities by
ethnicity, race, gender or income.

27. Collaboration
Health Care and Women of Color:
• Lane Community College Nursing Program
• Lane Community College Native American Studies
Program
• University of Oregon Center For Study of Women in
Society, Research Interest Group: On Becoming Bicultural,
Latino Immigrant Mothers Raising American Children
• Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS) Support Groups
for Women of Color Survivors

28. "Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to
home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the
world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he
lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where
he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks
equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination.
Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.
Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall
look in vain for progress in the larger world.” - Eleanor Roosevelt